George Dahl designed the original building (on the left) in the late-1920s, and Thomas, Jameson & Merrill designed the expansion (on the right) in the early ’50s.
Everything you could want to know about Titche-Goettinger/Titche’s is here.
UNT owns the building at 1900 Elm now, and it’s installed windows in that cool solid wall where the store’s name used to be. Check out photos of key renovations and read why they were made here.
More on the Titche’s building (including news on its expansion in 1952 and an architect’s drawing) can be found in the Flashback Dallas post “Main Street — ca. 1942,” here. See the expanded building here.
In amongst things the things I’ve haphazardly collected (and I use the term loosely) over the years is this postcard. The image looks familiar to me, as if I remember actually seeing it — but I think that might just be because I’ve looked at this postcard so long. The first thing that popped into my head when I saw it was “turnpike,” but until I read up on the history of local highways (my days are fun-filled!), I wasn’t entirely sure where the turnpike had been other than “the other side of downtown, toward Fort Worth.” Did I ever see this sign and attendant weird looming structures when I was a child? Unless it was still up in the ’70s, I probably didn’t. So what is it?
Here’s the text from the back:
Concrete wings
THREE HYPERBOLIC PARABOLOIDS
GREAT SOUTHWEST INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT
Midway between Dallas and Fort Worth
“Located on U.S. 80, these hyperbolic paraboloids stand as insignia of the vast Great Southwest Industrial District in the center of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. This thin shell ‘concrete umbrella’ construction form was pioneered in the Untied States by Great Southwest Corporation, developer of a 5500-acre planned industrial district.”
It was somewhere around Arlington and Grand Prairie, back when it was still a vast, undeveloped area being planned in the mid-1950s by Angus Wynne who would, a few years later, bring us Six Flags Over Texas. (US Hwy 80 no longer runs west of Dallas — that stretch is now, I think, Hwy 180 — it was shoved off its Great American Interstate Highway pedestal by the DFW Turnpike and the arrival of what is now Interstate 30.)
1961 (Texas Highways photo by Willis Albarado)
But … “hyperbolic paraboloids”? Those things are so cool. The “hyperbolic paraboloid” was developed by Mexico-based Spanish engineer-architect Felix Candela who worked in the Dallas area with the great architect O’Neil Ford (on, specifically, the Great Southwest Industrial District and the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Building). Candela is pretty interesting — look him up. Without Candela’s paraboloids and his contributions to engineering and architecture, Santiago Calatrava probably wouldn’t be doing the sort of thing that he’s doing.
Here’s another view of (other) paraboloids out on the Texas prairie. They’re like elegant, curved, inverted parasols. Kind of. Made from thin shells of concrete. (One source identified these paraboloids as being part of the Great Southwestern Industrial District and another source as being from the Texas Instruments campus. (See 1958 TI ad below.) Either way, it’s Felix Candela, all the way.)
I’m still trying to figure out if I ever saw that fantastic sign and those three silent, looming paraboloids. It’s all pretty cool-looking, and it must have been an unexpected sight in the middle of what was, then, basically nothing.
Speaking of Candela and Calatrava, here’s a photo of the two together:
And here’s another paraboloid-y structure that stands out in the DFW area — you might have seen it:
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Sources & Notes
Photo of Calatrava and Candela from the blog An Engineer’s Aspect, here.
Photo of the Calatrava bridge from Pinterest, here.
A good overview of Felix Candela’s work, with photos and a video, is on the Columbia University website, here.
The Great Southwest Industrial District (Arlington and Grand Prairie) still exists, and their website has a history page which explains its creation and development by Angus Wynne, here.
Lastly, who could resist reading up on just what the heck a “hyperbolic paraboloid” is (warning: math) — Wikipedia’s on it, here.
