Flashback : Dallas

A Miscellany: History, Ads, Pop Culture

Category: 1940s

Collision on the Streetcar Viaduct — 1929

interurban_trestle_1946_denver-pub-lib_lgThe new streetcar viaduct, 1946

by Paula Bosse

For many, many years there was a special trestle that spanned the Trinity River which was for the exclusive use of streetcars and Interurbans. There were also trestles and viaducts for the exclusive use of trains and automobiles. Below is a photo showing the  viaductal activity in 1935, with the streetcar trestle — sometimes called the “Street Car Viaduct” or the “Trinity River Viaduct” marked in yellow and the Old Red Courthouse and Dealey Plaza (then under construction) marked in orange.

viaducts_1935_foscue_smu

The viaduct immediately above it was the Houston Street viaduct, for automobiles.

For many, a streetcar ride across the viaduct seems to have been a little on the harrowing side. There were no guardrails to prevent a car from going over the side, and even when the original wooden trestle had been bolstered with stronger materials, it was still described by commuters as being rickety. I like this quote of a man remembering a typical ride in the 1950s:

I always enjoyed the slight tingle of fear I experienced on the trestle over the river, as one could not see the trestle itself from the car window. One had the feeling of being suspended with no support when looking out the window.

And these two memories:

The streetcar trestle ran parallel to the Houston St. Viaduct where the current newer bridge is to downtown. No railings and just depended on gravity to hold the cars on the rails. The cars would buck and sway as they crossed the river bottoms as the motormen made up time on their schedules. Seemed like they were really going fast to me at the time, but probably not in today’s terms.

*

The [newer streetcars] used to scare me to death rocketing across the Trinity River high in the air with no sidewalls except just over the river itself! You were able to look straight down from high above ground… those newer cars had softer springs and the faster they went, the more they rocked side to side over the less than flat tracks!

Here’s a photo when it was in its original rickety state, back in 1895 (this is a detail of a larger photo, taken on the Oak Cliff side of the river, with the trestle — and the not-yet-old Old Red Courthouse — visible in the background).

trolley_oak-cliff_det1

Here it is in 1914 at river-bottom level, with a happy little trolley chugging along with the Oak Cliff/Houston Street viaduct looming over and in front of it. (This is a detail of a larger photo in the George W. Cook Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU — here).

streetcar-trestle-cook-coll_smu_det_1914

And here’s a sturdier version of the viaduct, in 1946.

streetcar-crossing-trinity_1946-denverpublib

But now to the collision on the viaduct, which happened on the morning of November 23, 1929. Back then — at that iteration of the viaduct — the trestle had only a single track. While one streetcar or Interurban car crossed the bridge toward Oak Cliff, a car wanting to cross over from Oak Cliff had to wait until the westbound car had made its mile-long trip. That must have made for a lot of impatient riders. Even though the so-called “block signal” system worked well for the most part, there were the occasional accidents, including the one involving three cars on Nov. 23, 1929. Below, a front-page report of the collision(s) from The Waxahachie Daily Light (click for larger image).

streetcar-trestle-collision_waxahachie-daily-light_112329Waxahachie Daily Light, Nov. 23, 1929

The Waxahachie paper even had a local angle (although it’s unclear just how this man “nearly lost all of the clothes he was wearing”).

streetcar-trestle-collision_waxahachie-daily-light_112329-sidebarWaxahachie Daily Light, Nov. 23, 1929

Since it happened during the morning rush hour, just about every other newspaper in Texas scooped The Dallas Morning News, which wasn’t able to run its story until the next day (and its report was surprisingly dull).

The UP wire story that ran in the Joplin, Missouri paper was far more exciting.

streetcar-trestle-collision_joplin-MO-globe_112429Joplin Globe, Nov. 24, 1929

Thankfully none of the streetcars fell off the trestle, but I’m sure that possibility was probably the daily fear/resigned expectation of generations of nervous travelers.

