Dallas Skyline | Flashback : Dallas

May 15, 2019

Dallas: Major Convention Center — 1963

City of dreams, city of motels… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Here’s an interesting shot of the downtown skyline: from an unidentified motel (possibly along Harry Hines?).

This cover of a 1963 Dallas Chamber of Commerce magazine carries the headline “Dallas: Major Convention Center” — that year Dallas was named the #3 convention center (Chicago and New York held the top two spots) in a survey conducted by the trade publication World Convention Dates based upon the number of conventions booked — Dallas had 405 conventions booked, as of July, 1963. The previous year Dallas was ranked #9, so that’s quite an improvement. The GOP was even considering the city as the site of their 1964 Republican National Convention (which, considering the events of November, 1963, is an odd thing to contemplate).

Why was Big D so popular? An advertorial in The Dallas Morning News listed a few reasons:

…clear, dry weather; cosmopolitan atmosphere; numerous modern and attractive hotels and motels – with more being built every day; a marketplace with wares from over the nation and world; fun things to do and see including cultural, sports and theatrical offerings; a world-wide shopping center; easy accessibility via gleaming highways, freeways and an airport which ranks 10th in the nation. (DMN, Oct. 6, 1963)

So… pretty much the same things you hear today (except our highways might not be quite so gleaming — but our (new) airport ranks a lot higher than #10). All these years later, Dallas remains near the top of the convention-attracting cities in the United States. (I have a feeling the motel seen in the photo above did not have such a rosy future….)

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Sources & Notes

Image shows the cover of the June, 1963 issue of Dallas, the magazine of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce; found in an old eBay listing. (If anyone has any old copies of this magazine they would like to divest themselves of — or loan out for a short time — please contact me at the email address in the About/Contact tab at the top of this page.)

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October 26, 2018

“Triple Underpass” by Florence McClung — 1945

“Triple Underpass” by Florence McClung (photo: David Dike Fine Art)

by Paula Bosse

The word “iconic” is used way too much these days, but I suppose Dallas’ triple underpass is something that truly deserves to be described as “iconic.” Aside from the beauty, the engineering, and the usefulness of the underpass/railroad bridge, it is also, of course, known around the world for its cameo appearance in the Kennedy assassination.

Built in 1936, after years of back-and-forth planning and negotiating, the triple underpass was open in time for the Texas Centennial Exposition. It finally opened up a straight shot from Fort Worth to Dallas via Highway 1, and it and the concurrently-built Dealey Plaza served as Dallas’ welcoming “gateway” into the city for visitors approaching from the west.

The 1945 painting seen above — “Triple Underpass” by Dallas artist Florence McClung (1894-1992) — may be one of the first depictions of the structure in a fine art context. This painting goes up for sale this weekend, as the featured lot in the David Dike Fine Art Texas Art Auction. The estimate is $75,000-$175,000. Florence would be shocked by that, as her original price — which she wrote on a checklist for a show at the then-Dallas Museum of Fine Arts was $300 (which would, today, be about $4,000). (UPDATE 10/27/18: The painting sold for $252,000 — which, I assume, includes the buyer’s premium.)

As a fan of Texas art — and especially of the Dallas regionalist group, the Dallas Nine (with which McClung, though not a member, was closely associated) — I hope this wonderful piece of Dallas art (and you can’t get much more quintessentially Dallas than this!) goes for much more than the gallery estimate. (I wrote about McClung previously, here, with images showing a couple of other Dallas “cityscapes” done around the same time as “Triple Underpass.”)

Below is a photo from 1945 showing an aerial view of the scene captured by McClung that same year. (A photo from a little later, with a view to the west, is here.)

Dallas, 1945 (click for larger image)

A few things are interesting to me:

McClung neglected to include the ever-present billboard atop what was then the Sexton Foods building (later the School Book Depository) — in the photo above, U. S. Royal tires are being advertised.
I love that little oval, landscaped island, which is also seen in McClung’s painting.
Those four obelisk-y pillars, seen in both the photo and the painting, two on either side of the roadway, west of the underpass — what are those?
Is that large white building in the lower middle of the photograph ~~Pappy’s Showland?~~ Maybe ~~the Sky-Vu Supper Club (which I have meant to write about for years)?~~ (No! It’s the Chicken Bar, at the northeast corner of Commerce and Industrial. A photo of it under construction in 1945 is here.)

See here for as close to the angle of McClung’s view as I could get, from a 2014 Google Street View. (The painting shows the Dallas County Courthouse as it was then, without its now-replaced tower.)

