HOF | Flashback : Dallas

April 14, 2014

How Lincoln’s Assassination Was Reported in Dallas — 1865

by Paula Bosse

Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865; he died the next morning. I wondered how the news had been reported in Dallas. I couldn’t find the first mention of the assassination in The Dallas Herald, but it seems there may have been a special “extra” edition published on or just after April 29th — a full two weeks after the fact! The one thing I kept encountering in general Google searches were mentions of the vicious, celebratory editorial that appeared in the pages of the Herald — these reports always quote the line “God Almighty ordered this event or it could never have taken place.” I found that editorial. It appeared in the two-page Dallas Herald on May 4, 1865, along with detailed reports of the assassination.

lincoln_dallas-herald_masthead_050465

The image resolution here is pretty bad (it is transcribed below), but, yes, this eye-poppingly vitriolic editorial did appear in the pages of The Dallas Herald — but it did not originate with the Herald (which is not to say that the Dallas editor wasn’t in agreement with the sentiments expressed). The editorial was reprinted from the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph (which had run it ten days previously, on April 24); its appearance in the Dallas paper is even clearly prefaced with the following: “The Houston Telegraph, in speaking of the killing of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, says…” — so it’s unclear why so many historians and authors mention this editorial as being the product of The Dallas Herald.

The editorial was unsigned, but it was probably written by William Pitt Ballinger, whose previous flame-fanning tirades against the president in the pages of the Telegraph must have caused even hard-core Confederate-leaning brows to raise. I’ve transcribed the full editorial below. For whatever reasons, the Dallas Herald omitted the first and last paragraphs — probably because of space limitations, but one would like to think that even a pro-Confederacy newspaper would think it best to leave out a phrase such as “The killing of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward may be more wonderful than the capitulation of armies.” Yikes. Imagine a mainstream newspaper printing something like that following the assassination of President Kennedy.

Below is the full astonishing text of the editorial that originally appeared in the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph on April 24, 1865. The stark reality of historical events and the contemporaneous tenor of the times can look a lot different when seen from a distance of 150 years.

We publish to-day the most astounding intelligence it has ever been our lot to place before our readers — intelligence of events which may decide the fate of empires, and change the complexion of an age. The killing of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward may be more wonderful than the capitulation of armies.

With the perpetration of these deeds we can have no sympathy, nor for them can the Southern people be held any way responsible. While Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward had by their malignity created only feelings of detestation and horror for them in the minds of our people, and while in their death the finger of God’s providence is manifest, it is still impossible to look upon an assassin with complacency, even though he frees us from the threatened yoke of a tyrant. We look upon his as God’s instrument, and as such leave him with his maker, praying for infinite mercy to succor him in his hour of need.

God Almighty ordered this event or it could never have taken place. His purpose in it as His purpose in the surrender of Lee’s army, remains to be seen. The careful observer of the history of this war is struck with nothing more than with the fact that no great event has been foreseen by the actors, and that an Almighty hand has shaped the entire course of events. What this event will lead to no man can foresee. We are all instruments in His hands for the accomplishment of His purposes. The ways of Providence are inscrutable, utterly past finding out. It behooves us His creatures to look on in wonder and to act the part of duty according to the lights before us. That duty leads us to be true to our faith, true to our cause, and while it forbids our sanction to unlawful violence — to assassination — it commands us to accept all things as ordered by a Supreme Power, to bow to the exhibitions of that power, and to obey the manifest teachings of His will.

What will [be] the result of these tremendous events, no man can foresee. Theories will present themselves to every man’s mind. We have a dozen all equally probable, and all equally uncertain. Let us wait in patience for the next scene in this terrible drama.

***

Top image is an engraving of the assassination in Ford’s Theatre from Harper’s Weekly, April 29, 1865.

Editorial is from The Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, published April 24, 1865 (Vol. 31, No. 13). You can view a scan of the original newspaper via the indispensable Portal to Texas History, here (it is at the top right of the page, last column). Reprinted without the first and last paragraph by The Dallas Herald ten days later on May 4, 1865 (Vol. 12, No. 36).

Editorial is probably by William Pitt Ballinger, a Galveston attorney. His editorial screeds for the Telegraph are mentioned in the just-published Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present, by John McKee Barr (LSU Press, 2014), p. 53 — read an excerpt here. Read more about Ballinger — the “brilliant attorney and political insider” — here.

An interesting article titled “The Last Newspaper to Report the Lincoln Assassination” is here. The article is about The Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, but it looks like The Dallas Herald was even SLOWER to report the news.

