1950s | Flashback : Dallas

October 24, 2015

The Republic Bank Building’s Death-Ray Beacon

This novelty bank is WAY cooler than a toaster! (photo: Paula Bosse)

by Paula Bosse

I’m not a big collector of things, but when I saw this little book-shaped bank, probably a promotional item given away by the Republic National Bank in, I would guess, the 1950s, I really wanted it. I love that building, and I especially love images showing that powerful sci-fi-looking beacon on top of it.

About that beacon. I’ve never actually seen a photograph of that thing in action … until today. Here is a great photo (I’d love to see the original…) during a test-run of the blinding searchlight. (The Davis Building — previous home of Republic National Bank — is seen at the left.) (Click to see larger image.)

When the Republic Bank Building opened in December, 1954, it was Dallas’ tallest building — helped out by the added oomph of that rocket on top. In an article detailing the specifics of the building, was this:

The 150-foot ornamental tower […] supports a beacon light with a lens five feet in diameter. The rotating light of almost a half-billion candlepower was designed for visibility of 120 miles. (DMN, Nov. 28, 1954)

Wow. I don’t even know what “half-billion candlepower” IS, but I bet it cut through the night sky like a hot knife through butter. And visible for 120 miles? …ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILES?! I can’t even imagine what that death-ray must have looked like, rotating and pulsing and stabbing through the night sky probably hundreds of times every night. (I just checked on this. The light rotated twelve times a minute, or once every five seconds. 720 times an hour! If this pace actually kept up over the years, that’s thousands of times every night!) At some point, the beacon was turned off, most likely from complaints from pilots trying to fly in and out of Love Field (possibly from Atoka, Oklahoma, which is … 120 miles from Dallas).

Five feet in diameter…

I have searched and searched to find out when the beacon/searchlight was finally turned off for good. My assumption was that it was fairly early on, because I’m sure it was a major problem for aircraft and was probably shut down at the emphatic insistence of the FAA, but when I asked around on a history group, people told me they remembered seeing it in the ’60s (a couple of people even said they thought they remembered it in the ’70s). If anyone can tell me when this beam finally stopped beaming, I would love to know.

The rocket’s original red, white, and blue lights — made not of neon but of “Lumenarc” tubing (“a newly-developed, super-brilliant luminous tube” — DMN, Dec. 1, 1954) — were turned off in the 1980s, but lighting returned in the early 2000s when the building was being remodeled for residential living, and it continues to stand out as an important part of the Dallas skyline.

rocket_repub-center-website Today (via RepublicCenter.com)

That giant lens is still up there, and it might even still function, but the building is no longer the city’s tallest, and were it to be turned on today, that light would pierce right through neighboring buildings — not over them, but into them. If it hit you, it would be like an old cartoon where you would be able to momentarily see an x-ray image of your skeleton. Here’s a photo from 2006 in which you can see the light at the top of the rocket. (Click it!)

Photo by Scott Dorn/Flickr

There’s also a great photo of this which I included in one of my favorite Flashback Dallas posts, showing the rocket and searchlight from above, taken in 1968 from Republic Tower 2, here.

republic-national-bank_beacon_front

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Sources & Notes

That “book bank” is mine! It’s very small — about 3.5″ x 4.5″, covered in blue cloth to mimic a book (it even has a title — “Book of Thrift” — embossed on the spine); it was manufactured by Bankers Utilities Co., which made similar novelty banks for companies all over the country. It has no key — I found one comment online that suggested that they were never issued with keys because the banking institution wanted the young owners of the banks to have to go into the bank in order to retrieve their savings — just like Mom and Dad had to. It’s a cool little bank — much better than a toaster!

Scott Dorn’s photograph can be viewed on Flickr, here.

Not sure what “candlepower” is? I read the Wikipedia article, here, but I’m still not exactly sure. Imagine the light from half a billion candles, I guess. In other words, BRIGHT. Super-cool bright. Retina-damaging bright.

The building is now Gables Republic Tower (website here), a ritzy apartment building.

And, again, if you have information about when the plug was pulled on the painfully powerful revolving spotlight, let me know!

