“Triple Underpass” by Florence McClung — 1945
by Paula Bosse
“Triple Underpass” by Florence McClung (photo: David Dike Fine Art)
by Paula Bosse
The word “iconic” is used way too much these days, but I suppose Dallas’ triple underpass is something that truly deserves to be described as “iconic.” Aside from the beauty, the engineering, and the usefulness of the underpass/railroad bridge, it is also, of course, known around the world for its cameo appearance in the Kennedy assassination.
Built in 1936, after years of back-and-forth planning and negotiating, the triple underpass was open in time for the Texas Centennial Exposition. It finally opened up a straight shot from Fort Worth to Dallas via Highway 1, and it and the concurrently-built Dealey Plaza served as Dallas’ welcoming “gateway” into the city for visitors approaching from the west.
The 1945 painting seen above — “Triple Underpass” by Dallas artist Florence McClung (1894-1992) — may be one of the first depictions of the structure in a fine art context. This painting goes up for sale this weekend, as the featured lot in the David Dike Fine Art Texas Art Auction. The estimate is $75,000-$175,000. Florence would be shocked by that, as her original price — which she wrote on a checklist for a show at the then-Dallas Museum of Fine Arts was $300 (which would, today, be about $4,000). (UPDATE 10/27/18: The painting sold for $252,000 — which, I assume, includes the buyer’s premium.)
As a fan of Texas art — and especially of the Dallas regionalist group, the Dallas Nine (with which McClung, though not a member, was closely associated) — I hope this wonderful piece of Dallas art (and you can’t get much more quintessentially Dallas than this!) goes for much more than the gallery estimate. (I wrote about McClung previously, here, with images showing a couple of other Dallas “cityscapes” done around the same time as “Triple Underpass.”)
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Below is a photo from 1945 showing an aerial view of the scene captured by McClung that same year. (A photo from a little later, with a view to the west, is here.)
Dallas, 1945 (click for larger image)
A few things are interesting to me:
- McClung neglected to include the ever-present billboard atop what was then the Sexton Foods building (later the School Book Depository) — in the photo above, U. S. Royal tires are being advertised.
- I love that little oval, landscaped island, which is also seen in McClung’s painting.
- Those four obelisk-y pillars, seen in both the photo and the painting, two on either side of the roadway, west of the underpass — what are those?
- Is that large white building in the lower middle of the photograph
Pappy’s Showland?Maybethe Sky-Vu Supper Club (which I have meant to write about for years)?(No! It’s the Chicken Bar, at the northeast corner of Commerce and Industrial. A photo of it under construction in 1945 is here.)
See here for as close to the angle of McClung’s view as I could get, from a 2014 Google Street View. (The painting shows the Dallas County Courthouse as it was then, without its now-replaced tower.)
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Good luck to the bidders this weekend. It’s a great painting!
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Sources & Notes
Image of Florence McClung’s painting “Triple Underpass” is from the David Dike Fine Art catalog, which is illustrated with the works to be auctioned on Saturday, October 27, 2018; the catalog can be viewed in its entirety, here (this painting and its description are on p. 45). The website of David Dike Fine Art is here. The prices realized for this auction can be found here — McClung’s painting is Lot 163.
I am unsure of the source of the 1945 aerial photo — I saved it years ago and did not make note of the source, although I highly suspect it is from one of the many fine collections held by SMU.
See McClung’s application for the DMFA show where “Triple Underpass” was shown, here; her checklist of works to be shown is here (both documents are from the Dallas Museum of Art’s Exhibition Records, via UNT’s Portal to Texas History).
The earlier Flashback Dallas post “Dallas Scenes by Florence McClung — 1940s” (with two other paintings from the same period as “Triple Underpass”) is here.
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Copyright © 2018 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
The pillars later held wires to support traffic signals. The club isn’t Pappy’s, I believe the name was the Venus Club.
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Thanks, Bob. Do you think the pillars were originally purely decorative?
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Don’t know about that. By the time I was old enough to see them, they had signals hung from them.
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I think that building is the Sky-Vu club (or it was when it opened in 1940). Here is the opening ad from 1940: https://flashbackdallas.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/sky-vu_june-1940.jpg
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I believe the Sky-Vu Club was inside the point of the West Commerce Street-Fort Worth Avenue split.
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That’s it. Sure like those cover charge prices!
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tdwalla1: The 1945 Dallas directory has the Sky Vu at 541 Fort Worth Avenue, next to the Semos Drive-In.
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In the painting you can see the traffic signals and also street name signs. In the photo I can only see the street name signs.
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You can also see the wires in the painting. I hadn’t noticed that. I thought the street name signs in the photo were markings on the road. Thanks!
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Chicken Bar! Northeast corner of Commerce and Industrial.
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Pappy’s Showland, I think so at one point and I think at another time it was a restaurant called the Chicken Bar. The obelisks, they are still in place, although not in use, and were the supports for wires that signage and traffic signals hung from to control traffic through the Triple Underpass. All two way streets back then so signals and signage were very important. Very informative posting Paula. If I had a few extra bucks I’d be bidding on this wonderful painting.
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Wow! Thanks. I used to work in the Records building on the left of the courthouse back in 1973. I have been trying to identify it on Google for awhile. I parked somewhere on this side of the Schoolbook Depository on a free gravel lot. I got a jaywalking ticket for crossing the street and not using the crosswalk at the light.
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[…] Florence McClung (1894-1992) — a painter, printmaker, and pastelist in the circle of Regionalist artists known as The Dallas Nine — lived in Dallas and often painted nearby rural scenes as well as more rugged Western landscapes. I haven’t seen many urban scenes by McClung, but there were two oil paintings that appeared in a one-woman show at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in the spring of 1945 which I’d love to find images of: “Triple Underpass” and “Big D,” the latter of which sounds very similar to the one seen above, “Dallas Cityscape,” from the collection of Mark and Geralyn Kever (whose impressive collection of Texas art can be seen in the Jan./Feb. issue of American Fine Art Magazine — jump to page 53 in the PDF to find the story, “Cream of the Crop”). (UPDATE: “Triple Underpass” has surfaced! More here.) […]
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there are actually four pillars in the picture, two closer to the intersection of Industrial and Commerce, which are still standing.
https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7768249,-96.8130843,3a,75y,52.58h,89.25t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sHktlB4x8gO2B7ZltlAeJAw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
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[…] original price for the painting was $300; it recently sold at auction for $252,000. More on this at “‘Triple Underpass’ by Florence McClung — 1945.” (Source: David Dike Fine […]
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