“We received on Saturday last [April 29] the dispatches containing the assassination of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, by a letter from Maj. Stackpole to his family at this place, and published them in an extra. There was some little discrtepancy and an omission in them as published then, which we find corrected in the Houston Telegraph’s dispatches which we publish to-day.” (Dallas Herald, May 5, 1865)

3 Comments

April 12, 2014

That Time When Dallas Changed the Numbers of Every Single Street in Town — 1911

young-street-sign_flickr Photo by Silver Lighthouse/Flickr

by Paula Bosse

Here’s a topic that isn’t very sexy, but it’s one of those mammoth-scale city-wide operations that had to be done, but no one wanted to tackle it because it was a huge undertaking and it was going to be a big hassle: re-numbering the streets. All of them. Throughout the entire city. I wasn’t aware that something like this had ever happened until I started using old criss-cross directories to try to pinpoint the location of old buildings that were originally built on streets that no longer exist (such as Poydras and Masten).

Why, for instance, is the current address of the Majestic Theatre 1925 Elm St., but in 1909 that same parcel of land on Elm had an address of 463 (-ish)? Weird, huh? Obviously street numbers changed at some point, but when? And why? Eventually I zeroed in on 1910 or 1911 as the year when addresses seemed to have changed, but I was having a hard time finding any information about what prompted the change in the first place. Until I hit on the key phrase “century system.” After that, my search became much easier.

As far back as the 1880s, the city seemed poised to address the haphazard street numbering situation, as it was causing “endless confusion” — the powers-that-be had even seemed to settled on the “century system” (so called because each block is numbered up to 100, with a new hundred starting in the next block). But progress moves at a snail’s pace in city government, and the plan didn’t start picking up steam until fifteen or twenty years later.

In the early days of the 20th century, the numbering of Dallas streets was, as one mail carrier described it, “freakish.” Numbers weren’t always consecutive. Sometimes odd and even numbers were on the same side of the street. Sometimes a run of numbers would suddenly start all over again. Houses sometimes had TWO numbers. People would move and expect to take their number with them. Buildings and houses often had NO numbers. Street signs were few and far between, and it wasn’t uncommon for street names to be duplicated in different parts of town. As you can imagine, unless you were intimately familiar with the area or neighborhood, chances were that you weren’t going to be able to find anything. Unsurprisingly, the real pressure to come up with some sort of logical, uniform street numbering system came from the city’s postmasters and postal employees (that they managed to regularly deliver mail to the proper recipients is just short of miraculous).

Postmaster Albert G. Joyce (one in a line of several postmasters who tried to effect change over the years) wrote an impassioned/frustrated plea for action in 1904:

1904_street-numbering_dmn_051804a

(DMN, May, 18, 1904)

Everyone agreed that something needed to be done — especially as the city’s population was growing at an astronomical rate, but … nothing got done. Here, at the end of 1907, another exasperated postal employee shared examples of the problem:

1907_street-numbering_dmn_120707 (DMN, Dec. 7, 1907)

By 1909, a plan was finally starting to come together. This article describes how the numbering system would be implemented downtown, starting from the Trinity River, with Main and Ervay being the east-west and north-south anchors:

1909-street-numbering_dmn_121709-ervay (DMN, Dec. 17, 1909)

Even though the plan had basically been decided on, it wasn’t put into action for at least a year. There were three main reasons to delay the implementation: city directories had already been compiled and were to be issued soon, the 1910 census survey was about to begin, and the post office (which would bear the brunt of the impact of the drastic change) asked that the changeover take place before or after the busy holiday season.

By the end of 1910, the final details had been hammered out. The main change to the previous version of the plan was that the city, rather than the property owners, would pay for the re-numbering. Also, I don’t know if this was a new detail or not, but there is mention here that numbering east of Greenville Ave. would “begin anew.” The re-numbering was expected to be completed in January, 1911.

1910-street-numbering_dmn_100110 (DMN, Oct. 1, 1910)

By the middle of January, 1911 the long-put-off task was completed, ending in Oak Cliff. The cost to the city of the “number placement” and the new street signs was $10,500.

1911_street-numbering_dmn_011511 (DMN, Jan. 15, 1911)

The problem that had been moaned about for decades had been fixed, and a uniform system of street numbering had finally been put in place.