**

The most interesting thing in the DMN article is the last paragraph:

Plans in the making for the new street car crossing of the Trinity River call for a double track over the channel, eliminating the necessity of waiting on block signals.

In February 1931, that new double-track streetcar viaduct opened for business, and I’m sure there was a citywide sigh of relief.

 **

One last little amusing tidbit about this viaduct: it was not unheard of for those having indulged in excessive amounts of alcohol to try to drive their automobiles (either on purpose or by accident) over this already-kind-of-scary trestle intended for electric-powered railway use only.

streetcar-trestle-mexia-weekly-herald_011333_drunk-motoristMexia Weekly Herald, Jan. 13, 1933

trestle_beaver-valley-PA-times_120852
Beaver Valley (Pennsylvania) Times, Dec. 8, 1952

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo titled “T. E. clouds, sky, city, from east levee close to wooden trestle 320 just passed, at rear, car 320 on Trinity River Bridge, Dallas, Tex.,” taken on Feb. 16, 1946 by Robert W. Richardson, is from the Western History/Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library.

Photo showing the viaducts across the Trinity is titled “Central Levee District,” taken on May 20, 1935 by Lloyd M. Long, from the Edwin J. Foscue Map Library, Southern Methodist University; the labeled photo is here, the unlabeled photo is here.

Don’t know what “block signaling” is? Wikipedia to the recue.

 Lastly, just because I like it, a magnified detail from the top 1946 photo, showing a streetcar at the downtown end of the viaduct.

interurban_trestle_1946_det-streetcar

*

Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Dallas: “Amusement Capital of the Southwest” — 1946

entertainment_so-this-is-dallas_ca-1946-photos_smSomething for everybody! (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Post-war Dallas had it all, man: our unparalleled night life included swanky hotel nightclubs where the beautiful people sipped champagne and danced to the music of tuxedoed big bands, “quieter but none-the-less entertaining taverns on the outskirts of the city” where the less beautiful people drank beer and danced to the non-stop music coming from jukeboxes, “unusual” restaurants (“where there is no music to dull the solid enjoyment of well-seasoned viands served with sparkling wines of appropriate vintage”), theatrical presentations, movies, movies, movies, and outdoor sports and recreation, including baseball at Rebel Stadium. Something for everybody!

entertainment_so-this-is-dallas_ca-1946-text(click for larger image)

***

Photo collage and text from “So This Is Dallas,” edited by Mrs. E. F. Anderson (Dallas: The Welcome Wagon, ca. 1946); photographs by Parker-Griffith.

*

Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Ramon Adams: Violinist, Candy Manufacturer, Old West Expert

adams-ramon_texas-week-mag_090746_portal-photo_bwRamon F. Adams, 1946

by Paula Bosse

I’ve spent a fair amount of my adult life cataloging Texana books and ending descriptions with the bibliographic citations “Adams, HERD” or “Adams, SIX-GUNS.”* “Adams” was Ramon F. Adams, a respected and prolific writer and bibliographer specializing in the Old West and cowboy life. If you collect books on Texas and The West — or on cowboys and the cattle industry — you have Ramon Adams’ books on your shelves. And he lived in Dallas.

Ramon Adams was born in Moscow, Texas in 1889, near Houston, but left there as a young man to study and teach music. He was a professional violinist who played not only an occasional symphony gig, but after his years of teaching, he made a steady living playing in movie theater orchestras, accompanying silent films. While playing in the orchestra at the Rialto in Fort Worth, he even wore white tie and tails. When the Rialto musicians went on strike in 1923, he and his wife, Allie, moved to Dallas, and he played in the orchestras up and down theater row until the fateful day when he was cranking a stalled Model T Ford in an attempt to start it and broke his wrist. It never healed properly, and his days as a professional violinist came to an abrupt end.