15 Comments

October 23, 2015

The Republic Bank Building and Spain’s “Casa de Los Picos”

Flour City Ornamental Iron Co. employees hard at work (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Did a 15th-century building in Spain inspire one of Dallas’ most distinctive and recognizable skyscrapers?

While reading about the construction of the Republic Bank Building, I came across the great, GREAT photo above which was part of an ad which ran about the time of the grand opening of the just-completed big, splashy Republic Bank Building in December, 1954. The ad this photo appeared in was for the Flour City Ornamental Iron Co. in Minnesota — the company that manufactured the thousands of pressed and embossed aluminum panels that covered the building’s exterior. These star-embossed panels — along with the distinctive and forever-cool “rocket” on the top of the building — gave the Dallas skyline a new super-modern look and an instantly recognizable landmark.

But back to that photo. It’s pretty cool. I had never really thought about those panels, but now I know that these iconic architectural adornments were manufactured in Minneapolis (…”New York CITY?!”) at the Flour City Ornamental Iron Co. Almost four thousand of these aluminum panels, a mere 1/8th of an inch thick (!), along with three thousand windows (which were reversible, so that the exterior sides could be washed from inside the building) were made in Flour City’s Minneapolis factory and transported to Dallas. From the ad:

The Flour City Ornamental Iron Company is proud to have been chosen to cooperate with the architects and builders of this project; to have made the dies for forming the wall panels on their great 750-ton hydropress; to have designed and built some three thousand unique reversible windows — both faces of which are washed from within with sash closed and locked — and to have erected the precision-formed panels, nearly four thousand in number, each in its proper position to form the weather-tight, heat and cold resistant aluminum covering for this notable building.

So, discovering that was interesting. But maybe even more interesting was this paragraph:

Although new in concept and especially in its techniques and use of materials, it is interesting to note that a sixteenth century [sic — it’s actually fifteenth century] prototype exists for this prismatic design of the pressed aluminum covering of this building. At Segovia, in central Spain, the Casa de Los Picos — literally ‘House of the Spikes’ — has each stone, above a point which would hazard passersby, cut to form a boldly projecting pyramid. The sparkling pattern of light and shade produced by this device is strikingly similar to the effect, especially on the enormous unbroken wall area of the Ervay Street side, which will be observed and admired here in Dallas for years to come.

I looked up Casa de Los Picos. It’s fantastic.

Casa de Los Picos, Segovia, Spain / via Trover.com

Was this design an homage of sorts to the Spanish building, conceived by the building’s main architects, Wallace K. Harrison and Max Abramovitz of the New York firm Harrison & Abramovitz? Or was it just Flour City exaggerating their work’s architectural significance? Whichever — I’m excited to have discovered Casa de Los Picos … because of an advertisement! I love this building — here it is again.

Wikimedia (click for gigantic image here)

And here’s an extreme close-up of the hometown favorite.

Wikimedia (see a fuller image image here)

You learn something new every day.

Here’s the original 1954 Flour City advertisement, broken into readable sections (click for larger images).

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Sources & Notes

Wikipedia round-up:

Flour City Ornamental Iron Works Company, here
Casa de Los Picos (en Español), aqui
Harrison & Abramovitz, architects, here
Republic Bank Building, here

See a whole passel of photos of the exterior of Case de Los Picos, here.

Here’s something I stumbled across in the middle of stumbling across other things — a schematic of the aluminum panels — I don’t know if they are original architectural drawings or not. They are contained in the book Construction, Craft to Industry by Gyula Sebestyen (London: E & FN Spon, 1998); you can find it here.

I found surprisingly little information on Flour City’s contribution to the Republic Bank Building on the internet. Anyway, thanks, Minnesota, for playing such an important role in the construction of — and look of — one of my favorite Dallas buildings!

My previous post on this great building — “The Republic National Bank Building: Miles of Aluminum, Gold Leaf, and a Rocket” — is here.

When in doubt, click pictures for larger images.

8 Comments

October 21, 2015

Elm Street at Night, Coming & Going — 1950s

Have a sudden hankering for a fistful of roasted peanuts?

by Paula Bosse

Two postcards from the Fabulous Fifties showing Dallas’ Theater Row, lit up at night — one looking east (above), and one looking west (below).

