I don’t think the 1936 Texas Exposition at Fair Park could have oversold itself. It was everything it promised. The sensory overload must have been almost debilitating!
The night beauty of the Texas Centennial Exposition at Dallas isbreath-taking! Rainbow-hued fountains, rippling flags, colorful buildings, thousands of constantly changing lights blending into a symphony of thrilling, inspiring, gorgeous effects… A glamorous fairyland of scintillating light, color and cool water that alone will repay your trip. SEE this marvel of beauty!
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“Have the time of your life in Dallas! […] Joyous days and nights of holiday-making await you … in one of the most magnificent settings ever conceived! […]The Texas Centennial Exposition at Dallas is being enthusiastically applauded as the most magnificent spectacle ever attempted on the American continent.”
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“World’s Greatest Show for 50¢… Ample Tourist Accommodations… Come to Dallas!”
(According to the Inflation Calculator, 50¢ admission in 1936 would be equivalent to about $10 in today’s money. 10¢ hamburgers would be about $2, and 5¢ cold drinks would be about $1.)
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“Dallas: Night Spot of the World! / Dallas: Day Spot of the World!”
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Sources & Notes
Images from a promotional brochure offered recently on eBay.
Check out many previous Flashback Dallas posts on the Texas Centennial here.
Before Dr Pepper moved into its fabulous art deco HQ at Mockingbird & Greenville (RIP…), the company’s Dallas bottling works was located at Second Avenue & Hickory Street, from about 1927 to 1948. The building (seen below) still stands.
The images in this post are from a DP manual for bottlers, with numerous photos taken in the Dallas plant. All photos in this post are from that manual (more info is at the end of this post), which every true Dr Pepper superfan (or the dogged collector of obscure soft-drink ephemera) should probably have! All captions are from the booklet.
Above, “Interior of Dallas bottling plant in operation.”
Below, “Model syrup factory, bottling plant and general home office of Dr. Pepper Company, Dallas, Texas.”
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“Water stills, Dallas plant, supplying water for syrup making.”
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“General view chemical laboratory, Dallas.”
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“Chief chemist, Mr. H. Buttler, Dallas, Texas” (Howland Buttler is also seen in the photo above).
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“Water cooler and carbonating equipment, bottling plant, Dallas.”
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This is my favorite photo: “One section of sugar storage, Dallas — you see a supply sufficient for about a week. Interior view of sugar storage floor, Dr Pepper factory building, Dallas. Only the finest, pure cane sugar is used, a grade and quality superior even to the finest table sugar. Exacting standards must be maintained by refiners to meet our specifications, lest the slightest taste or odor from impurities creep into the Dr. Pepper syrup.” (A few years ago, I stumbled across a crazy story about Dr. Pepper — and other soft drink manufacturers — involved in buying black-market sugar, which was a violation of war-time food rationing, as WWII came to a close. Read about this case in the post “Halloween Party? Don’t Forget the Dr Pepper! — 1947” — scroll to the bottom.) Shout out to Sugar Land!
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“Syrup compounding and manufacturing unit at Dallas, Texas. Interior view of syrup room, Dr. Pepper factory, Dallas. Note flood of sunshine through modern factory-glass windows; floors, walls, ceilings, as well as equipment, immaculately clean. Glass-lined mixing tanks in center and at right are of 300-gallon capacity, and behind these are 500-gallon steam-jacketed, glass-lined kettles, where hot process simple syrup is made. Entire syrup manufacturing process is modern, efficient and sanitary.”
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“Modern soaker and washer — one of two units used in Dallas plant.”
“Automatic case stenciling machine.” This is an important part of the manufacturing process I hadn’t thought about….
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“Bottle storage, Dallas plant.”
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Battered front cover and title page:
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Sources & Notes
Photos from “Dr. Pepper Bottler’s Manual: A Manual of Proved Principles and Practices Governing Successful Operation of Dr. Pepper Plants” (Dr. Pepper Company, Dallas, Texas, Nov. 1938); this booklet was found on eBay — for sale for $499.99.
More Flashback Dallas posts featuring Dr Pepper can be found here.
