When Every Skyscraper Was a Distinctive Landmark
by Paula Bosse
Soak it in…
by Paula Bosse
I love this photo, taken from the southern edge of downtown, at S. Akard (running from left to right in the photo) and Royal, a street which once ran one block north of Canton (map below). Today, the convention center would be behind the photographer, and the I. M. Pei-designed City Hall would be pretty much straight ahead. I’m always going to prefer the grittier-looking downtown Dallas of days gone by to today’s shinier, glitzier version. I couldn’t get the exact angle, but today’s view from more or less the same vantage point looks like this, and it just isn’t as interesting. (I’ve never actually heard anyone broach the topic, but am I the only one who thinks that Pei’s City Hall now looks weirdly and hopelessly dated? Kind of tired and stuck in the ’70s? If nothing else, those yucky white flagpoles out front need to go!)
When this photo was taken, you could actually still see all those famous buildings — before they were dwarfed and engulfed by all those over-eager underclassmen!
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Sources & Notes
Photo from a site managed by Andrew K. Dart, full of photos from negatives he rescued when they were thrown out by KDFW-TV, many from the archives of KRLD. This photo is from a page of Dallas skyline photos, here.
Here’s a map that shows S. Akard and Royal streets, which Mr. Dart identified as being the intersection seen in this photo by zooming in on the street sign (click for larger image):
1952 Mapsco
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Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
Going by the age of the cars and that the Southland Life building is there I think the posted photo is from around 1959.
Andrew’s website has some really great photos. One is taken from a similar perspective and about the same time as the one you posted but much higher resolution. It was taken from the roof of what was Memorial Auditorium at the time: http://www.akdart.com/vtr/jpeg/03-06R.jpg
Also for a view with even fewer skyscrapers but many more trees, you posted a photo that was taken from a similar perspective but about a 1/4 mile south in 1942: https://flashbackdallas.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/dallas_skyline_eisenstaedt_1943_large.jpg
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Nothing will ever be better than that Eisenstaedt photo!
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i agree Paula – there are some cool Brutalist buildings, but City Hall is not one of them. Not representative of I.M. Pei’s career either.
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I’m glad I’m not alone!
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