The top view — taken from about Stone — was probably taken in the early- to mid-’50s. (See the same view today, here.) The following Elm Street businesses — all of which can be seen in this postcard — were listed in the 1953 city directory:

1602 Elm — W. T. Grant (dept. store)
1605 — Dundee Smart Clothes
1607 — Planters Peanuts (This place fascinates me!)
1607a — Wallace Studios (photography studio)
1609 — Dunton’s Cafeteria
1610 — Franklin’s (women’s clothing)
1613 — Henri’s Hollywood Beauty Studio
1614 — Baker’s Shoes
1623 — Palace Theatre

ERVAY crosses
1700 — Mangel’s (women’s clothing)
1705 — Lee Optical
1713 — Haverty’s (furniture)
1806 — Volk Bros. (dept. store)

ST. PAUL crosses
1907 — Tower Theatre
1911 — Melba Theatre (barely visible)
1921 — Majestic Theatre

Here’s Elm looking west, taken at about North Harwood. (See the same view today, here.) The movie playing at the Majestic, “The True Story of Jesse James,” was released in February, 1957.

The businesses seen here, on the south side of the street:

1918 Elm — Hall’s Credit Clothiers
1922 — Askin’s Credit Clothing Store
1924 — Ben Morris Jewelry
1926 — Majestic Cafe (*possibly* — I’m not sure if it was there in 1958)

In all my wanderings through photos of old Dallas, my biggest regret is that I never experienced downtown-Dallas movie-going in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Mr. Peanut, we hardly knew ye (or in my case, I never knew ye).

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Sources & Notes

October 14, 2015

“The Fair Is In the Air — Let’s Go!”

Look at this 1923 typeface!

by Paula Bosse

Here we are again in the final days of another State Fair of Texas. Why not take a look at a few random images of the fair over the years. (Click pictures for larger images.)

First, from 1900, the entrance to the fairgrounds. (It appears to be the same view as the top postcard seen in a previous post, here, just a few steps inside the archway.)

Fort Worth Public Library

A cartoon from The Dallas Morning News in 1912 — “The People’s University.” Remember, it’s not just about Ferris wheels and candy apples.

state-fair_dmn_102012-cartoon DMN, Oct. 20, 1912

1921. Don’t miss The Whip.

From the Texas Centennial in 1936, a shot of a remarkably spotless Midway. (Am I the only one who would have paid to see the “28-Ft. Monster” do battle with whatever freakish specimens were ensconced within the walls of the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not building?)

During World War II, no fair was held between 1942 and 1945. “Not until the boys come home, will there be another State Fair of Texas.”

By the ’50s, everything was back to normal. Big Tex had arrived, and this ad promises “She’s a LULU in ’52.” Martin & Lewis and whatever a Thrillcade was!

And, lastly, an aerial view of the Midway from 1966. Now this IS all Ferris wheels and candy apples. (To watch a short collection of color footage from the damp 1967 SFOT — including a sad, rainy parade downtown — click here.)

University of North Texas

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Sources & Notes

1900 photo of the entrance to the fair is from The Bohemian magazine (1900) in the collection of the Fort Worth Public Library (those perforations in the photo are the FWPL’s).

1921 photo — I’m afraid I have no source on this one.

1936 postcard of the Centennial Midway is from eBay.

Patriotic WWII ad is from the 1945-1946 Texas Almanac.

Photo of the 1966 Midway is from the University of North Texas University Libraries blog, here.

My previous collection of SFOT photos over the decades appeared in the post “So Sorry Bill, But Albert Is Taking Me To The State Fair of Texas,” here.

Other Flashback Dallas posts on the State Fair of Texas are here; posts specifically on the Texas Centennial are here.

Again … some of these pictures are pretty dang big — when in doubt, click ’em!

6 Comments

October 6, 2015

Take a Spin In “The Rotor” at The State Fair of Texas

Another beautiful day at the fair!

by Paula Bosse

Students’ Day at the Fair? There are a lot of unaccompanied kids in that photo eating food on sticks.