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A quick post today! Above, the much-loved, much-missed Highland Park Cafeteria (3212 Knox), a proud member of the Knox Street Merchants’ Association, the latter of which has drawn up a not-terribly-helpful, pre-Central Expressway map, as seen below, with handy arrows pointing to town.
1932
From a couple of decades later, a matchbook graphic (with a more helpful map), reminding you that the HPC has been “serving particular people since 1925”:
I’m just going to add these things here, because, so far, this is my only post on the HPC, and I might as well keep everything together.
I saw the 1956 ad below, and, even though the photo in the ad is pretty poor quality, it looked like there was a mural there. I’m always interested in murals — most of the time a photo like this is the only chance to see them because they are inevitably painted over or demolished. Anyway… was there a story behind the mural? What did it show?
Dec. 1956
Here it is larger, but the resolution is still low, and the hanging light fixtures directly in front of the mural don’t help:
I found only one mention of a mural at the Highland Park Cafeteria — in this 1950 ad, which mentions “the Williamsburg mural,” as if it were a well-known feature of the restaurant:
April 1950
Then I asked about it on the Flashback Dallas Facebook page — and that led to this muddy screenshot glimpse of the mural from unknown news footage from 1953. Yep, Colonial Williamsburg, above a long planter. I’m not sure why that was immortalized on a wall of the Highland Park Cafeteria, but if anyone was wondering about any sort of HPC mural, these few paragraphs are for you!
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Sources & Notes
Photo from Pinterest.
Knox Street Merchants’ Association ad from the 1932 SMU Rotunda. (That whole area has gotten cramped and is certainly more claustrophobic than when I was a kid, but I’m sure the present-day business owners would probably still echo the 1932 sentiment “Knox Street Business District has them coming from blocks … to shop on Knox.”) (Also, it isn’t often that I see ads mentioning Greenland Hills, the general M Steets area, adjacent to the neighborhood I grew up in.)
Matchbook (detail) from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU Libraries — the full image and more information can be found here.
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These six portraits of ex-slaves who were living in Dallas in 1937 were included in Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project (Works Progress Administration/Work Projects Administration — WPA). See all of the Dallas portraits here.
UPDATED: Thanks to a comment from a reader, I’ve linked to the oral histories of those photographed. Click the links below the photos to read about their lives.
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Above, William Moore was born in Selma, Alabama about 1855; in 1937 he was living at 1016 ½ Good Street in Dallas.
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Below, Emma Watson was born in Ellis County about 1852; in 1937 she lived at 318 Allen Street.
Update, Jan. 2024: I came across this portrait of Andrew Goodman by Dallas-trained artist Merritt Mauzey (1946, Smithsonian American Art Museum):
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From the Library of Congress site devoted to this project:
“Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938” contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume “Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.”
Rejoice, Oak Cliff residents of 1930: you’re getting five Marathon gas stations! I’m not sure why these stations were only in Oak Cliff and no other part of Dallas, but they were (a sixth station joined this elite group a year or so later).
I have a fascination with old gas stations, but I have to admit I’m not familiar with Marathon Gasoline or Marathon Oil products or the Transcontinental Oil Co. (they had a refinery in Fort Worth), but for whatever reason, the Marathon stations in Dallas — all emblazoned with an image of the Greek runner Pheidippides — appear to have faded away by about 1942 when I guess the last straggler finally crossed the finish lane, collapsed, and died. Farewell, Pheidippides.
The photo above shows one of those first 5 stations in Dallas. The location is not specified.
Marathon stations in the O.C. in 1930:
No. 1: Jefferson & Llewellyn Sts. (539 W. Jefferson)
No. 2: Zangs Blvd. & Beckley Ave. (1111 N. Zang)
No. 3 Jimtown Rd. & Montreal Ave. (2120 W. Clarendon Dr.) (in 1931, residents petitioned the city to change the name of the street to “Clarendon” because they thought “Jimtown” was too déclassé)
No. 4: Zangs Blvd. & Davis St. (137 W. Davis — this was the station that lasted the longest, appearing to have closed by the time the 1942 city directory was published)
No. 5: Polk & Davis Sts. (938 W. Davis)
(No. 6: 1804 W. Jefferson)
It doesn’t look like any of the old buildings are still standing, but there IS one of the exact same design still standing in Miami, Oklahoma — a group restored it and even added period gas pumps (which someone later stole) — see it below.