I never knew about his first career as a musician, and I never knew about his second career as a candy merchant! The Candy Years began when he and his wife bought a little candy store on Elm Street between the Melba and the Majestic, and it did such good business that, a few years later, he went into manufacturing and wholesaling candy. The Adams Candy Co. began its successful life in the 1930s, known for its widely available candies such as “Texas Pecandy” and for its “Burnt Offering” (“burnt almonds in chewy caramel and rich chocolate”), which was made specially for Neiman-Marcus.

pecandy_dmn_090940Sept. 1940

The runaway success of his candy business meant that when the Adamses sold the business in the mid-’50s (making, one assumes, a hefty profit) Ramon was able to devote his full attention to researching and writing about cowboy life and culture. He had been writing all along, in his spare time, but only in short bursts, usually at night, at the kitchen table. He had written several very long pieces for The Dallas Morning News in 1927 and 1928, but his first book, Cowboy Lingo, wasn’t published until 1936 — when he was 46 years old. And then the floodgates opened. When he died in 1976, his obituary noted that he had written 24 books — in addition to numerous articles for magazines and journals. He was the expert other experts consulted. And he lived in Dallas. And he made “Pecandy.”

**

I love this 1936 caricature of Adams. (He looks an awful lot like Dr. Smith of Lost In Space here….)

adams-ramon_caricature_1936

A pleasant little article on Adams, no doubt written by one of his many journalist friends, from 1946 (click for larger image):

adams-ramon_texas-week-mag_090746_portalTexas Week magazine, Sept. 7, 1946

And…

ad-adams-candy-co“Get a taste of Texas in your mouth!”

***

Sources & Notes

The Handbook of Texas entry on Ramon F. Adams is here.

A more comprehensive Biographical Note is on the page devoted to the Ramon Adams Collection, Texas/Dallas History & Archives, Dallas Public Library, here.

* “Adams, HERD” and “Adams, SIX-GUNS” is short-hand used by catalogers of books on Western Americana when noting that the book being cataloged is referenced in Ramon F. Adams’ book The Rampaging Herd: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on Men and Events in the Cattle Industry (Norman: Univ. Oklahoma, 1959) or his book Six-Guns and Saddle Leather, A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on Western Outlaws and Gunmen (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma, 1954).

*

Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

The Forney Car

forney-fair-park-car_ebayEastbound on Commerce (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I’m a sucker for streetcars. Here’s car 764 heading east on Commerce, between Prather and S. St. Paul.

forney-car_1800-block-commerce_googleGoogle Maps

***

Photo from eBay.

The Underwood Corporation was at 1805-7 Commerce, and Dallas Multigraphics was at 1807 1/2 Commerce — they both moved to this location sometime between 1936 and 1943. This stretch of Commerce was once jam-packed with typewriter companies.

Forney Avenue ran along the northeastern side of Fair Park, about where Haskell does today, starting at Parry — if one continued along it past the city limits, one would reach the town of Forney. In 1922 Interurban track was laid between Dallas and Terrell, with the train entering Dallas along Forney Avenue, terminating at Union Station. The Forney streetcar and the Interurban traveled over the same tracks.

terrell-forney-ave_dmn_061621Dallas Morning News, June 16, 1921

forney-ave_1919-mapDetail of a map from 1919

For more on the Dallas-Forney-Terrell Interurban, check out the 1925 publication “Making Neighbors of the People of Dallas and Kaufman Counties and the Towns of Terrell, Forney, Mesquite and Dallas by the Opening of the Texas Interurban Railway” — the 16-page pamphlet has been scanned by the fine folks at UNT’s Portal to Texas History, and it can be accessed here.

Images larger when clicked.

*

Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Muriel Windham — An Oak Cliff Teenager’s 1940s Diary

muriel_colorMuriel, via Muriel Windham’s Diary

by Paula Bosse

About this time last year, Robert Wilonsky of The Dallas Morning News wrote an interesting article about a black-out imposed by the city of Dallas in January, 1942, just a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the middle of it, he linked to a diary entry written by a 14-year-old describing the event. For me, the most interesting thing about Wilonsky’s piece was the fact that someone had transcribed diary entries of a teenage girl growing up in Dallas in the 1940s. So I read the whole thing. And I loved it.