1911_street-numbering_dmn_043011 (DMN, Apr., 30, 1911)

I can’t imagine how much of a headache and how unbelievably confusing the whole process and aftermath must have been. Several businesses, concerned that their clientele might have a difficult time “finding” them, hedged their bets by including BOTH address — the old and the new — on their letterhead and in their ads. This two-address thing went on for quite a while with some businesses — in fact, leading real estate man J. W. Lindsley was so annoyed by this practice that he complained about it to the Morning News in 1916 (a full five years after the switch!). Even though, ahem, Lindsley was one of the few advertisers in the Blue Book Directory for 1912-14 who did that very thing:

lindsley-ad-blue-bk_1912

Unlike his competitor, Murphy & Bolanz, who had just the one (but still felt compelled to add the “new” to the address):

murphy-bolanz-ad_blue-bk_1912

And that is today’s lesson on how Dallas finally bit the bullet and gave the entire city new addresses.

(And now I know that Neiman Marcus apparently IS the center of Dallas.)

main-ervay_NM

UPDATE: HOW TO FIND THE OLD OR NEW ADDRESS. When I first wrote this, I’m not sure if I knew about the very handy resource Jim Wheat provided on his website: the 1911 Worley’s Dallas street directory, here. This is one way you can determine what the post-address-changeover was if you know the pre-1911 address (or vice-versa): find the street name and click on it. You’ll find two columns: one showing the “new” address, and the other the “old” address. (These aren’t always exact, but it at least gets you in the right block number to investigate further.) If you don’t know a specific address, you can make an educated guess according to the cross-streets. Thank you, Jim Wheat!

***

Photo of Young St. sign from Flickr, here. It’s great.

All newspaper articles from The Dallas Morning News.

The two real estate ads from The Standard Blue Book of Texas, 1912-14, Dallas Edition (Dallas: A. J. Peeler and Company, n.d.).

Slightly fuzzy Ervay-Main sign from Google Street View.

An early article about this issue, “Street Numbering, A Neglected Matter to Receive Attention Soon” (Dallas Daily Times-Herald, Nov. 22, 1889) can be found here.

And if you’re interested in just what goes into tackling a problem like this in modern times, hie yourself over to “Street-Naming and Property-Numbering Systems” by Margaret A. Corwin (American Planning Assn., ca. 1976). Read the entire report here, in a PDF. I’m nothing if not thorough.

dallas-st_sign_nyt_120713

8 Comments

April 10, 2014

Oriental Oil Company: Fill ‘er Up Right There at the Curb

An Oriental Oil Co. competitor, at 1805 Commerce

by Paula Bosse

I cropped this detail from a much larger view of Commerce Street because this incidental, everyday moment caught my attention. Was that man filling his automobile with gasoline? Was that square, boxy, hip-high thing full of gas, right there at the curb of one of the city’s busiest streets? The sign above the pump reads “PENNSYLVANIA AUTO OIL GASOLINE SUPPLY STATION.” I looked into it, and now I know more about early gas pumps and stations than I ever thought I would.

In the very early days of automobiles, one would have to seek out a supplier of gasoline (such as a hardware store or even a drugstore) where you would buy a gallon or two and carry it home with you in a bucket or something and then carefully pour it into your car’s gas tank using a trusty funnel. After a few years of this inconvenient way to gas up, these curbside pumps began to pop up in larger cities. The pump seen above was at 1805 Commerce St. and belonged to the Pennsylvania Oil Company. It opened in early 1912. That got me to wondering about other such fueling stations, and it seems the first in Dallas may have belonged to the Oriental Oil Company, just down the street from the one seen above, at 1611 Commerce. Here is a fuzzy image of it, from the same, larger photo the detail above was taken from. (Click for larger image.)

Could this photo have been taken there? It was listed on eBay merely as “Oriental Oil Company, Dallas, 1910-1920.”

Oriental Oil’s first “auto station” opened in February, 1911, where “facilities have been arranged so as to fill the cars along the sidewalk.”

(Dallas Morning News, Feb. 26, 1911)

Drive-up “stations” had begun to appear a few years before, on the West Coast.

gas-stations_dot-pdf_p33 (Texas Dept. of Transportation, 2003)

In a 1924 Dallas Morning News article (see below), the pump seen in the above photos was described thusly:

Dallas’ first gas filling station had a one-gallon blind pump on the curb which was then thought to be the last word in equipment. Now if a filling station is not equipped with a visible five-gallon pump it is thought to be behind the times and the gas now sold must be water white, when in the old days it was most any color.

