1920s | Flashback : Dallas

February 19, 2014

The Arcadia Theater Sign You’ve Never Seen

Best theater marquee EVER! Lower Greenville, late ’20s (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I LOVE this photo! Forget the sign for a moment (difficult though that may be…) — take a look at Greenville Avenue in the late-1920s! That building at the top right, across the street from the (late, lamented) Arcadia, is still there. The car heading north is just about to pass where the 7-Eleven is now (at Richmond). As for that tree-shaped sign … wow. I’ve never seen anything like that. The photo was used in a promotional campaign for a new sort of electric marquee technology.

Here’s what Arcadia manager Wally Akin (pictured above) had to say about this new-fangled Vendope Changeable ‘Lectric Letter thing:

I’m not sure the Vendope Service System took off, but, damn, that sign is cool. Here’s a another view, from 1930, looking up Greenville from about Alta — you can see how close to the curb the sign was. Imagine driving up the street and seeing that lit up in front of you.

It was a little less cool, though, by 1937 when the “tree” had been pruned and tampered with almost beyond recognition, but, still, that is one weird eye-catcher of a marquee.

UPDATE: The following information comes from a comment to me from the estimable Angus Wynne, who took over the Arcadia in the 1980s (and 1990s?) and booked some great live shows there (several of which I paid to see): “The tree sign evolved from a lesser marquee that was installed in a real tree which grew in the original parkway formerly located adjacent to the street. A very unusual attraction, it remained there for many years until the tree died, upon which the owner had it concreted over and had the electric branches added, pictured here. It was torn down when the theater’s facade and interior were renovated during the 1940’s.”

What a shame that something so wonderful didn’t survive. All those lights! I’d have loved to have seen it lit up at night, back when this lowest stretch of Greenville Avenue was called a “northern” and “remote” part of the city.

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Sources & Notes

First three images, including top photo, from the Hardin-Simmons University Library, via the Portal to Texas History — these and other Arcadia Theatre images from this collection can be viewed here. The main photo (MUCH larger when clicked) is undated, but it’s sometime between the Arcadia’s opening in 1927 and the Publix theater chain’s plummet into receivership around 1931. UPDATE: When I posted this photo back in February, 2014, I was excited to think I had stumbled across something that had been unseen for years. At almost the exact time I posted this, Troy Sherrod’s great book Historic Dallas Theatres was published … and this photo was in it. Troy beat me to it!

If you’re into patent-perusing, just google “Vendope” and you’ll see oodles — an example of one them is here. I’m not sure if this is part of the same system described above, but this patent is dated 1931. The inventor (apparently of Fort Worth) had the unlikely name of Vendope L. Pistocco. Or maybe Van Lawrence Vendope. …There’s a Vendope in there somewhere.

1930 view of Lowest Greenville, looking north from Alta, is from the archives of the Dallas Public Library.

For further exploration of the Arcadia (and another photo of the barely recognizable tree), see my follow-up post here.

8 Comments

February 11, 2014

Delta Air Lines’ First Passenger Flight — 1929

by Paula Bosse

Delta Air Lines has had a longer — and more important — association with Dallas than you might think. On June 17, 1929, Delta made its first-ever passenger flight, from Dallas to Jackson, Mississippi via Shreveport and Monroe, Louisiana. According to the Love Field website, “Early flights operated from a passenger terminal near Bachman Lake, which later served as Southwest Airlines’ first headquarters building.” On that first flight, the five passengers sat in wicker chairs and could roll down windows (!) for needed ventilation. The flight took five hours. One of the first ads, from the Delta Flight Museum page, looked like this:

Delta passenger service ad ca. September 1929.

Forty-some-odd years later, the ads — and Dallas — got a bit more sophisticated.

delta_dallas_fur

delta_dallas_fredric-sweney_playing-cards Artist: Fredric Sweney

And we can’t leave out Cowtown!

delta_fort-worth

UPDATE, June 20, 2017: This almost-three-year-old post got a TON of hits yesterday, and I couldn’t figure out why. Eventually, though, I tracked it down: it had to do with yesterday’s Final Jeopardy question (or is it “answer”?):

delta_jeopardy_061917

Nice to see that Jeopardy is incorporating Dallas history into the show!

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Top travel poster — showing Fort Worth in the distance, I guess? — by Jack Laycox.

For a really well-researched article by Timothy Harper describing that first flight, click here (the Dallas bit is contained in the last seven paragraphs).

1 Comment

February 5, 2014

Prohibition Killjoys

Stills stilled

By Paula Bosse

Oh dear.

A quote from Michael V. Hazel, from his book Remembering Dallas:

A national magazine described Dallas as “one of the wettest cities in the nation” during Prohibition, with more than its share of speakeasies and bootleg liquor. Sheriff Dan Harston and his deputies kept busy confiscating stills.

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Sources & Notes

Quote and photo from Remembering Dallas by Michael V. Hazel (Turner Publishing, 2010). Wonky image is completely my fault.

3 Comments

February 4, 2014

Beware the Narrow Oak Cliff Viaduct!

by Paula Bosse

“Sometimes the Oak Cliff Viaduct seems a trifle too narrow. From a snapshot made just after it happened.”

I came across this photograph while flipping through the book Our City — Dallas, A Community Civics by Justin F. Kimball (1927). I love that viaduct, but … yikes. Look at all those calm and/or petrified passengers. (We were always warned about going across the river…)

Here are a few contemporaneous images of the not-actually-so-narrow viaduct.

oak-cliff-viaduct_old_postcard