by Paula Bosse
Wishing you the happiest of holiday wishes!
–Paula
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Both ads are from Dallas magazine, a publication of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce; the Mercantile National Bank ad appeared in the December 1956 issue, and the Republic National Bank of Dallas ad appeared in the December 1955 issue.
Many, many more Christmas posts from Flashback Dallas can be found here.
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Copyright © 2023 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Lo, the “Money Tree” at First National Bank
by Paula Bosse
Hello! I’m writing a different sort of post today, one in which I am asking for your financial support, which should be an empowering career move but which is actually a little intimidating.
I created Flashback Dallas in February 2014 and have recently embarked on Year Ten (!). I’ve written over 1,300 posts, which amazes me. Along the way, I had hoped someone would “discover” me and offer me a Dallas-history-related job with a salary which I could live on, but that hasn’t panned out so far. I still hold out hope, but “Dallas-history-related jobs” are few and far between. There have been a few fantasies of a Dallas-history-loving person with loads of cash emerging from the ether, wallet in hand, wanting nothing more than to fund the writing of this blog and handing over wads of cash. But that hasn’t happened either. (If you are an employer or a wealthy investor with wads of cash, you know where to find me!)
I’ve plugged away on this blog for more than 9 years, and I’ve loved it all. Loved it. My first passion is writing, and I feel pretty lucky that I’ve been able to combine that with learning about the history of my hometown! It’s been both fun and gratifying. But I’ve made no money doing this. No advertising, no sponsorships, no “partnerships.” The amount of time I’ve put into this blog is pretty staggering — and, again, I’ve loved it, but I’d really like to be able to make some money for my efforts.
For years, people have suggested I start a Patreon page. And now I have. (Click the logo below to check out my Patreon page.)
Patreon is a “membership platform” which offers a way for people like me to have subscribers who pay a monthly contribution to support an ongoing project, sometimes offering special incentives to followers. The way I have set up my Patreon account is to offer the same content to whomever chooses to support me. Things may change in the future, but for now, if you pledge $5, $10, or $15 a month, you’ll have access to “exclusive” content which will not be crossposted here. These will usually be short posts — photos, ads, clippings, etc. — which might later become a longer post here on the blog, but a lot of it will be things that don’t fit anywhere else or are about subjects I simply don’t have time to write a full blog post about. As I become more comfortable with the site, I may try other types of “content.” I will most certainly be posting WAY more frequently there.
I am also on Patreon as a patron, supporting a person whose work I really enjoy, and I’ve found the platform very easy to use. There are no strings attached. You can change the amount of your pledge — up or down — very easily. And you can also CANCEL at any time. (You won’t hurt my feelings!) Your credit card will be charged monthly on the same day of the month that you initially subscribe. Patreon has been around for 10 years, so, as the kids say, it’s legit.
There will be occasional “public” posts on the site, and you are welcome to pop over there at any time to see what’s there. You can check the page out HERE. (I hope not to spam people incessantly with this, but — fair warning — this Patreon-mentioning will be popping up from time to time.)
I hope to use some of these proceeds to eventually upgrade this blog. It’s a long story, but I am not unaware of the failings of my present website. I need to do a major, scary migration. For several years I’ve been a caregiver dealing with health issues of elderly relatives, and it’s definitely held me back on things I’ve wanted to do with this site and with my writing.
So — if you’re still reading! — I am asking in a no-pressure way that you consider supporting me monetarily if you are a fan of my work and appreciate the time and effort it takes to create it. If you are unable to or just don’t feel like it, no problem. I am so happy to have all of you reading. It’s been so much fun doing this — and, in the process, getting to know many of you. As I said above, I have no plans to stop Flashback Dallas anytime soon — things here should continue as usual. Thank you so much for reading!
–Paula
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Image at the top is a 20-foot bas-relief mural by Alma Shon, the “Money Tree,” which was located on the second floor of the First National Bank building. It was made from 7,819 coins and carved walnut wood. Read the complete description here.
And… in case you missed it, that Patreon page is here.
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Copyright © 2023 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Welcome.… (photo by John Rogers, via the Portal to Texas History)
by Paula Bosse
When it opened in 1959, the Southland Center (the Southland Life Building and the Sheraton Dallas hotel) boasted the tallest building west of the Mississippi. It was obviously a huge, multi-million-dollar construction project, but it was also a very costly decor project in which no expense was spared on the interior design of the buildings. An admirable amount of attention was paid to artistic elements such as site-specific commissioned artwork, and input from artists and designers was welcomed. It was an interior decorator’s dream job in which absolutely everything was NEW and modern. I love this period of design. Here are a few photos from the new Southland Center which I could look at all day.
