Flashback : Dallas

I. M. Pei shows off his vision for a new City Hall (1970)

by Paula Bosse

2025 was not a good year for me. Or, sadly, for this blog. As most of my time and energy was spent caring for my mother and dealing with her difficult last few months, I feel that everything else around me suffered from unintentional neglect. After years of being possibly over-productive and posting perhaps too much (this blog contains almost 1,500 posts!), I looked at this year’s numbers, and I posted only 27 times — one month had no posts at all. And that surprises me, because, quite honestly, I thought the number would be a lot lower. I gotta get back on that horse. Thank you so much for sticking with me!

Because there were so few posts this year, I’ll decrease the number of year-end favorites to a lean Top Seven. Here are my personal favorites of 2025. I don’t know if I have a favorite, per se, but the one that I felt that I sort of had to write is my top post of the year, and the rest are listed chronologically. Click the titles to see the original posts (sources for all of the images used in this list will be found at the bottom of each of those posts).

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1.  “DALLAS CITY HALL” (November)

The prospect of our City Hall being torn down is pretty unbelievable. But, as a Dallas native who has written incessantly about my hometown for the past 12 years (and even before that), I have to say that, unbelievable as this is, it doesn’t surprise me. Except that this has eclipsed the standard Dallas stereotype of wanting something bigger and newer and shinier and pricier and glitzier and braggier and, now, emptier. We’re in a whole new dimension here. Not only is this a city hall (arguably the most important building in any city), this is an I. M. Pei building, one he designed for us — for the people of Dallas and for the city of Dallas. I look at Pei’s building almost every day. It means more to me now than it ever has. This post was written as an appreciation for an important work of public architecture by an internationally renowned architect, which is somehow — unbelievably — in danger of being torn down. But, to paraphrase the final, bleak, cynical line from a movie that was released when City Hall was being built, “Forget it, Jake — it’s Dallas.”

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2.  “AN ARTISTS’S CONCEPTION OF A FUTURE DALLAS” (January)

Check out this post to see several wonderful dark and moody sketches by artist Ignatz Sahula-Dycke that combine Art Deco and futuristic elements into super-cool visions of what public buildings and spaces might one day look like. The artwork is from around 1940, so we are living in that “future” right now.

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3.  “MY MOTHER, MARGARET WERRY, 1936-2025” (May)

My mother’s death is all I’ll probably remember about 2025 when I look back in future years. It helped to write this, but it’s the one thing I never wanted to write. I learned so much about Dallas from my mother, who grew up here. She had some wonderful stories that have shaped how I see our shared hometown.

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4. “WHEN BIG D HAD NO LOVE FOR BRUCE — 1974” (June)

My favorite posts to write are ones like this. I saw the ad below for a Bruce Springsteen show at the Sportatorium and wondered why I had never heard of that. …Because it never happened! That sent me down a Springsteen-in-Dallas rabbit hole (a sentence I can’t believe I just wrote). It’s always fun to stumble across some random piece of forgotten ephemera on the internet and then dive into the story behind it. And, as is usually the case, I ended up learning lots of interesting things in the process.

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5. “VAUDEVILLE AT THE SPORTATORIUM? — 1936” (July)

More Sportatorium! I discovered this story because of a truly unexpected ticket I saw on eBay. A lot of rabbit holes have involved the Sportatorium….

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6. “FISHER’S ADDITION, WEST DALLAS” (August)

I guess a lot of what I write about is spurred by seeing a photo or an ad or, in this case, a postcard and saying to myself, “What am I looking at here?” Researching this one was fun. Even more fun was having people see the post and contact me to say they had found what this same view looks like today. And even more fun was unexpectedly meeting those people and being able to thank them in person for giving me a sort of “closure” to the arc that began with seeing a postcard with a mysterious “Fisher’s” written on it and having no idea where this place I had never heard of once was.

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7. “DALLAS FIRE DEPARTMENT TRAINING TOWER, FAIR PARK — 1936” (October)

Yep. Same story: I saw this photo and wondered what I was looking at and why I had never seen this tower structure before. With help from people who follow the Flashback Dallas Facebook page, I found out what it was and then delved in and really enjoyed learning about this weird “building” incongruously plopped down in Fair Park. (Also, this look into the history of a forgotten Dallas building earned the ignominious distinction of being my LEAST-VIEWED POST OF THE YEAR!)

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And there they are, my personal faves of 2025. Not a banner year, but I was always happy (and relieved) when I could get away from everything and immerse myself in my hometown’s oddness and/or greatness.

Check back on Wednesday to see the readers’ most popular posts of 2025 (number 7 in the list above will definitely not be on that one!).

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Sources & Notes

As they are posted, the three Year-End “best of” lists from 2025 will be here.

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

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