A 1958 Texas Instruments ad wants you to know that “hyperbolic paraboloids form roof-ceiling” (click to see larger image):
1958
UPDATE: Thanks to comments below, I’m happy to present another photo of the paraboloids, this one from the cover of the 1960 Arlington High School yearbook, complete with Shetland pony! Click the image below to see a larger image of the photo inset. (Thanks to Brad McCorkle for alerting me to the photo — it was taken by his father, Lynn McCorkle, intrepid student photographer!)
ANOTHER UPDATE, from the comments: this still-standing building at 10830 Preston Road (Preston Royal Shopping Center) was one of many that utilized hyperbolic paraboloids in its design. The American Savings Association building (designed by Brock & Mabrey of Corpus Christi, with Braden & Jones of Dallas as associated architects) opened in March, 1966.
Trini Lopez has sold millions of records. MILLIONS. He was born in Dallas in 1937 and grew up in the Little Mexico area of town. He started his career when he was a teenager at Crozier Tech High School, singing and playing guitar in a popular combo. He played at dozens of school dances and parties, and, with a steady and faithful following, he was much in demand at countless venues around town, including a regular 2:30-6:30 p.m. Sunday matinee spot at Club Vegas (Oak Lawn & Lemmon), one of the many clubs in the city run by Jack Ruby.
Jack Ruby — the personable Latin from Manhattan, reports surprising success with his Sunday night Fiestas at Club Vegas….
“There is a wide demand for Latin music in Dallas,” said the Oak Lawn impresario…. He is opening at 2:30 p.m. Sundays for matinee dances featuring Trini Lopez and his orchestra. The versatile Lopez combo offers an occasional Yanqui tune in addition to the likes of the “Jack Ruby Mambo.” (Tony Zoppi’s column in The Dallas Morning News, Dec. 19, 1956)
(I really want to hear that “Jack Ruby Mambo”!)
Speaking of the “Latin from Manhattan” (?!):
Ha! (From Gary James’ really great interview w/ Trini — see link at end.)
He also appeared on local TV, including Channel 8 shows hosted by a pre-Peppermint Jerry Haynes: “Jukebox” and “Top Ten Dancing Party.”
1958 publicity photo
Trini’s first single was “The Right to Rock” — the first song he ever wrote — recorded in 1958 on a small Dallas label called Volk (did anyone else ever record for this label?).
Billboard, June 23, 1958
It’s a great little rockabilly number, but it didn’t really make any waves outside of Dallas (although it’s since found new life in the cult-y world of vintage rockabilly reissues).
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Trini then recorded a few singles for King, but those went nowhere as well, and Trini and his combo continued to play small clubs in and around DFW, wondering when the big break was going to come.
Jan., 1959
After a gig in Wichita Falls, Trini met fellow-Texan Buddy Holly who had been impressed by the young singer’s performance and encouraged him to contact his producer, Norman Petty, about recording some tracks at Petty’s studio in New Mexico. Trini jumped at the chance, but, unfortunately, the time in the studio at Clovis turned out to be a career low-point (see below for a link to the Gary James interview in which Trini gives a bitter and scathing account of that whole experience). Trini returned to Dallas and immediately fired his band and started a new one, determined that he would succeed, despite the prevailing (spoken and unspoken) racism he was continuing to run up against in the music business.
A few months after Buddy Holly’s death, the Crickets contacted Trini and asked him to travel to Los Angeles to discuss the possibility of becoming their new lead singer. Trini, seeing this as the big break he’d been waiting for, disbanded the combo and set out to the West Coast alone. The “audition” never really materialized, and Trini was stuck in California with no money and no prospects. He played a few small clubs and then settled into PJ’s for an extended and very successful engagement. It was there, in 1963, that the “big break” finally happened: he was discovered by producer Don Costa, who recommended that Frank Sinatra sign him to Reprise Records. Next thing you know, Trini had recorded his debut album, “Trini Lopez at PJ’s,” and the first single, “If I Had a Hammer,” was a huge smash hit, selling millions of copies and reaching #1 in 38 countries. Trini Lopez became an international star.