I love all the glass and the sharp, crisp lines of the furniture. (All photos are by John Rogers — see the link below each photo to go to its Portal to Texas History page where you can zoom in and see details more clearly.)
This is a fantastic shot — you can see a couple of the commissioned artworks. At the left, extending from the ceiling of the second-floor lobby of the Sheraton to the ground floor is a “stamobile” kinetic sculpture titled “Totem” by Richard Filipowski. In the background at the top center of the photo, above the registration desk, is a Venetian-glass-and-broken-marble mural by Lumen Martin Winter.
Speaking of art, another commissioned work can be seen in this detail of a photo: at the back, barely seen, is “Texas Sunburst,” a glass-tile mosaic mural by Gyorgy Kepes with additional work by Robert Preusser, located on the second-floor lounge concourse. Kepes designed the vibrant tile mosaic on the St. Jude Chapel downtown (the recent restoration of which I wrote about here), and he was also a contributor another wonderful mid-century architectural landmark in Dallas, Temple Emanu-El. (I spotted a brief glimpse of a bit of this Sheraton mural in color in a WFAA clip from June, 1974 in a story about, of all things, an ESP convention.)
Here’s a jewelry kiosk, which is sort of Deco-futuristic — like something you’d see in a 1930s movie set on a spaceship. (Is that the “rocket” of the Republic Bank Building seen outside the window at the right? It was practically right next door, as seen in this photo.)
This shows a couple of ground-level retail shops, with more wonderful floor-to-ceiling glass “walls” (the glass-cleaning must have been an ongoing nightmare!). If you needed a stuffed tiger toy, a game of Risk, paint brushes, or stationery… this shop was made for you. (In the background is the entrance to the Minute Chef, an informal restaurant which also featured original artwork by Gyorgy Kepes.)
And, lastly, a shot of the neighboring Southland Center towers, high above everything else on the edge of downtown.
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All photos are by John Rogers, from the John Rogers and Georgette de Bruchard Collection, provided to the Portal to Texas History by the UNT Libraries Special Collections, University of North Texas; see all 25 of Rogers’ photos of the Southland Center, taken in 1959/1960, here.
See a list of the permanent art as well as exhibited art at the Southland Life Building/Sheraton Dallas in the scanned 1959 catalog “Made in Texas by Texans.”
See photos of the Southland Center under construction in the Flashback Dallas post “On Top of the World: The Southland Center.”
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Copyright © 2020 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
When the uniforms match the exterior of the building…
by Paula Bosse
Republic National Bank opened its dazzling new building on N. Ervay in December, 1954. It was the tallest building in the city, the interior boasted gold leaf everywhere, and the exterior was covered with thousands of aluminum panels embossed with a distinctive four-pointed “star” shape.
The building’s opening was quite the PR extravaganza — so much so that Life magazine sent photographer Joe Scherschel to take photos for the Feb. 28, 1955 article “Dazzler For Dallas.” Scherschel took a ton of photos, but only a handful made it into the article — one that didn’t make it is the one above which shows five young women on a staircase, all of whom are wearing dresses with those Republic Bank “stars” on them! I have to admit, I was a little more excited than I should have been to have noticed what I assume must have been a (fairly stylish) uniform (hostesses? elevator girls?). Kudos to whomever came up with that clever way to celebrate the bank’s home by incorporating one of the most distinctive elements of one of the city’s most distinctive buildings into something as easily overlooked as an employee’s uniform. That is attention to detail!
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All photos were taken by Joe Scherschel for Life magazine, ©Time, Inc. A large collection of the photos Scherschel took while on assignment in Dallas for this article can be viewed here.
I wrote about those fantastic embossed aluminum panels in the Flashback Dallas post “The Republic Bank Building and Spain’s ‘Casa de Los Picos,'” here.
All photos are larger when clicked.
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Copyright © 2019 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Executive privilege…
by Paula Bosse
Here are a couple of cool, vertigo-inducing photos taken by Squire Haskins in 1958 or very early 1959 showing Southland Life Insurance executives and a crane operator perched atop the under-construction Southland Center, which included the Southland Life building (which was the tallest building in Dallas for a while) and the Sheraton Hotel. Once completed and opened in April, 1959, there was an observation deck at the top of the Southland Life building, offering an unequaled, unobstructed view of the city.
The building under construction in these photos is unidentified, but the familiar Sheraton logo seen elsewhere with the same men is a tip-off.
