The Haskell Exchange — ca. 1910

telephone_haskell-exchange_postmarked-1910_ebayThe switchboard hub in Old East Dallas… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Above, the building that housed the Haskell Exchange of Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone (the company which later became Southwestern Bell Telephone and, eventually, part of AT&T), located at the southeast corner of Bryan and Haskell in Old East Dallas. It was so cute and quaint back in 1910 (the year this postcard was mailed). AT&T still has a building on this very same corner — over a century later. Unfortunately, the building stopped being quaint a long time ago. See the same location today, here. Some awnings might help….

Below is part of an article describing a tour of the Exchange taken by the Dallas Advertising League in 1911 (click for larger image):

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Dallas Morning News, Feb. 11, 1911

ad-southwestern-telephone-telegraph_1912
Cattle Raisers’ Association of Texas, 1912

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DMN, May 2, 1912

haskell-exchange_ca-1915_DHSDallas Historical Society

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Sources &  Notes

More about the operators of Southwestern Tel. & Tel. (with photos of their “rest room”) can be found in the Flashback Dallas post “Work and Play in Telephone Land,” here.

In this case “exchange” did not mean the same thing as telephone exchanges such as “Taylor,” “Emerson,” “Lakeside,” “Fleetwood,” “Riverside,” etc. Read more at Wikipedia here and here for the distinctions.

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Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.