The teenager in question is Muriel Windham (1926-2005) who grew up in Oak Cliff and attended Peeler Elementary, Greiner Jr. High, and Sunset High School. She was a top student who was involved in lots of extracurricular activities, but her greatest joy was going to the movies and listening to comedians on the radio. She was absolutely obsessed — OBSESSED! — with Bob Hope. She attended SMU where she ultimately received a Master in English Literature degree and Master in Library Science degrees; she was head of the children’s department of the Dallas Public Library (as Muriel Brown) for many years and was a specialist in children’s literature. Somewhere in there she married G. W. Brown II and had three children.

But back to the diary. After her death in 2005, Muriel’s son David began transcribing his mother’s teenage diary — exactly as written, complete with misspellings and grammatical errors. It begins on January 1, 1940 (six weeks after she had turned 13) and ends in the summer of 1942. David Brown says he has years and years worth of her diaries — I hope he gets  back to transcribing them one day, because what’s on his blog now is utterly charming.

The diary is exactly like every other teenage girl’s diary. If you’re not of the female persuasion, you might not be able to handle the deep, deep plunge into teenybopperdom. It reads just like MY diary from when I was 13, except that my obsession wasn’t Bob Hope but a TV star from a 1970s TV show that might prove highly embarrassing were it to be revealed. If you have a low threshold for incessant mentions of Bob Hope by a moony adolescent or are not at all interested in entertainment of the early 1940s, this may not be for you. As I said, I loved it. I wish there were more Dallas-specific entries, because when those pop up, it’s pretty cool.

An introduction to the diary is here. The blog is written in reverse order — and it really should be read chronologically, so I suggest starting here at the very bottom and reading up the page; when it’s time for the next page, scroll down to the bottom and click  “Next Entries.” (You’ll get used to it.) There are 8 pages, and each entry is very short. It’s the perfect sort of thing to read when you stay in on a cold weekend. …But I’m not going to sugar-coat it: there is a LOT of Bob Hope to slog through! You’ve been warned!

**

muriel-windham_sunset-high-school_1943Muriel, 1943

muriel-windham_sunset-high-school_1944Muriel, 1944 — editor of the Sunset yearbook

muriel-windham_sunset-high-school_1944-clubsSenior, over-achiever — 1944 yearbook

***

Sources & Notes

Black and white photos are from the Sunset High School yearbook, the Sundial.

Muriel Windham Brown’s obituary can be read here.

Muriel does actually get to meet Bob Hope once or twice, but the diary entries stopped before a pretty incredible meeting on April 22, 1943 at a benefit to sell war bonds at the Dallas Country Club. There was even a short article in The Dallas Morning News which chronicled what must have been the biggest moment in her 16 years: “Hope Thrills Girl As He Sells Bonds” (DMN, April 23, 1943). A couple of sentences from the article:

In the hustle and bustle of his bond sale at Dallas Country Club Wednesday afternoon a pretty, young girl shyly stepped up to Hope and caused him to sink to his knees in a swoon as she whispered she would pay $10,000 for his autograph. […] Hope treated her beautifully. He sat her down on the platform, left the mike occasionally to dash over, feel her pulse, stroke her brow and leave a light kiss on her forehead. (DMN, April 23, 1943)

I can’t even imagine how stunned Muriel must have been! (Her father worked as an executive, mostly in insurance and banking, and I have a feeling that the $10,000 check came from his employer, not his own bank account.)

Muriel’s family lived at 817 Brooks. No movie theater was all that far away by streetcar.

muriel_817-brooksGoogle Maps

A few more photos as she made her way through Sunset and SMU are here.