Good luck to the bidders this weekend. It’s a great painting!

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Sources & Notes

Image of Florence McClung’s painting “Triple Underpass” is from the David Dike Fine Art catalog, which is illustrated with the works to be auctioned on Saturday, October 27, 2018; the catalog can be viewed in its entirety, here (this painting and its description are on p. 45). The website of David Dike Fine Art is here. The prices realized for this auction can be found here — McClung’s painting is Lot 163.

I am unsure of the source of the 1945 aerial photo — I saved it years ago and did not make note of the source, although I highly suspect it is from one of the many fine collections held by SMU.

See McClung’s application for the DMFA show where “Triple Underpass” was shown, here; her checklist of works to be shown is here (both documents are from the Dallas Museum of Art’s Exhibition Records, via UNT’s Portal to Texas History).

The earlier Flashback Dallas post “Dallas Scenes by Florence McClung — 1940s” (with two other paintings from the same period as “Triple Underpass”) is here.

15 Comments

August 3, 2018

Downtown Dallas Through the Clouds — 1923

Big D from above… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

This wonderful, dream-like, “through the clouds” photo shows a growing, booming (pre-Pegasus) downtown Dallas.

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Sources & Notes

Photo by the Fairchild Aerial Camera Corp., from the 1923 promotional brochure Dallas from A to Z (“Where Men Are Looking Forward”), published by the Dallas Chamber of Commerce (note the publication’s staple in the center of the photo). This brochure is in the collection of the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University and can be viewed in its entirety here (click the “download” button to view or save the brochure).

6 Comments

July 17, 2018

Stemmons Tower, Downtown Skyline — 1963

Photo by Squire Haskins, 1963 (UTA Libraries, Special Collections)

by Paula Bosse

Another fantastic photo from premier Dallas photographer, Squire Haskins: the new Stemmons Tower (East), with the Dallas skyline serving as a dramatic nighttime backdrop. (See this photo really big at the UTA website, here.)

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Sources & Notes

“Stemmons Tower with downtown Dallas, Texas in the background; photo taken at night,” by Squire Haskins, taken on April 19, 1963; from the Squire Haskins, Inc. Photography Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections (more info on this photo can be found here).

The first of several “towers,” construction of Trammel Crow’s Stemmons Tower East began in the summer of 1961 and was open and leasing by December, 1962. This office complex was part of the grand vision of the Trinity Industrial District and the “Stemmons corridor” (click ad below to see a much larger image).

Jan., 1963

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December 10, 2017

A Bird’s-Eye View to the North

As the crow flies… (click for much larger image)

by Paula Bosse

This is a great view, produced by the Fairchild Aerial Survey Co., taken sometime between 1925 (when the Ferris Plaza waiting station was built) and 1934 (when the land between the Trinity and the courthouse began to be cleared to begin construction of the “million-dollar project” which would eventually be known as Dealey Plaza and the Triple Underpass).

UPDATE: Brian Gunn posted this fantastic now-and-then overlay on the Dallas History Guild Facebook page. I love this. Thank you, Brian!

These images are huge. Click ’em!

UPDATE #2: Such participation from Flashback Dallas readers! Eric Hanson has now animated Brian Gunn’s overlay. Watch Dallas shoot up! Thank you, Eric! (Click GIF to see it slightly larger.)

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Sources & Notes

Photo found on eBay.

12 Comments

November 2, 2017

Dallas Skyline, Looking West — 1970

Southland Life welcomes you to Big D…

by Paula Bosse

This is a view of the Dallas skyline that isn’t seen that often — a view across downtown toward the west. This 1970 Southland Center postcard has the heliport-topped Southland Life Building (one of the few downtown buildings designed to face to the east) and the Sheraton Hotel front and center. It’s really interesting to zoom in on this photo and look around — for instance, the sight of the Hilton/White Plaza/Indigo hotel at the left, at Harwood and Main across from the Municipal Building, is a little disorienting (I think it’s the empty lot/parking lot at Elm and Harwood).

Have a little fun and zoom way in on this photo of 1970 downtown Dallas on the Portal to Texas History website, here.

skyline-looking-west_southland-center_1970_portal_info

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Sources & Notes

Postcard was provided to the Portal to Texas History by Dallas Heritage Village; more info on this can be found on the Portal, here.