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At the beginning of 1964, he was booked for a series of shows in Paris where he shared the bill with The Beatles, just as they were about to hit big in the US (their Ed Sullivan appearance was less than a month away). Beatlemania was in full force in Europe, but Trini was also getting his share of attention.
And, the rest, as they say, is history.
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A couple of interesting things, Dallas-wise. My Trini Lopez knowledge is fairly scant, but having read a lot about him over the past couple of days, the one thing that keeps coming back when he talks about the Little Mexico section of town (invariably referred to by him as a “ghetto”) is how violent a place it was. He also recounts the deep and dehumanizing racial prejudice he and other Mexican-Americans experienced living in Dallas. When he left for Los Angeles in 1959/1960, he left for good. He came back regularly to visit his family (I remember having him pointed out to me by my parents in a restaurant once), but I’m not sure he would have ever wanted to live here again.
From an interview by Robert Wilonsky (Dallas Observer, May 29, 2006)
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Below are a few random interviews and tidbits.
Trini developed his own beat, a Tex-Mex style of rock and roll now popularly known as “the Trini beat” and which Trini describes as “American music with a Mexican feeing.” (DMN, July 12, 1964)
And from the same article:
“People in Dallas told me I had the talent but suggested I change my name. I said ‘No.’ I told them Italians had made it as Italians, Jews as Jews, and Negroes as Negroes. I wanted to make it as a Mexican. No one of Mexican-American heritage had made it before in the entertainment world. I wanted to be the first.” (DMN, July 12, 1964)
(According to Trini, the person who suggested he change he name was John F. Sheffield who owned Volk Records. Sheffield was okay with “Trini,” but he insisted the “Lopez” had to go. He suggested “Roper.” Trini refused and threatened to walk. Sheffield relented.)
(Click for larger image – continues below.)
Earl Wilson’s syndicated column (July 1965)
In 1969, Trini Lopez became a restaurateur and opened “Trini’s” at 5412 East Mockingbird, across from the old Dr Pepper plant (click for larger image):
UPDATE: Sadly, Trini Lopez died on April 11, 2020 from complications of COVID-19. He was 83. Read his obituary in Varietyhere.
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Sources & Notes
Full Dallas Observer interview by Robert Wilonsky is here.
There are a lot of garbled accounts of Trini Lopez’s career scattered across the internet. One that seems mostly right is here.
The essential interview with Trini by Gary James I’ve mentioned a couple of times above, is here. I think the interview is from 2002. His memories of growing up in Dallas are interesting, unvarnished, and well worth reading. He also talks about the racial prejudice he met with when attempting to record with Norman Petty and the resulting mutiny of his band in Clovis which led to their being fired by Trini immediately upon their return to Dallas.
Read Trini’s tribute to his parents — an essay he wrote in the early 1980s — here.
Discovering Trini and his music has been surprisingly fun! Thanks, Trini! Check out this great, infectiously joyful performance of “La Bamba” with Jose Feliciano at a music festival in San Antonio in 1974. (Trini was performing “La Bamba” when he was still in Dallas, before Ritchie Valens had a hit with it — when Valens’ version hit the airwaves, Trini was crushed that someone had beaten him to recording it. He may not have recorded it first, but he had the bigger hit with it a few years later.)
Look familiar? The building above would later become the Texas School Book Depository. But prior to that, the building housed Sexton Foods, a Chicago-based wholesale grocer which occupied the building for twenty years (1941-1961). The building was known commonly in town as “the Sexton building,” even after it was leased to the Texas School Book Depository in 1963, which explains why some people — citizens and police officers alike — were still referring to it by that name on the day of the Kennedy assassination (and this has apparently caused confusion amongst those wading deep into the “assassination literature”). The photo above is cropped from an ad I came across in The Dude Wrangler, a dude ranch quarterly (!), published in Bandera. The ad (which is reproduced in full down the page a bit) is from 1953, but the photo of the building appears to have been taken earlier.