And, well, I kind of feel I have to….

bob-hope

*

Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

 

Merry Christmas From the Dallas Police Department’s Parking Enforcement Squad

xmas_santa_DPDSanta on Elm Street (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I don’t know what the story is behind this photograph of Santa Claus riding on the back of a three-wheeled motorcycle (they were used by the Dallas Police Department to patrol downtown streets for parking violations). Maybe Santa’s sleigh has broken down and he’s thumbed a ride to get to a scheduled event at a department store. Let’s hope it wasn’t the result of said sleigh being parked in a No Parking zone and a rather too strenuous ticket dispute by Mr. Claus necessitating a visit to the station to discuss the situation further. (Look at the brick-paved street!)

***

I’m not sure of the original source of this photo, but I want to thank reader Chris Walker for sending this to me. Thank you, Chris!

*

Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Main Street — ca. 1942

main-street-canyon_ebay_smallThe Merc, Titche’s, the White Plaza (click for much larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I love postcards like this. All signs of people, automobiles, and streetcars have been magically erased. Poof! This lunchtime scene of empty streets and sidewalks — looking west down Main from Harwood at 12:30 PM — was definitely a view never seen by a human being!

In trying to figure out the year of this image, I narrowed it down to about 1942 — that was the year the Mercantile Building was completed, and that was also about the time that Henry Pollock’s luggage store packed up (…as it were…) and vacated 1911-13 Main (the store was no longer listed at this address by the time the 1943 directory was issued). That’s not to say that the sign painted on the side of the building didn’t remain after Pollock had left, but later occupants would most likely have painted over it as soon as they moved in.

Speaking of directories, here’s a look at the businesses in the 1900 block of Main — between St. Paul and Harwood — in 1941. (Click for larger image.)

main-st_19411941 Dallas directory

For me, the interesting thing about this postcard is seeing the Titche’s building (at the corner of St. Paul) before it was expanded. The small buildings between Titche’s and the White Plaza Hotel (a hotel which was originally Dallas’ first Hilton — Conrad’s first-ever hotel to bear his name) were demolished sometime around 1952, and the expansion began that year, its 50th in business in Dallas.

The original building was built in 1929, designed by George Dahl (whose office was, a few years later, right across the street); the architectural firm responsible for the expansion was Thomas, Jameson & Merrill.

Here’s what the building looked like before the expansion (with another magic erasure — this time, the hotel at the end of the block has been removed to make way for an unobstructed view of the moon):

titches_night.jpg

And here’s the building after its expansion:

titches

***

Sources & Notes

More on the Titche’s expansion in the Dallas Morning News article “Titche’s Reports Plans to Double Present Size” by Edd Routt (Sept. 7, 1952).

Present-day photo of the Titche’s building, from Wikipedia, is here.

Present-day street view showing roughly the same vantage point as the postcard at top, can be seen on Google Street View, here.

A previous Flashback Dallas post — “George Dahl’s Titche-Goettinger Building” — is here.

All images larger when clicked.

*

Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

 

The 67-80 Split Near Mesquite — ca. 1951

interchange_hwys-67-and-80_THC_flickr_largeFar East Dallas (click for VERY LARGE image)

by Paula Bosse

Above, a wonderful photo showing Highway 67 (now East R. L. Thornton Freeway and I-30) splitting off into Highway 80, just east of Loop 12/Buckner Blvd., surrounded by lots and lots of open land. At the top right, along Buckner, you can see the Buckner Drive-In, above it the original location of the Devil’s Bowl Speedway, and farther over, to the left, White Rock Airport. Part of the sprawling property belonging to the Buckner Orphans Home can be seen at the bottom left. Today, this is right about at the Dallas/Mesquite border. Except for the highways, this is pretty unrecognizable today!