Not all of the Dallas stations had the same design — a press release describes the stations of possessing “distinctive architecture.” Another of the Oak Cliff locations looked very different (and certainly more distinctive):
Somewhere in Oak Cliff, 1930
The one above is the same design seen in this local ad:
April 1930
May 1930
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Sources & Notes
Top photo is from the American Petroleum Institute Photograph and Film Collection, National Museum of American History, Archives Center, Smithsonian Institution — more info can be found here.
I seem to post a lot about gas stations. Here are a few notable posts:
The Gateway to Dallas, or the the Gateway to Oak Cliff?
by Paula Bosse
Above, a fantastic photo showing the new Triple Underpass, about 1936, with the view toward Oak Cliff. (Compare this with a similar view, from the 1950s, here.)
Below, a little earlier, with the view to the east, back toward town.
The triple underpass was built by the Austin Bridge & Road Company between 1934 and 1936, finishing up just in time to welcome the onslaught of visitors to the Texas Centennial Exposition. I encourage you to visit the company’s public Facebook post here, which includes these and other great photos of this Dallas landmark (including a “then and now” comparison and a history of their involvement in the project). Below is an excerpt from that post:
Once called the “Gateway to Dallas,” the triple underpass near Dealey Plaza was built by Austin Bridge Company and Austin Road Company starting in 1934. The underpass, a joint project with the Texas Highway Department and City of Dallas, created access to the western edge of downtown Dallas under the Union Terminal tracks. Contending with up to 80 trains a day complicated the job, requiring close cooperation with the railway companies. The triple underpass was hailed as a modern marvel, built of concrete with square balusters in a handsome art-deco style. It was unveiled with great excitement in 1936, during Texas Centennial celebrations.
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Sources & Notes
Top image is a U.S. Bureau of Public Roads photo showing the new underpass, looking to the west.
Both photos and the excerpt are from a post on the Austin Bridge & Road Facebook page, which you can find here.
Wandering around the eBay “sold” archives, I came across this unusual photo taken in a not terribly scenic part of town. After checking addresses of these businesses in the 1932 city directory, it looks like the photographer (who appears to have been seated in a car) snapped this shot on N. Pacific Avenue, a block or so west from Good Street (now Good-Latimer). Deep Ellum-adjacent. The view is southwesterly, toward downtown. The businesses are mostly warehouses. See what this view looks like today, 90 years or so later, via Google Street View, here.
I was excited to see two familiar 19th-century buildings which I’ve written about and feel a weird kinship with: the abandoned and shuttered old Union Depot (which I wrote about here) and the Union Depot Hotel (which I wrote about here) — located about where Pacific takes a slight jog to the right. It’s like seeing old friends.
Here are some rather grainy magnifications of the eBay “snapshot” (click to see larger images).
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Below: the Western States Grocery Co. was located at the southwest corner of Hawkins and Pacific. The Home Furnishings Co. was at 2301-2311 Elm Street (at Preston). Many of the buildings in this view (except for the 5-story-ish tall building straight ahead and to the right) can be seen in this 1921 Sanborn map. (Is that the pre-Pegasus Magnolia Building seen in the distance behind the 5-story building at the right? If so, that would mean that this photo was taken before 1934.)
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The building seen below in the foreground at the left is the old Union Depot. I’ve seen so many photos of this building — but it looks TINY here! Just across the street (railroad tracks) from it (in the building seen immediately below the “Radios” sign) is the old Union Depot Hotel. The H&TC railroad used to run between them — Central Avenue later (basically) became Central Expressway. I was really excited to see these two buildings.
The taller building seen in the background, behind the Hart Furniture sign, can be seen in this 1921 Sanborn map — the 5-story building at the southwest corner of Pacific and Preston was home to the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills (another story was added around 1935).
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The Combs Transfer & Storage Co., the Packer Transfer & Storage Co., and the Baldwin Piano Ware Room were all at 2507-2509 Pacific. It looks like the two buildings seen in this detail (the short one and the taller one) have somehow miraculously survived the insane redevelopment of everything on all sides of it (I’ve haven’t been to Deep Ellum in a few months, but these two buildings seem to be the ones which you can see in the most recent Google Street View). Also, looming like a ghostly whisper in the background (above “Combs”) is the Medical Arts Building.