The leasing of the building by D. Harold Byrd to the John Sexton Wholesale Grocery Company of Chicago (initially for only five years) was announced in The Dallas Morning News on Nov. 28, 1940 (“Wholesale Grocery Leases Building at Houston and Elm”). The Sexton Co. was scheduled to move in on Dec. 8 “following a general remodeling which will include installation of elevators, rearranging of partitions and painting.” They remained in the building until 1961.
1951
1953
In 1953 (before anyone from Hertz was planning on putting a billboard up there), the Ford people erected a giant neon sign on top of the building to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Ford Motor Company. In fact, it was so big that it had half a mile of neon tubing in it and was touted as being the largest animated neon sign in the Southwest. Now there’s a sign that probably caused a few car accidents!
1953
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Before the Sexton company moved in, the building housed the Perfection-Aire air-conditioning company. Newspaper articles announced the renovation of the building for the A/C people — the company went into receivership a couple of years later.
1937
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Before that, it was the site of the Southern Rock Island Plow Co., which was the original owner of the property (1894) and which built the building in 1903 after the first building was destroyed in a fire after it was hit by lightning on May 4, 1901.
circa 1910
Above, the Southern Rock Island Plow Co. Building which still stands, famous as the “Texas School Book Depository”; below, the building originally built by the plow company which was destroyed by fire in May, 1901.
1901, Dallas city directory
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Sources & Notes
Sexton Co. ad from a 1953 issue of The Dude Wrangler ; the top image is a detail from that ad.
More on the history of the building as it pertains to the Rock Island Plow Co. is here.
I started watching reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show on Channel 11 when I was a kid. I still love the show, and I’ve seen every episode countless times. Which is kind of an odd jumping-off point for a post on a Dallas clothing manufacturer, but there you are. The company was Nardis of Dallas, a successful manufacturer of women’s apparel, owned by the Russian-born Bernard “Ben” Gold who arrived here in 1938 from New York City where he had operated a taxi company for many years.
Gold moved to Dallas at the request of his brother who, along with a man named Joe Sidran (“Sidran” spelled backwards is “Nardis”) was an owner in a near-bankrupt dress company. Ben Gold became a part-owner (and later the sole owner) and quickly turned the business around. When he brought in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, other Dallas garment manufacturers were shocked (Time magazine used the word “horrified”). He also shook things up by employing African-American workers, the first such company in town to do so. The company eventually grew to become the largest clothing manufacturer in Dallas, with clients around the country and around the world. Nardis was one of the first Dallas clothing companies to have an apparel collection made in a foreign country: his upscale “House of Gold” boutique line specialized in silk, beaded, and sequined dresses and gowns, hand-made in Hong Kong.
Nardis of Dallas was originally located at 409 Browder, with factories at 211 North Austin, the 400 block of S. Poydras (at Wood Street), and, finally, at 1300 Corinth (at Gould St.), where they built their 75,000-square-foot “million-dollar plant” in 1964 (a quick check of Google Maps shows the building still there, but it appears to be vacant). Below are two photos of their S. Poydras location.
Above, Wood Street at the left (Andrew’s Cafe is listed at 1008 Wood St. in the 1960 Dallas directory); below, Nardis garment workers.
So how does this all connect to The Dick Van Dyke Show? If you’re a fan of the show and a faithful reader of closing credits like I am, you’ve probably seen the “Fashions by Nardis of Dallas” credit at the end of some episodes, right under the Botany 500 credit. And, like me, you might have wondered, “How did THAT happen?” How does an apparel-maker from Dallas network itself into a primo gig supplying fashions to a top Hollywood television show? I have no idea how the initial contact was made, but I DO know that Dick Van Dyke Show star Rose Marie and Nardis owner Ben Gold became very good friends while she was appearing in a production of Bye, Bye Birdie at the Dallas Summer Musicals in 1965. She mentions Gold several times in her autobiography.
