Flashback : Dallas

Just out of frame, Miss Crabtree…

by Paula Bosse

Time again to look back through a year of posts and pick out some of my favorite photos/images. They’re in no order. The pictures are larger when you click them. To see the posts they appeared in, click the titles; for information on image sources, scroll down to the bottom of each post to “Sources & Notes.”

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Above, this 1936 photo of kids and their dogs at the Hall of State during the Texas Centennial Exposition is so “Little Rascals” it hurts. I love this photo! It’s in the post “Stereoview Souvenirs of the Texas Centennial — 1936” (a post which has tons of great photos!).

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Below, a photo of the way-way-WAY-over=the-top decoration of The Dallas Morning News Building (northwest corner of Commerce and Lamar) to welcome the huge Elks convention to town, I mean… it’s a lot. There are little elks everywhere you look (one in every window!). I love this. It’s so ridiculously excessive. From a post where I zoomed in to look at all the crazy details, “Elks-a-Plenty — 1908.” 

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Fair Park is such an amazing place. Color photographs from 1936 showing the new buildings which were built for the Centennial are pretty unusual (are there any?) ( I discovered one a few years ago in an ad for linoleum, but I’m not completely sure the photo wasn’t colorized). For color images you pretty much have to rely on old postcards with their postcard colorization magic (like here) to try to imagine how fantastic that bright, new, vivid color must have been in real life. This postcard shows the Praetorians Life Insurance exhibit inside the Varied Industries building. Those are some pretty bold color choices. From the post “Miscellaneous Postcards.” 

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From that same “Miscellaneous Postcards” post, this image of the Magnolia Building. As I said in that post, looking at this building never gets old.

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I love these two dreamy images of the interior of the brand-new Union Staton, taken by Frank Rogers, featured in the post “Union Station Interiors — 1916.” 

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This photo shows what I’ve called the “Pacific Avenue Warehouse District“ — an area woefully undocumented by urban photogs (and it took me a while to figure out the exact location). I think I like this early-1930s image because it’s such an odd area to photograph, and it was completely new to me as part of the historical landscape. Found it on eBay — just an old random snapshot taken by an unknown person. Thank you, eBay.

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Looking at this photo of “Betty and Benny Fox, Sky-Dancing in Dallas — ca. 1935” makes me feel a little lightheaded and queasy. It took me forever to figure this one out. I found it in one of those circuitous and impossible-to-retrace internet journeys which had me, somehow, rummaging through the digital collection of Princeton University! I loved writing this post, and the photo is exactly what it looks like: two crazy daredevils waving at the camera from way up in the sky.

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Just this week I posted a few favorite screenshots from the work I’ve been doing in the WFAA Collection at SMU. I’ll narrow it down a bit more and put my 3 favorites here. From the post “No-Context Channel 8 Screenshots: 1970-1971.” The first one shows the 1500 block of Commerce on a rainy afternoon, April 1971.

Another shows a boy in Old East Dallas holding a paper sack, staring directly into the camera, looking a little shell-shocked — he had apparently witnessed a fatal traffic accident. (November 1970)

And then there’s this one. I can’t get over this bank interior: marble and wall-to-wall green shag carpeting. The FBI is there investigating a bank robbery. (That’s not the only crime that’s been committed on these premises!) (December 1970)

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There were a few images I really liked in “Photo Additions To Past Posts — #18,” including a color photo looking north up Akard from Commece, the construction of the Dallas Athletic Club (1925), and a wholesome ad for roller skating at the Fair Park Skating Rink.

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I’ve really slacked off on posting ads, which saddens me, because I really love old advertising. The one that I perhaps got most enjoyment from this year was this 1911 ad from the fine folks at Dr Pepper, found in the winsomely titled post “‘No Mice, No Flies, No Caffeine, No Cocaine’ — 1911.”

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I posted a photo from a collection I had catalogued a few years ago as a volunteer for the Dallas Historical Society which shows the “1400 Block of Main Street, ca. 1946.” It was taken by James Bell, an amateur photographer who took a lot of interesting photos of what probably seemed like mundane things at the time, but which seem kind of magical when you look at them 75 years later. I love this photo but had some image-quality issues with it, so I posted only a detail (directly below) — but it’s the end of the year, so what the heck, the full, wonky, super-low-resolution photo which widens out the view a bit is posted below it. 

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There are so many photos I love in the post “The University Park Brown Books — An Unbelievable Resource!”, but I’ll limit myself to three. First, the old Couch Building at Hillcrest and McFarlin, seen in 1931 (I wrote about this building here when it was destroyed by a fire in 2016).

And this building at 6601 Hillcrest, which is still standing and is instantly recognizable. In 1931 it was the Mustang Garage.

And who wouldn’t love a cute little barbecue joint called the Beef Bar? Snider Plaza, undated.

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Lastly, I posted this just a few days ago — it’s such a great photograph. I wish I had a better copy to share! It shows the brand-new “Triple Underpass — ca. 1936,” looking toward Oak Cliff.

It. Is. Fantastic. And it might be my favorite photo posted in 2022.

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BONUS IMAGE: Okay, I do have a bonus image, because it shows my mother (!). It’s from the post “When SMU Theology Students Were Sprayed with Insecticide at a University Park Lunch-Counter Sit-In — 1961.” I’d heard about this awful event since childhood because my mother had been there. When I showed the news footage to her, she found herself in it. Sadly, there’s no view of her face, but I recognize the back of her head! I was surprised to see that there was footage of this sort-of “famous” historical event, but I was shocked to learn that my mother was actually in it! Here’s a very grainy screenshot from old Channel 8 news footage. She is seen taking part in a peaceful civil rights protest in a drug store which refused to serve Black customers at its lunch counter — in an attempt to run out the protesters, the owner sprayed them with insecticide. My mother is sitting at the lunch counter as the thick cloud of bug spray fills the room — she is second from the right, wearing a white coat. Pretty cool.

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And those are my favorite images that appeared in Flashback Dallas posts in 2022. 

Coming soon: my personal favorite posts and the most popular posts of the year.

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2022 Year-End “best of” lists here.

See all Flashback Dallas Year-End lists — past and present — here.

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Copyright © 2022 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.