Here is a second photo, dated Jan. 4, 1951, with Oscar Slotboom’s caption below (from Slotboom’s exhaustively researched book and website, Dallas-Fort Worth Freeways).

thornton-frwy_1951_dfw-freeways

thornton-frwy_1951_dfw-freeways_INFO_pdf-p40

*

The Buckner Orphans Home was founded in 1879; it was both a home for orphaned children and a working farm, and at its height, it occupied some 3,000 acres of land (!). Take a look at a 1911 photo here to give you an idea of the size of the place. The buildings seen at the bottom left of the photo above were houses used by Buckner staff; the Home itself is out of frame.

buckner-orphans-homeBuckner Children’s Home

White Rock Airport opened about 1941 and was in use until 1974. Here is a photo of it soon after it opened.

white-rock-airport_early-1940sWhite Rock Airport

(Several more photos and memories about this airport can be found here.)

Devil’s Bowl Speedway opened in March, 1941. If you wanted to see jalopy races, you headed to Devil’s Bowl. (DBS is still around, nearby, at a different location.)

The Buckner Boulevard Drive-In opened on June 4, 1948. It was the first drive-in in Dallas to have individual car speakers that one placed in one’s car. (More on the Buckner Drive-In can be found at Cinema Treasures, here.)

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo is from the TxDOT Photo Files and can be viewed on the Texas State Archives’ Flickr page, here; the date is given as “circa 1940,” but as the drive-in didn’t open until 1948, the date of the photo is probably closer to 1950. (The second aerial photograph — from Oscar Slotboom’s fantastic Dallas-Fort Worth Freeways — is dated 1951, so I’ve updated the title of this post.)

Thanks to Mark’s comment below, I’ve found this detail of a 1957 topo map from the United States Geological Survey. It’s a few years after the photo above was taken, but it shows the layout of the Buckner Children’s Home more fully. (The east-west highway called “East Pike” here is now known as Samuell Blvd.) Click map for larger image.

1957-topo_usgs

The Dallas/Mesquite city limits boundaries have moved over the years, but a current view of the boundary — which involves the area seen in this photo (seriously, this exact area) — can be seen here.

Below, a current Google Maps view of this interchange:

interchange-map

And, if like me, you need some helpful guidance:

interchange_marked.jpg

Thanks to members of the Dallas History Facebook group for helping me figure out what I was looking at, especially David and Chuck — thanks, guys!

Click pictures and articles for larger images.

*

Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Red’s Turnpike Open-Air Dance: An East Pike/Samuell Blvd. Joint — 1946

reds-turnpike_texas-week-mag_121446-portalThey’re playing your ditty….

by Paula Bosse

I always wonder about those old, decaying buildings — sometimes they’re little more than shacks — which are somehow still standing, in areas that will probably never be gentrified. Like Samuell Boulevard, just south of Tenison Golf Course, two or three miles south of White Rock Lake. The north side of Samuell is a lovely, manicured golf course. The south side? Rough, man.

Before Samuell Blvd. was Samuell Blvd., it was known as East Pike, and it served as the highway to Terrell. This explains the large number of tourist courts and motels which dotted the road. Also, the Tenison golf course was right about at the very edge of the city limits — which explains the large number of bars, taverns, liquor stores, and other assorted dens of iniquity all clustered together at the wet/dry line (wet in Big D, dry beyond).

The local papers were full of a veritable pu pu platter of crimes and offenses committed along the East Pike, almost all of which were generally traced back to alcohol consumption. Police and city inspectors spent a lot of time in the area, called to various of these joints to handle reports of public intoxication, selling alcohol to minors, selling alcohol to those already drunk, general rowdiness, unsanitary conditions, noise, brawls, “suggestive dancing,” gambling, hold-ups, shootings, suicides, and murder.

One of those rural drinking establishments was Red’s Turnpike Open-Air Dance, which appears to have opened in 1946 in the 3700 block of Samuell (even though it didn’t have an actual street address in city directories), between the Belt railway and White Rock Creek. In 1948, the tavern burned down in an early morning fire (a not-uncommon fate for these types of businesses). The Dallas Morning News reported that “firemen were hampered by a lack of fire hydrants in the vicinity and pumped water from White Rock Creek to fight the blaze” (DMN, May 3, 1948). …Wasn’t enough.