Excerpt from “Hold the Roses” by Rose Marie
She spent much of her off-stage time in Dallas with Gold and his wife, and, in fact, when Gold was fatally injured in a traffic accident that summer, Rose Marie (then recently widowed herself) stayed with his wife Tina for several days at Tina’s request.
So, no big Dick Van Dyke Show story, but, as is no doubt known to the hyper-vigilant members of the JFK-assassination community, Nardis of Dallas DOES have an interesting connection to that. In 1941, Abraham Zapruder, who had worked in the garment industry in New York, moved to Dallas and began working for Ben Gold as a Nardis pattern-cutter. His name even appears in a couple of classified ads in The Dallas Morning News.
June 1945
Jan. 1948
While at Nardis — before he left to start his own clothing company — Zapruder worked with a woman named Jeanne LeGon (later Jeanne De Mohrenschildt) who, with her husband George (suspected by some of being a CIA operative), was friends with Lee Harvey Oswald in the early ’60s. Yep. That’s an interesting, head-spinning coincidence.
And I owe all this trivial Nardis-related knowledge to wondering for years about a single card seen in the closing credits of the unquestionably stylish and fashion-forward Dick Van Dyke Show.
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Sources & Notes
Fashion photographs from MyVintageVogue.com (1952, 1955, and 1956, respectively). Other Nardis fashion photos from My Vintage Vogue can be found here. (If you’re interested in vintage fashion, fashion photography, and vintage advertising, this is a great website.)
Photos of the Nardis plant at S. Poydras and Wood are by Squire Haskins, from the Squire Haskins Photography Inc. Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections — more info on the exterior shot ishere; more on the interior shothere.
Passage about Gold from Rose Marie’s autobiography, Hold the Roses (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), p. 192.
Dick Van Dyke Show closing credits card from a 1965 episode.
Nardis of Dallas logo from a clothing tag, found on eBay.
Additional background information on Gold from Time magazine, June 12, 1950.
See another Flashback Dallas post on Nardis — “Nardis Sign-Painters: ‘Everything in Sportswear’ — 1948” — here.
On April 2, 1957, the famous Dallas tornado (tornadoes, actually) ripped across the city. At the time, it was the most photographed tornado in history, and the photographs and film footage taken that day were immensely important in the study of how tornadoes form and behave. The above photo is from a landmark study by the United States Weather Bureau (link to the full report is below).
Above, a photo by Bill Winfrey of the Dallas Morning News, taken from the roof of the News building, looking toward Oak Cliff.
I just stumbled across the odd little film above, produced by the National Assn. of Broadcasters in the late ’50s. If you skip to about the 4:30 mark, you can see a WFAA Channel 8 reporter/cameraman running to his news vehicle, followed by a minute or so of the clearest film footage of the Dallas tornado I can find online.
Since the tornado has been written about for years and years and years, there’s nothing I can add, really, except to mark another anniversary. ALTHOUGH, the following paragraph (from the official U.S. Weather Bureau report) has been sorely under-reported: the affect of tornadoes on the behavior of rubber duckies.
As you can see, that report was thorough! The U.S. Weather Bureau Report that was issued about the Dallas tornado was incredibly important in leading to what we know about tornadoes today. This paragraph introduced their report:
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Sources & Notes
Top photo and clipped text from “The Tornadoes at Dallas, Tex., April 2, 1957 — Research Paper No. 41” (Washington: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, U.S. Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau, 1960). You can access the entire official report — containing numerous photographs, charts, interviews with Dallasites who witnessed the tornado(es), and results of the Bureau’s research — here. It’s very interesting.
The second photo is from the great Dallas Morning News photo blog, here.
The National Association of Broadcasters’ self-aggrandizing pseudo-PSA film, “A Guest in the House,” can be found here.