Here’s what it all looked like when it opened. Click to see a larger image.
April, 1959
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Photos are by Squire Haskins, from the Squire Haskins Photography, Inc. Collection, Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Info on the top photo can be found here.
Some of the men in the photos are Dan C. Williams (President, Southland Life), Ben H. Carpenter (Executive Vice-President), William H. Oswalt, III (Vice-President, Director of Project Development for Southland Center), J. E. Herndon, and “A. B.”
A related Flashback Dallas post — “Sheraton Dallas, Original Version — 1959” — is here.
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Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Main St. looking east
by Paula Bosse
Above, Main Street looking east, taken from Murphy, anchored by the beautiful City National Bank, built in 1903. This block today? One Main Place. Whatever old buildings were left in this block in 1965 (including the old City National Bank) were bulldozed into oblivion to make way for the skyscraper.
The same view today:
Google Street View, 2015
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Top image from a postcard found on eBay.
Imagine looking up to the sky from the photographer’s vantage point in the top photo and seeing what things would look like a century later.
Murphy no longer exists — it was between what is now Griffin and Field. A map from 1898 showing the location:
See another photo of the same view taken at about the same time, only with horse-and-buggy traffic, here.
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Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
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.
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.
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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!
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
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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Wikipedia round-up:
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.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
The company’s Dallas warehouse on N. Lamar (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
The Underwriters Salvage Company of New York (founded in 1893) was a business that worked with insurance companies and merchants in settling losses due to merchandise damaged by fire, water, etc. In their words:
Underwriters Salvage Co., 1920
There were branch offices in cities around the country, including Dallas, which was the location of the company’s Southwestern offices, or, their “Gulf Department,” located in the American Exchange National Bank Bldg. on Main St. The warehouse pictured above was at 2014-16 North Lamar (in the West End warehouse district, between McKinney Ave. and Munger). Not only would merchandise being readied for processing be stored there, there would probably also be large fans going full-blast to dry out and remove the smell of smoke from items that would soon be sold for bargain prices, either to the public or to wholesalers via “fire sales” or public auctions.
The company’s most famous fire sale (which they were quick to mention in later national advertising) was the huge dispersal of merchandise from the big fire at Neiman-Marcus in 1964. Instead of the usual, somewhat dull, inventories of shoes or boys’ coats or rope (“all sizes”), that sale included Neiman’s eye-poppingly expensive fur coats and other luxury goods (and, I think, every single piece of merchandise in the store that survived), all marked down to bargain basement prices. Now THAT is a fire sale.
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1913
1924
1924
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Top photo and text excerpt from a tiny pocket-sized booklet/calendar issued by the Underwriters Salvage Company of New York in 1920, featuring photos of the company’s branches around the United States.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
Today is the anniversary of Texas Independence. Below, you will find the most heart-swellingly patriotic bank ad ever penned. Before you plunge in, you might want to get a hanky. (Transcription below.)
Dallas Morning News, March 1, 1921
Four score and five years ago tomorrow a little band of fervent patriots, defying the tyranny of a foreign yoke, gave enduring form and substance to the underlying principles of a free and independent people.
Unfurling the Lone Star Flag to the Southern breeze, they gave its composite symbolism a lasting signification among the nations of the world. Courage, fidelity and truth — devotion to a single aim — wrought out of the wilderness a new empire, dedicated to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Immortalized in song and story, the signers of the Declaration of Texas Independence stand shoulder to shoulder in Texan annals with the martyrs of Goliad and the Alamo and the victors of San Jacinto.
We, therefore, shall honor them tomorrow, pausing in the excited quest for business triumphs to worship for a moment before the shrine of liberty and thus to renew the exalted sentiments in our own hearts that inspired the lives and melded the destinies of our heroic dead. Hence the Clearing House banks of Dallas, over and above a perfunctory obedience to ancient custom and the provisions of our own by-laws, shall close our doors in reverential memory of the sacrifices of men who placed duty before gold, freedom before prosperity and righteousness before luxurious living — actuated by the hope that in this simple tribute to their illustrious names, to their glorious deeds, we may imbibe more of the patriotic spirit that animated them and thus become, through an advancing excellence of citizenship, more worthy of the heritage which they have left us.
American Exchange National Bank
City National Bank
National Bank of Commerce
Dallas Trust and Savings Bank
Security National Bank
Central State Bank
Dallas National Bank
Composing the Dallas Clearing House Association
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Remember the Alamo! And remember the men who placed “righteousness before luxurious living”! (Even though that last part’s not exactly a sentiment that Dallas is typically known for….)
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 