I could be wrong, but I think the round structure to the right of the entrance is The Rotor (part of the sign is visible at the far right). The Rotor resembled a large barrel inside. You’d stand with your back to the curved wall, and then the walls would begin spinning around. Eventually the spinning got faster and you’d be pinned against the wall with centrifugal force as the floor dropped out. …Which could be a big mistake after too many corny dogs and cotton candy.

The Rotor debuted at the State Fair in 1952, imported from England. The British company would be sued later that year by the man who invented the ride, Ernst Hoffmeister. Hoffmeister sued several people who were operating similar rides internationally, but all was resolved by the following year, and the Rotor ride was an extremely popular fixture of the State Fair of Texas midway for many years.

Below, the ride in action.

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Sources & Notes

Postcard from eBay.

For more on this, head to the Dallas Morning News archives and read an interview with the men who brought the Rotor to the State Fair of Texas in the article “‘Bloody Sensation’ — Britons to Supply Ride on State Fair Midway” by Frank X. Tolbert (DMN, Sept. 25, 1952).

September 21, 2015

Old Parkland — 1950

The *OLD* Old Parkland… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Fantastic aerial view of Parkland Hospital, looking south toward Reverchon Park (you can see the baseball diamond at the very top, just west of the old Turtle Creek pump station — now the Sammons Center — in the upper right corner). Maple is running north and south at the left of the photograph, Oak Lawn, east and west, just above the center.

Here’s the same view today.

Google Earth

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Sources & Notes

Photograph titled “Aerial view of Parkland Hospital on Maple with Southwestern Medical School adjacent,” is from the UT Arlington Special Collections Library, hosted on the UT Southwestern Archives Collection site, here. You can zoom in and see incredible magnified details here.

The photo was taken August 15, 1950, by an unknown photographer. It looks a lot like a photo by Squire Haskins, taken a couple of blocks south — see it in the previous Flashback Dallas post “Reverchon Park Flyover,” here.

September 20, 2015

Cadillac + Neiman-Marcus = “Practical” — 1956

Gowns and storefront by N-M, bumpers by Cadillac

by Paula Bosse

One need not be “prominent” to own a Cadillac or to shop at Neiman’s (… but it certainly helps).

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Sources & Notes

Thanks to reader Kevin Smith for sending this to me!

Click ad to read text and to see those N-M gowns practically life-size.

4 Comments

September 9, 2015

Ebby Halliday, 1911-2015

Ebby in Big D, 1957… (photo: Ebby Halliday Realtors)

by Paula Bosse

(Feb. 2019: This post has been expanded since its original publication on Sept. 9, 2015.)

Ebby Halliday — the Dallas realtor known instantly by just her first name — died September 8, 2015 at the age of 104. Ebby was not only stunningly successful in the world of Dallas real estate, she was also something of a pioneer in paving the way for other women to establish and find great success in business. There are several obituaries that will present a more complete overview of her life (see links at the bottom of this post), so I’ll just post a few odds and ends that have caught my attention.

Vera Lucille Koch grew up in Kansas, and according to her 1929 Abilene High School yearbook, she was inordinately active in all sorts of clubs and sports. Here are a couple of photos from that yearbook (most images are larger when clicked); the first one shows her with the debate team.

And the second one shows her with her “Forensics” teammates (she excelled in reading competitions, although I’m not exactly sure what that means, as most “forensics” events involve debating). Rather amazingly, this scanned yearbook has her signature!

These two extra-curricular activities served her well in her later career — she obviously learned a lot about the effectiveness of persuasion at an early age.

After school, she spent several years working in department stores selling women’s fashions (including a stint in Omaha, where a vivacious young Vera can be seen in a fantastic photo posted by D Magazine here). Ultimately she arrived in glamorous Dallas around 1938, where she began life as a Dallasite managing the women’s hat department at the downtown department store W. A. Green. Most accounts have her entering the real estate business while still selling hats, soon after the war — almost by a fluke. Legend has it that one of her customers mentioned to her husband, famed oilman Clint Murchison, that he might want to utilize Ebby’s sense of style by having her decorate a few of his newly-built houses in Far North Dallas in order to increase sluggish sales; she was apparently so successful at this that she decided to pursue selling houses on her own and eventually established her own realty company.