And, finally, everything you ever needed to know about the 1957 tornado is here.
Lefty Frizzell was born on this day in 1928 in Coriscana. His Dallas connection? He was “discovered” by Dallas producer Jim Beck and recorded many of his early hits at Beck’s downtown studio. He played a lot of gigs around town, including several appearances over the years on the Big D Jamboree. But even if there weren’t any iron-clad Dallas connections, I’d have to mention him anyway. Not only is he one of country music’s most influential artists (up there in the Holy Trinity with Hank Williams and George Jones), he’s my favorite singer. Of any genre. EVER.
Take a listen to his first single, recorded on July 25, 1950 at the celebrated Jim Beck Studio at 1101 Ross Avenue: “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time” (which the Dallas Morning News — a bit dismissive of the “hillbilly” set — weirdly mangled into “I’ve Got the Money If You Can Spare the Time”). It was an incredible smash hit, and it kicked off a spectacular career, during which he was at almost Beatles-level popularity, with four singles in the top ten at the same time.
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And another clip, this time a live performance from “The Porter Wagoner Show.”
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And, lastly, something I just found today, an ad for an appearance by Lefty in January 1963, when his career had dipped a bit (he would have a big come-back hit with “Saginaw, Michigan” at the end of the year). I’ve never heard of The Chalet (a supper club, I think), but its address of 6400 Gaston means that it was in the space where the Dixie House is now, in Lakewood. Maybe it’s only exciting to a superfan such as myself, but knowing that Lefty performed in my neighborhood, in a place in which I’ve actually spent a not insignificant amount of time, well … that’s just damn cool. Happy Birthday, Lefty!
January 1963
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Sources & Notes
To read my post on the untimely death of Jim Beck (and see photos of him, which are few and far between), click here.
I came across the above image and was enthralled. I’ve never heard of the Joe Yee Cafe, but this (granted) idealized picture is wonderful. The postcards above and below were from the early 1950s, and if you are familiar with the generally run-down neighborhood around Columbia and Fitzhugh these days, you may well shed a tear that something this charming and picturesque has been gone for many, many years.
I love the surprising color scheme of the restaurant’s interior — those fabulous purples and greens! (The colors are a bit unexpected because they so loudly clash with the bold tomato red of the exterior.)
I did a little research to see what I could find out about Joe Yee’s Chinese restaurant. Seems that Mr. Yee’s cafe was in business by the 1930s, downtown, on Main Street near Field. It advertised steadily over the years, and its ads proudly proclaimed that the restaurant served “the best Chinese food you ever tasted” and was “completely air-conditioned.” Several newspaper accounts (particularly the society columns) mentioned it as a popular place for young people to grab a bite before and after dances at nearby downtown hotels. Business must have been pretty good for the place to have lasted so long at such a primo location. The cafe moved to the Columbia Street location in 1950 where it remained in business until at least late 1956 when a major fire struck.
1938
1943
1953
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Sources & Notes
Top two early-’50s postcards are from the great Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection on Flickr, here.
In old photos of downtown Dallas one often sees “Chop Suey” signs along the streets. I’d love to know more about these restaurants in general, and about Chinese and Chinese-Americans in Dallas in the first half of the 20th century, if anyone can point me to a good source.
If background on Chop Suey is needed, might I point you to to the Wikipedia entry here, or the Snopes entry here.
Pairs well with bluebonnets…. (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
I’m a sucker for these kinds of state maps. Look at Dallas, home of the State Fair, symbolized by a very large Zeppelin-like, blue-ribbon-bedecked bovine hovering over our fair city. I’m not sure I would have come up with that, but it’s always nice to be remembered and/or stereotyped by the fine folks on Madison Avenue.
1951
1953
1937
circa 1910
Excerpt from “Hold the Roses” by Rose Marie
June 1945
The Man
January 1963
Flashback : Dallas 