Smith College Book Sale — 1962
by Paula Bosse
Smith College Club book sale, Highland Park Village…
by Paula Bosse
As the children of a bookseller, my brother and I spent our childhoods surrounded by books — at home, in the Aldredge Book Store, at book shows, and at book sales. The two big annual book sales I remember were the Smith College Book Sale (the really big one) and the Brandeis Book Sale, both being fundraisers for the respective colleges.
The Smith College Club of Dallas put on their book sales. The club was organized by alumnae in 1949 in the home of Mrs. Joseph L. Higginbotham (Elizabeth Higginbotham, Class of ’32), and the first informal sale was conducted on her back porch in Highland Park. Proceeds from the book sales funded Smith College scholarships for Dallas girls.
I was excited to see (silent) film footage of an early Smith College sale, footage which showed up in SMU’s endlessly interesting WFAA-Channel 8 newsfilm collection. I remember much larger sales from the ’70s and ’80s, so this one from 1962 seems very quaint. This 9th annual sale was held on May 1-2, 1962 in an empty storefront at 84 Highland Park Village. Volunteers were wearing “candy striper” uniforms, and shoppers filled up Neiman-Marcus shopping bags.
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Stanley Marcus, always a supporter of book-related events in Dallas (and the father of two Smith grads), even had the event incorporated into a Neiman-Marcus ad that year (their Preston Road location was an official drop-off spot for book donations, and after the store moved from Preston Road to NorthPark, the empty building was given over to the Smith women a few times to use as the site of several of their book sales).
Neiman-Marcus ad, April 20, 1962 (click for larger image)
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Sources & Notes
Top image is a screenshot from the YouTube clip (here), from the WFAA NewsFilm Collection, G. William Jones Film Collection, Hamon Arts Library, Southern Methodist University.
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Copyright © 2020 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
Mickey,
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[…] I’m adding three bonus images, all ads. I used to post so many more ads than I have lately. I think my first love has always been retro/vintage/historical advertising, so it’s always exciting when I can combine old ads with Dallas history or Dallas pop culture, and I really love these three ads. The first is from Neiman-Marcus and is a 1962 tie-in ad with what was once the very popular annual Smith College Book Sale. From the April post “Smith College Book Sale — 1962.” […]
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