4 Comments

October 28, 2017

KRLD News Crews, At the Ready

They mean business: they’re wearing suits and ties…

by Paula Bosse

Early-’60s-era KRLD radio and TV mobile news crews are seen above, showing off their fleet and ready for breaking news. Behind them, the Dallas skyline, seen from an unusual vantage point: the Trinity levees. See this photo really big here, and explore the skyline, from the Republic Bank Tower on the northern edge of downtown, to the Dallas Morning News building on the southern edge.

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Sources & Notes

Photo is from an interesting collection of “very old pictures from KRLD radio and TV,” presented on the website akdart.com.

8 Comments

September 14, 2017

La Reunion Tower

Big D from inside the ball… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

On Tuesday night I gave a little talk on the history of the La Reunion colony as part of the Dallas Historical Society’s Pour Yourself Into History series. The event was held in the *very nice* Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck restaurant high atop Reunion Tower — right in the ball. I was a bit of a last-minute fill-in presenter, and I hesitated to accept the invitation because I always feel awkward talking in front of more than, say, two or three people, but I really, really wanted to go up to the top of Reunion Tower.

I hadn’t been to Reunion Tower since a family outing back around 1980 or so. Back then I was most fascinated by the fact that the restaurant slowly revolved to give diners a leisurely 360-degree view of the city (I always imagined it spinning out-of-control, pinning diners — and their meals — against the walls with centrifugal force, like a fine-dining version of the Spindletop ride at Six Flags, or The Rotor ride at the State Fair of Texas); but now, decades later, as an adult, the image of the spinning restaurant was eclipsed by the real star: the VIEW.

As you can imagine, the view is unbelievably spectacular — especially at night when Dallas is at its most glamorous. The ticket price is fairly steep to get up to the observation deck, and a meal and/or cocktails at the restaurant will set you back a goodly amount, but it is, without question, the most fabulous view of the city you’ll ever see. And you see all of it. When I started my talk about the history of the La Reunion colony of the 1850s (which was located about 5 miles due west of Reunion Tower, in West Dallas) the view was pretty much the one seen in the photo above; by the time I finished, we were, serendipitously, looking out over where the plucky colonists of “French Town” had toiled unsuccessfully 160 years ago. (Estimates on the boundary of La Reunion’s 2,000-acre land is the area now bounded by Westmoreland on the west, Hampton on the east, Davis on the south, and the Trinity River on the north — the southwest corner is marked here on Google Maps.)

It was a little noisy at the event Tuesday night, so if you were one of the very nice people who turned out, you might not have been able to hear anything I said! If you’d like to hear more about the history of La Reunion (and about Reunion Tower — and how, if a marketing agency had had its way, it might have been named “Esplanade” Tower), I enthusiastically recommend this very entertaining radio piece from Julia Barton (the La Reunion segment begins at about the 5:15 mark).

I took photos, but they don’t do justice to the view. The really breathtaking vistas are at night, and, sadly, none of those photos came out. Seriously, if you’ve never been up Reunion Tower — or if you haven’t been since it was opened in 1978 — you should definitely go now. Better still, go at sunset and enjoy the best view in Dallas as you sip delicious cocktails.

The view stretches for miles. Here’s a cropped view of Dealey Plaza (click to see it really big).

And, at sunset, the jail has never looked lovelier.

Back down on terra firma, looking up and saying “goodbye” to the ball.

Thank you, Dallas Historical Society, for inviting me to be part of your event! And thanks to everyone who came out … and up!

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Sources & Notes*

Photos by Paula Bosse. Click ’em to see ’em bigger.

For more information of the La Reunion colony, see other Flashback Dallas posts here.

2 Comments

May 11, 2017

A Bird’s-Eye View of the Central Business District

The Statler Hilton and the Merc at dusk… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I’ve recently experienced a long, long involuntary separation from my beloved laptop (the welling anxiety! the withdrawal pangs!), but now it’s back home from the shop, resting comfortably and ready to go back to work.

Here is a “welcome back” shot of the Dallas skyline, with a view to the southwest: the neon begins to come on in the CBD as “magic hour” arrives.

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Postcard image posted on Flickr by the ever-reliable Christian Spencer Anderson (aka Coltera), here.

5 Comments

April 4, 2017

A Century of Growth: From Log Cabin to Skyscrapers

Ol’ JNB wouldn’t recognize the place… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

To think it all began with John Neely Bryan’s little log cabin on the banks of the Trinity….

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Photo from the booklet So This Is Dallas (Dallas: The Welcome Wagon, circa 1943); courtesy of the Lone Star Library Annex Facebook page.

6 Comments

Category: Dallas Skyline

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