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I wonder why someone decided to take this photo? I’m glad they did, because it’s not a view I’ve ever seen. I love finding photographs taken in places that most people wouldn’t think were interesting enough to document for posterity. Like this one. Thanks, anonymous photographer!
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I just picked the closest historical map I had easy access to — the 1952 Mapsco. My guess is that the photograph is from the 1930s. The star is about where the photo was taken — just west of what is now Good-Latimer, just before Pacific becomes Gaston — with a view to the west.
1952 Mapsco (det.)
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Sources & Notes
Photo found on eBay — it looks like the item sold a couple of weeks ago, in Sept. 2022.
Today is the birthday of my late father, Dick Bosse, owner of the Aldredge Book Store. I always try to post something bookstore-related on his birthday. This year: Miss Eula Wolcott’s Baker Hotel Book Shop & Rental Library, located inside the Baker Hotel.
Eula Wolcott (1881-1962) was born in Waxahachie and had moved to Dallas by 1910. She appears to have had theatrical ambitions and studied voice and expression (she was billed as an “Experienced Concert Reader and Story Teller”). She opened a little book store and library in the early 1920s — the Booklovers Shop and Library was first on West Jefferson and later on Swiss Avenue. In 1926, she opened a similar shop inside the glamorous Baker Hotel, an enterprise she ran successfully until at least 1942 when another owner took over (she also apparently had a book shop inside the Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells). In 1931 she opened the rather confusingly-named “Baker Hotel Book Shop and Rental Library” in Highland Park — in the new “Spanish Village” (the original name for Highland Park Village). Below is a very enthusiastic profile from Publishers Weekly (click to see a larger image).
Publishers Weekly, March 24, 1934
I wish the photo at the top had been better, because I’d love to get a good look at the decor. And Eula. I managed to find a photo of her.
Eula Wolcott, via Ancestry.com
Here are a few ads:
1924
Two shops, one owner — 1926
1927
1937
1940
She was active as a bookseller for many years and was also a familiar voice to radio listeners who tuned in to hear her book reviews on WFAA.
One interesting piece of trivia about Eula’s hotel bookshop, shared with me by a former bookstore client of mine: the Baker Hotel Book Shop was the very first American bookstore that British author H. G. Wells ever visited. A lecture tour brought him to Dallas in 1940 — like many of the celebs of the day, he stayed at the Baker. I’m sure Eula was very happy to have Mr. Wells, a literary powerhouse, in her shop. Let’s hope he exhibited proper bookstore etiquette and purchased something!
Baker Hotel, circa 1940
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Sources & Notes
Top photo and article from the trade magazine Publishers Weekly, March 24, 1934.
Read more Flashback Dallas articles on the Dallas bookstore scene here.
I often just wander aimlessly around the internet, hoping I’ll find something Dallas-related that I haven’t seen before. Last night I found this unusual photo in the Western Americana Collection of Princeton University, described as “View of a Texas city, possibly Dallas.” Okay. It didn’t strike me immediately as a familiar view of Dallas, but you’ve got appearances by Dallas Art Glass Co., Texas Hosiery, and Texas Paper Co. So, yeah. Dallas! I definitely haven’t seen this before. (Scroll down for the specifics of the location.)
Once I determined this was, in fact, Dallas, I tried to figure out what was happening — who (and why?!) were those two people waving from a tiny platform on top of a tall pole? I first thought “flagpole-sitting,” the weird fad of the 1920s which makes me uncomfortably acrophobic just thinking about it. But it was two people on a pole. Standing. Waving. I just kept looking at it, wondering how they got up there. And how were they going to get down (without plummeting)? Why were they there? Were they a couple? Were there husband-and-wife pole-sitters/-standers/-dancers/-wavers? So many questions.