I’ve always wondered about the name “Ebby” — what was it short for? Ebby Halliday is the only Ebby I’ve ever heard of. Turns out that she made the name up, sometime between graduating from high school in Kansas and coming to Dallas. In a 1983 Dallas Morning News interview, she explained how Vera Lucille Koch became “Ebby Halliday”:

“I was selling hats when one of the buyers who I admired a great deal told me I had to get rid of Vera Lucille. She said it was the silliest name she’d ever heard. I needed something more sophisticated. I thought about it and came up with the name Ebby. That sounded very, to me, like I had a lot of class.” (DMN, Sept. 25, 1983)

The paragraph ended with two sentences added by the writer of the article:

The name Halliday came from an early first marriage. That husband is now deceased.

The somewhat dismissive tone of those last two lines is interesting, because that husband, Claude W. Halliday — whom she appears to have married in 1947 (although an earlier marriage license for the couple had been issued in 1945 in New York) — is almost non-existent in newspaper searches. C. W. Halliday (1908-1965) was described in a 1957 article about Ebby as being “engaged in an investment and building corporation.” In his 1965 obituary, C. W. was described as “head of C. W. Halliday Realtors and a partner in Ebby Halliday Realtors.” When C. W. died in 1965 — several years he and Ebby had divorced (and the same year Ebby married Maurice Acers) — it was Ebby who acted as informant on his death certificate. Mr. Halliday’s real estate career began about 1946, a year or so before Ebby opened her own retail millinery business. Ebby and C. W.’s marriage lasted for over 12 years, but most traces of him seem to have vanished into the ether.

But back to the name “Ebby.” When the former Vera Lucille Koch arrived in Dallas around 1938 to work at the W. A. Green department store, she was listed in the city directory as “Mrs. Vera Eberhardt.” I’m not sure where the “Mrs.” came from (had she been married before she arrived in Dallas?), but it’s certainly easy to see that “Ebby” probably came from “Eberhardt,” a name which was either a husband’s surname or the name she described as having created for herself because it sounded sophisticated.

eberhardt_vera_ebby_1939-directory 1939 Dallas directory

In June, 1940, 29-year-old Ebby married KRLD broadcaster Royce H. Colon. Their marriage lasted only a few years, but it was during this time that the city directory shows her using the name “Ebby” professionally, while still working at Green’s.

Mrs. Royce Colon, 1940

colon_1941-directory
1941 Dallas directory

colon_1942-43-directory 1942-43 Dallas directory

In Mr. Colon’s 1975 obituary it was stated that he had begun his career in real estate (with Majors & Majors Realtors) at a time which would have coincided with the years he and Ebby were married. This is to take nothing away from Ebby’s incredible accomplishments, but if that were the case, it seems that she might have had some (at least rudimentary) background in real estate before Clint Murchison asked her to spiffy-up some new houses he was having trouble unloading. It’s possible she may have entered her new profession with more in her quiver than simply a flair for interior decoration. Ambition may have seemed unladylike and immodest for a “career gal” in the 1940s, even for someone as independent and focused as Ebby. I wonder if her “origin story” might have been softened a bit to play down her ambition? Whatever the case, it didn’t take Ebby long to make her mark on the world of Dallas real estate, and, in so doing, establishing for herself a national reputation as both a top realtor as well as a major inspiration and mentor for women in business.

Below is the type of article about Ebby Halliday’s accomplishments which ran constantly throughout her career. (Most images in this post are larger when clicked.)

The Tennessean, Nashville, TN, Sept. 7, 1958

But back to that hat shop.

The first mentions I found for the shop Ebby Millinery (one of several boutique shops which operated in the still-beautiful old home at 2603 Fairmount), were in August, 1947 — an article in The Dallas Morning News described the shop as having “opened recently.” Ebby (who had recently become Mrs. C. W. Halliday) opened the shop in partnership with Dallas hat designer Annabelle Derrieux Bradley.

Aug. 10, 1947

The shop’s bold decoration sounds … bold:

…Ebby Millinery’s French Room is decorated with bottle green walls and carpets and accented with striped drapes of deep shocking pink and chartreuse. The designing room has a touch of the Victorian with frilly white curtains and oversized wallpaper roses against a bottle-green background. (DMN, Aug. 20, 1947)

Oct. 26, 1947

When Ebby decided to pursue her new real estate business full-time, Derrieux and her husband took over the shop and eventually renamed it Derrieux Hats.