From its ashes sprang Keller’s drive-in, in 1950, in the same general spot. In a 2015 Lakewood Advocate interview, Jack Keller described the location of his first drive-in as being “the last wet spot going into East Texas, right across from hole number two” of the golf course. “We had a lot of fun down there.”

Who doesn’t love hamburgers? Keller’s probably helped the area’s reputation, as its arrival eventually ushered in a less seedy clientele than the old East Pike of the ’30s and ’40s was known for. Less riff-raff, better food.

***

Sources & Notes

Photo of Red’s Turnpike from the Dec. 14, 1946 issue of Texas Week magazine.

Here’s what the spot where Red’s once stood looks like now (the Keller’s location here closed in 2000):

samuell_google-street-viewGoogle Street View, 2015

reds_map_2015Google Maps

Take a virtual look at the area on Google Street View, here.

*

Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Downtown Parking Innovations

ad-nichols-bros-parking-garage_1945-directory-detSplendiforous parking garage, 1945

by Paula Bosse

Here are a couple of ways developers have attempted to cope with the parking needs of downtown Dallas. I’m not sure how long either of these parking garages lasted, but I give them both A’s for effort.

First, 1945: Nichols Bros. Garage & Rent-a-Car Service at 1320 Commerce (just east of Field). Just look at all these amenities — women and chauffeurs are not forgotten.

…Fluorescent lighting — Air-conditioned waiting room for customers — Beautiful powder room for women — Waiting rooms for chauffeurs — Complete facilities for auto storage, washing, lubrication and motor tune-up service.

ad-nichols-bros-parking-garage_1945-directory1945 Dallas directory

I don’t know how long this lasted, but if you’re going to have a garage downtown, it might as well look like that one!

*

pigeon-hole-parking_dallas_1962_sign

Then in 1954, the 8-story Dallas Carpark at Jackson and St. Paul arrived (a second one at Jackson and Lane was under construction that same year). It was a franchise of the Pigeonhole Parking System of Spokane, utilizing “car-parking machines” invented by Leo Sanders of Spokane, Washington. I’m not exactly sure how these worked, but cars were hoisted and lowered on elevators, and the whole parking process, from start to finish, was conducted without an attendant ever actually touching the cars. Again, I don’t know how long this endeavor was in business (at least through the early 1960s), but — parking-garage-history neophyte that I am — I’ve never heard of such a thing. (There’s a video showing how it worked — thanks, “Not Bob” for posting this in the comments)!

*
UPDATE: “Found” film footage of a family’s trip to Dallas in 1962 actually shows this pigeon-hole system in action. The whole short video is interesting, but the pigeon-hole footage is what got me really excited — it begins at the 1:32 mark.

*
A couple of screenshots:

pigeon-hole-parking_dallas-1962

pigeon-hole-parking_dallas-1962_b

***

Sources & Notes

Nichols Bros. ad from the 1945 city directory.

The 1951 Universal Newsreel segment can be found on Vimeo here (thanks to “Not Bob”).

1962 YouTube video of found footage can be seen here (thanks to Robert Wilonsky of The Dallas Morning News for posting this link!).

See photos and read about the elevator-centric Dallas Carpark at Jackson and St. Paul in these Dallas Morning News articles:

  • “Parking Gets Lift in Downtown Area” by Robert F. Alexander (DMN, Sept. 26, 1954) (with photos)
  • “Pigeonhole Parking Now in Operation” (DMN, Oct. 10, 1954)

See several photos of the “pigeon-hole” parking system in other parts of the country in the article “Pigeon Hole Parking — An Amusement Park Ride for Your Car,” here. Here’s one in Portland, Oregon (the Dallas Carpark was 8 levels high):

pigeon-hole-parking_portland-oregon_oldmotorblog

*

Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.