My first hint was in a December, 1931 story in The Dallas Morning News about a young woman who seemed to have some name-recognition named Betty Fox who was, at the time of the article, perched atop a pole in Greenville, Texas, attempting to test her endurance and remain there for 100 hours. As one does. (When in Greenville….) So I searched for newspaper articles about “Betty Fox.” She was, indeed, a star in the pole-sitting world, entertaining large crowds and making personal appearances all around the country. Then I noticed that there seemed to be more than one “Betty Fox” out there. Hmm. And I had noticed that there had been a pole-sitter named Ben Fox who was a fairly serious flagpole-sitting champ. That was kind of a weird coincidence. Or was it? And then I found the article “Sky Dancers Betty and Benny Fox,” which helpfully explained that Benny and Betty were daredevil aerial dancers. They were originally billed as brother and sister, but as the article says, “they were not related. And Betty was not always the same person, nor was she actually named Betty.”
They traveled from city to city where they drew large crowds who watched them perform high in the sky on a tiny circular disc 24 inches in diameter (it later shrank to 18 inches in diameter). Their acrobatic “sky dance” (AKA “The Dance of Death”) apparently lasted for several hours. (There was an article I read from 1931 about “Betty” and a heretofore unknown other “sibling” named “Babe” Fox who defied a judge’s injunction to prohibit the two from engaging in a 100-hour marathon-dance stunt on a 35-inch platform, 50 feet in the air in cold, wet, and windy Texarkana. Seems like a bad idea, but, apparently, they didn’t die. (…Or maybe they did and just got a new “Betty” and “Babe” and carried on to the next gig.)
Princeton University estimated the date of the photo to be around 1930. I think it might have been 1935. The two classified ads below in which Benny seeks Dallas promoters for their local event, were from the end of 1935. (The event was sponsored by a Dallas newspaper — it obviously wasn’t the DMN, because there was no story about the Foxes in their pages.) The newspaper photo below the ads shows the then-current version of Betty and Benny, and they look like the couple in the Princeton photo.
Dallas Morning News, Nov. 27, 1935
DMN, Dec. 7, 1935
Atlanta Constitution, May 3, 1935
Yes, that caption says they performed for SIX HOURS.
I’m not sure how long “Betty and Benny” lasted, but they were back in Dallas in 1957 performing at a week-long carnival in Wynnewood Shopping Center. I bet there were more “Bettys” than “Perunas.”
Here’s some newsreel footage of one of the Betty and Benny incarnations, doing their thing in Chicago. (Seriously, if you’ve got even a hint of a fear of heights, look away!!!)
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So where was that photo at the top taken? I’m estimating the camera was on the top of a building at, roughly, Griffin and Pacific, looking in a northerly direction. At the top right, the tall building farthest away is the First Methodist Episcopal Church (now First United Methodist) at Ross and Harwood. It’s hard to see any streets, but the two running diagonally are Camp and Patterson. A few addresses of businesses seen in the photo:
Dallas Art Glass Co.: 1408 Camp
Steger Transfer Co.: 1305 Camp
Texas Hosiery: 1200 Camp/1201 Patterson
Texas Paper Co.: 1200 Patterson, extending to Pacific
A 1921 Sanborn map is here. A detail from a 1952 Mapsco is below.
1952 Mapsco (det)
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I’m not sure why Princeton has this photo in their collection, but I really enjoyed reading about Benny and his “Bettys.”
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Sources & Notes
Top photo — “View of a Texas city, possibly Dallas” — is from the Western Americana Collection, Princeton University Library Special Collections; more information on this photo can be found on the Princeton website here.
See several “action” photos of Benny and Betty from GettyImages here.
Read the very entertaining “Sky Dancers Betty and Benny Fox” by Alan E. Hunter, here.
There’s a church, and a bank, and a bank, and a bank…
by Paula Bosse
A couple of quickies: these are two really nice postcards which popped up recently on eBay — I’d never seen them before.
Above, a lovely, creamy, glowing shot of the skyline. I recognize several of the buildings, but I’m not sure where the photographer was positioned. I’m sure a smart person will put the location in the comments.
And below, a great image of the “Dallas-Oak Cliff viaduct,” looking toward the city. There’s even a Volk’s billboard to welcome visitors.
Miami, OK, 
1924
Two shops, one owner — 1926
1927
1937
Dallas Morning News, Nov. 27, 1935
DMN, Dec. 7, 1935