The first real estate ad I could find that featured Ebby’s name is this one, from 1948:

DMN, Aug. 5, 1948

And she was off like a rocket.

Below are a few photos of Ebby I’ve come across which I particularly like.

1956, Charm magazine (“the magazine for women who work”) (via Candy’s Dirt)

Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, Sept. 22, 1957

Austin Statesman, Jan. 25, 1966

1966 (via Candy’s Dirt)

This photo is interesting because a version of it appears in the May 15, 1966 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald under the headline “The Texas Millionairess” with one slight difference: instead of posing above the Dallas skyline, she is shown posing above the Sydney skyline while on a trip to Australia.

And here she is in later days: the undisputed grand dame of Dallas real estate. RIP, Ebby.

ebby_wfaa

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Sources & Notes

Top photo is one of three in this post which appeared in a Candy’s Dirt slideshow here (slideshow photos are from the archives of Ebby Halliday Realtors — there are tons of great photos there!).

Highschool photos of Vera Koch are from the 1929 yearbook of Abilene (Kansas) High School.

Ebby Halliday Acers died Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015. A few of the online obituaries/tributes in the local media:

Dallas Morning News, here
Dallas Business Journal, here
D Magazine, here
Ebby Halliday Realtors website, here

A great article on a typical day at work for the 96-year-old Halliday (!) appeared in D Magazine in July, 2007; read Candace Carlisle’s article “Ebby Halliday: The Woman Who (Still) Sells Dallas,” here.

7 Comments

August 31, 2015

Akard Street Looking South, 1887-2015

Akard Street from Pacific, ca. 1898, via Cook Collection, SMU

by Paula Bosse

I realized the other day that I have an inordinate number of photographs and postcards showing Akard Street looking south — usually taken from Pacific or Elm, so I thought I’d collect them all together. Some of these aren’t dated, so they’re not in strict chronological order, but I’ve made a half-hearted attempt to make sure horse-and-buggy photos are before the men-in-straw-hat-boaters, which are before the women-in-Miss-Crabtree-dresses, which are before the cars-with-rounded-bodies. It might be easiest to just assume they are not in chronological order. (All photos are larger when clicked — a couple are really big.)

The oldest is from 1887, when North Akard was still called Sycamore Street, and before the Oriental Hotel was built at Commerce and Akard in 1895.

Next up, an incredible photo, taken around 1898, a detail of which appears at the top of this post. The Oriental Hotel can now be seen at the end of Akard, at Commerce, where Akard used to make a dog-leg turn before continuing south, giving the appearance of a dead-end street.

via George W. Cook Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU

Another, with the Adolphus Hotel (built in 1912) now on the right, across Commerce from the Oriental. The tall building across Akard from the Adolphus is the Southwestern Life Building. The Gentry photography studio was at the southeast corner of Elm and Akard from 1912, which is probably the date of this postcard image. Construction of the Busch Building (now known as the Kirby Building) began in December, 1912.

via eBay

From 1925, with the new Baker Hotel having replaced the Oriental Hotel. This area was now being called “the canyon district” or “the canyon.”

In this great Frank Rogers photo, the canyon walls are getting higher, with the Adolphus Hotel firmly anchoring the Commerce corner across from the Baker.

via eBay

By the time this photo was taken in about 1936, Pegasus had become a part of the skyline, perched atop the Magnolia Petroleum Building. (Note the Queen Theater at the northeast corner of Elm and Akard.)

via Legacies History Journal

This photo is from the early- or mid-1930s — LOOK AT ALL THOSE PEOPLE.

via the DMA’s Uncrated blog

As opposed to this one, which has NO people in it.

via eBay

More canyon, this view showing the super-cool art-deco-y building at Elm and Akard with Ellan’s hat shop on the ground floor, late-1930s.

