“There Are Eight Million Stories in the Naked City…” — ca. 1920
by Paula Bosse
by Paula Bosse
The photograph above, by George A. McAfee, shows Ervay Street, looking south from Main, in about 1920. Neiman’s is on the right. I’m not sure what the occasion was (I see special-event bunting….), but the two things that jump out right away are the number of people on the sidewalks and the amount of congestion on the streets. In addition to private automobiles (driven by “automobilists” or “autoists,” as the papers of the day referred to them), the street is also packed with cars standing in the taxi rank (cab stand) at the left, and a long line of hulking streetcars. This busy intersection is jammed to capacity.
The city of Dallas was desperately trying to relieve its traffic problems around this time, and there were numerous articles in the papers addressing the concerns of how to manage the congestion of streets not originally designed to handle motor vehicle traffic. Dallas and Fort Worth were working on similar plans of re-routing traffic patterns and instituting something called “skip stop” wherein streetcars would stop every other block rather than every block. Streetcars, in fact, though convenient and necessary, seemed to cause the most headaches as far as backing up and slowing down traffic, as they were constantly stopping to take on and let off passengers. There was something called a “safety zone” that was being tried at the time. I’m not sure I completely understand it, but it allowed cars to pass streetcars in certain areas while they were stopped.
That traffic is crazy. But, to be perfectly honest, it’s far less interesting than all that human activity — hundreds of people just going about their daily business. It’s always fun to zoom in on these photos, and, below, I’ve broken the original photograph into several little vignettes. I love the people hanging out the Neiman-Marcus windows. And all those newsboys! Not quite as charming was all that overhead clutter of power lines and telephone lines; combined with the street traffic, it makes for a very claustrophobic — if vibrant — downtown street scene. (Click photos for larger images.)
My favorite “hidden” image in the larger photograph. The only moment of calm.
I love this. The woman in front of the Neiman-Marcus plaque looking off into the distance, the display in the store window, the newsboy running down the street, the man in suspenders, the women’s fashions, and all those hats!
A barefoot boy and litter everywhere.
The congestion is pretty bad above the streets, too.
Cabbies, newsboys, and working stiffs.
I swear there was only one streetcar driver in Dallas, and he looked like this! Those motormen had a definite “look.”
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Sources & Notes
Original photograph attributed to George A. McAfee, from the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, accessible here.
For other photos I’ve zoomed in on the details, see here.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
The boy, barefooted and with hands in pockets, looks for all the world just like he had stepped out of one of J.R. Williams’ “Born thirty years too soon” panels. They don’t make nostalgia like that anymore!
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Ha! I wasn’t familiar with Williams’ comics, but I just looked him up. Thanks, Bob!
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[…] in photos. I love them all, but I’m particularly fond of one that shows Ervay & Main (“There are Eight Million Stories in the Naked City… — ca. 1920″). This is one of 14 (!) parts of the photo I zoomed in on, this one showing a woman sitting at a […]
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You dissected a moment in time! I was a street cop on Elm and Ervay from 1995 to 2005, this page really spoke to me.
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Thanks, Billy!
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I love these pictures of downtown Dallas! I moved to Oak Cliff from a small rural town in 1952 (age 12) and much of my time was spent downtown, hanging out, movies, shopping, etc. I even went downtown for my last 2 years of school at Crozier Tech High School.
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I forgot to add that I then went on to work downtown for a number of years.
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[…] As you approach Main Street you see this elegant sign (Neiman-Marcus, for me, will always have that hyphen in it!). (See what this block looked like around 1920, looking south from Main, here.) […]
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Thanks, Paula, you are an un-evil genius, a pluperfect civic samaritan and we’re in your debt for your gifted eye and charity of spirit. This is wunnerful!
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Thanks, Bill!
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