This candid photograph, a little deeper into the canyon, is one of my favorites. (Click to see a gigantic image.)

via eBay

From 1951 — a bit grainy, but a slightly closer view of the side of the Queen Theater at the left and the Mayfair department store, built in 1946, at the right:

akard_dpl_1951 via Dallas Public Library

And, finally, today. Pegasus and the Adolphus are still there, but the Baker Hotel was demolished in 1980, replaced by the One AT&T Plaza/Whitacre Tower.

via Google Street View, 2014

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Sources & Notes

The photo dated by SMU as “circa 1898” is titled “Akard Street from Akard and Pacific Avenue Intersection”; it is from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, and it can be viewed here.

The circa 1936 photo showing Pegasus is from the Spring, 1989 issue of Legacies — here; it is from the Hayes Collection, Texas/Dallas Archives Division, Dallas Public Library, and is attributed to Denny Hayes.

The photo showing “ALL THOSE PEOPLE” is from the Dallas Museum of Art’s Uncrated blog — here — is from the Dallas Municipal Archives. They have the date as “1940,” but Liggett’s Drug Store was gone from Elm and Akard by 1936.

Other sources as noted.

Click pictures for larger images — sometimes MUCH larger images.

15 Comments

August 17, 2015

Teatro Panamericano / Cine Festival — 1943-1981

El Panamericano (click for larger image) (Villasana)

by Paula Bosse

In 1937, Joaquin José (J. J.) Rodriguez opened the first theater in Dallas to show Spanish-language movies. It was the Azteca, at 1501 McKinney Avenue, one block away from the still-there El Fenix. He soon changed the name to the Colonia and later to El Patio.

colonia_1938-directory 1938 city directory

Even though a journalist later described this theater as being “dingy” and “unprepossessing” (DMN, July 31, 1944), the theater was quite successful, little surprise as the Hispanic community of the day was sorely underserved in almost every way. This endeavor was so successful that in the fall of 1943, the 36-year old entrepreneur made a big, BIG move: he bought the stunning and palatial Maple Avenue building that once housed the famed Dallas Little Theatre, an amateur theatrical group that had burst on the scene in 1927, but which had fallen on hard times in recent years.

1930s

Rodriguez raised the necessary $35,000 (equivalent to almost half a million dollars in today’s money), bought the beautiful building at 3104 Maple, and renamed it Teatro Panamericano. The angle of the article that appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 22, 1943 announcing the new theater had the new moviehouse as being a boon to students and Anglo members of the community who might need to brush up on their Spanish rather than as a welcomed entertainment venue for the “Mexican colony” living and working in the adjacent Little Mexico neighborhood.

El Panamericano was an immediate success and soon became not only a place to see movies, but also a place for Dallas’ Spanish-speaking community to meet and mingle, with PLENTY of room for all sorts of events. (It was so big that Rodriguez and his family lived in back. He also had TWO offices and more storage space than he had things to store in it. No skimping on the parking lot either — one ad touted an acre of parking space.)

The theater’s importance to the Hispanic community of Dallas was both cultural and social:

For Mexican-Americans growing up in Dallas during the ’50s and ’60s, the films at El Panamericano, were a link with their historical and cultural heritage. For some, it would be their only exposure to cultural ties; for those whose families were stressing their Americanization by using only English in the home, it was a chance to practice their Spanish. (“Festival Fades, but Mexican Movies Thrive,” DMN, Aug. 9, 1981)

After more than 20 years of running a successful theater that catered to his core niche audience, Rodriguez was persuaded to change the theater’s focus. Mexican families had slowly moved out of the neighborhood, many to Oak Cliff where the Stevens Theater on Fort Worth Avenue had begun showing Spanish-language movies in the early ’60s and had siphoned off a large portion of Rodriguez’s audience. In 1965 the Panamericano became an arthouse cinema which showed mostly subtitled European films (and, later, underground and cult movies) — these were movie bills which were clearly aimed at college students and an upper-class Anglo audience. The Panamericano became the splashy Festival Theatre.

BoxOffice magazine, Nov. 22, 1965

An indoor-outdoor restaurant — the Festival Terrace — was added, and it boasted of being “the only theater in the history of Texas with a wine and beer license.”

BoxOffice magazine, Nov. 22, 1965

1960s (Villasana)

As impressive as the Festival and its array of films were, the theater struggled, and Rodriguez later called this period a “big mistake.”

“As soon as I could, I changed it back to the way it was before. In fact, I lost money on that deal.” (DMN, Aug. 9, 1981)

Another unusual misstep for Rodriguez at this time was his decision to open a drive-in that showed only Spanish-language films. What sounded like a great idea was another surprising failure for Rodriguez. Despite its non-stop advertising in the first half of 1965, the wonderfully-named Auto-Vista (located in Grand Prairie) lasted less than a year.

“Cine en su coche”! (March, 1965)

Rodriguez’s new-old Spanish-language theater — now the Cine Festival — was still popular, but it never regained its former glory. Rodriguez retired in 1981 and sold the property. Despite efforts by preservationists to save the beautiful Henry Coke Knight-designed building, it was demolished a few months later — in early January, 1982 — in the dead of night under cover of darkness (… that happens a lot in Dallas…). A nondescript office building was later built in its place.

J. J. Rodriguez died in 1993 at the age of 86, almost exactly 50 years after opening one of the most important entertainment venues for Dallas’ Hispanic population. He was a respected leader in the community and was for many years president of the Federation of Mexican Organizations, an organization he helped found in the 1930s. His theater was both culturally important and beloved by its patrons.

J. J. with daughter and wife (Pampa News, July 30, 1944) AP photo

With his wife, Maria, downtown 1940s (Villasana)

In the projection booth, 1950s (Villasana)

The matchbook cover image below gives an indication of how large the theater was. The building at 3401 Maple — at the corner of Carlisle, across Maple from the Maple Terrace — was gigantic.

Matchbook via George W. Cook Collection, SMU

In a Dallas Phorum discussion (here), the space was described thusly:

It was an interesting building with an outdoor terrace restaurant, a full proscenium stage, rehearsal space downstairs below the stage, dressing rooms, shop/storage areas, and even a puppet theatre built into a wall in the balcony lobby area.

To see what the corner of Maple and Carlisle looks like now, click here (have a hanky ready). Can you imagine how wonderful it would be to still have that elegant building and still see it in use as a theater and restaurant?

In what may well be research overkill, I thought it was odd that there was an Azteca Theatre at 1501 McKinney a year before Rodriguez owned it. I wondered if, in fact, Rodriguez had owned the first Spanish-language movie theater in Dallas, or whether that distinction belonged to Ramiro Cortez (whose name is often misspelled as Ramiro Cortes). It seems that Cortez’s theater might have featured live performances rather than motion pictures. Like Rodriguez, Cortez had ties to Dallas entertainment — read about him here.

1937 city directory

***

Sources & Notes

Photos with “Villasana” under them are from the book Dallas’s Little Mexico by Sol Villasana (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2011); all are from the personal collection of Mariangel Rodriguez. More photos of J. J. Rodriguez can be seen here (click “Next” on top yellow bar).

The full article from the Nov. 22, 1965 issue of the industry journal, BoxOffice, includes additional photos and information and can be seen here and here.

All other images and clippings as noted.

Articles on J. J. Rodriguez and his theaters which appeared in The Dallas Morning News:

“Pan-American Theater to Aid Spanish Study” (DMN, Sept. 22, 1943)
“Teatro Panamericano” by John Rosenfield (DMN, Oct. 12, 1943)– coverage of opening night festivities
“Maple Location Regains Swank” by John Rosenfield (DMN, Sept. 18, 1965) — about the change from El Panamericano to the arthouse Festival Theater
“Festival Fades, but Mexican Movies Thrive: Theater Owner Says Adios to Film Business” by Mercedes Olivera (DMN, Aug. 9, 1981) — about the closing of the Festival Theater
“Encore No More” (DMN, Jan. 4, 1982) — photo of the partially demolished theater
“Rites Set for Hispanic Leader J. J. Rodriguez — He Co-Founded Federation of Mexican Organizations” by Veronica Puente (DMN, Sept. 26, 1993) — Rodriguez’s obituary

“Dallas Theater Owner Is One-Man Pan-American Agency” — a syndicated Associated Press article by William C. Barnard — can be read here.

Read about Teatro Panamericano at Cinema Treasures, here.

Read about the competing Stevens Theater in Oak Cliff on Fort Worth Avenue, here.

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Category: 1950s

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