This, I think, is what the Oriental and Pennsylvania rolling tanks looked like — the make and model may be different, but I think the general design is the same:

gas-pump-1913

When it was empty, it would be rolled away to be re-filled. I’m not sure about the payment system. Coupon books are mentioned in one of the ads, but I don’t know how (or with whom) one would redeem them as these pumps appear to be self-serve. Perhaps there was a slot for coins/coupons, and everyone worked on the honor system.

It seems that its placement would cause a lot of congestion on a major street like Commerce (which at the time was still shared with skittish horses), but Commerce was also a hotbed of automobile dealerships (Studebaker, Stutz, and Pierce-Arrow dealerships, for example, were within a couple of blocks of the Oriental and Pennsylvania filling stations).

The Oriental Oil Company — a forgotten, early oil company — had an interesting history. The Dallas-based company began business in 1903, starting their company “in a barn in the rear of the Loudermilk undertaking establishment.”

oriental-oil_mercury_123103 (Southern-Mercury, Dec. 31, 1903)

They were a fast-growing oil company (“an independent concern which in spite of the strong opposition of the oil trust is now enjoying permanent and growing prosperity” – Greater Dallas Illustrated, 1908), and they were one of the first to open a refinery in Texas (they eventually had two refineries in West Dallas). The company’s primary concern in its early years was the manufacture of various oils and greases for industrial use.

Oriental Oil Company Factory, corner of Corinth St. and Santa Fe tracks, circa 1908

In 1911, understanding just how profitable the new world of retail gasoline sales could be, they installed their first pump at the curb of 1611 Commerce St., near Ervay (“right behind the Owl Drug Store”). A 1924 Dallas Morning News account of the company (see below) states that this was the first gas pump … not only in Dallas … but in the entire state of Texas. I’m not sure if that’s true, but the Smith Brothers who ran Oriental Oil were certainly go-getters — the Smiths were grandsons of Col. B. F. Terry, organizer of the famed Terry’s Texas Rangers, and one of the brothers, Frank, was an early mayor of Highland Park and a three-term president of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

(DMN, Oct. 8, 1911)

(DMN, Jan. 28, 1912)

Shortly after opening their first pump on Commerce, demand was such that a second pump was soon opened at 211 Lane St. (a mere half a block away!). The DMN reported on Oct. 19, 1911 that a competitor — Consumers’ Oil and Auto Company — was going to be right across the street: “Permission was given to the Consumers’ Oil and Auto Company to place a gasoline tank under the sidewalk at 214 Lane street.” And in March 1912 the Pennsylvania Oil Company was installing ITS underground tank for the pump seen in the photo at the top — again, less than a block away. And in 1916 Oriental opened its splashy new “‘Hurry Back’ Auto Station” right across the street from where that Pennsylvania tank had been. (That Commerce-Ervay area was certainly an early gas station hotbed!)

(DMN, Aug. 29, 1916)

Newspaper reports also cite claims made by the company that the station mentioned in the ad above — at Commerce and Prather — was the first drive-in gas station in the United States. I’m sure this was good truth-stretching PR for Oriental more than anything, because this claim was not true (Seattle and Pittsburgh seem to be battling each other for that honor). It might not have been the first, but when this “auto station” opened in 1916 (assuming it was “new” as this ad states), it was still pretty early in the history of the drive-in filling station. Also, by 1916, “Hurry Back” had become the company’s slogan as well as the name of its gasoline.

(DMN, Oct. 22, 1918)

(Jewish Monitor, 1920; detail)

(DMN, Apr. 11, 1921)

(DMN, Mar. 5, 1922)

I love these ads!

By 1927, the company boasted at least 18 filling stations, two refineries, and branches in Fort Worth and San Antonio. In 1927 they had moved into new offices in the “Oriental Building” at the nexus of Live Oak, St. Paul, and Pacific. A newspaper report described the building as being “finished in Oriental colors with Oriental decorations and is marked at night by very attractive lighting” (DMN, May 1, 1927).

oriental-oil_bldg_1977_flickr

The Oriental Oil Company declared bankruptcy in 1934, selling off their property, refineries, and their name. No more Oroco gas. A lot of companies went bust during the Great Depression, but I’m not sure what precipitated Oriental Oil’s bankruptcy. Actually, I’m surprised by how little information about the Oriental Oil Company I’ve been able to find. Afterall, it and its “Hurry Back” gasoline played a major role in getting the residents of Dallas off their horses and behind the wheel, a major cultural and economic shift that changed the city forever. And it all started at that weird little curbside gas pump on Commerce Street.

***

Sources & Notes

The first two images are details of a photograph by Jno. J. Johnson (“New Skyline from YMCA”), 1912/1913, from the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, viewable here.

Snippet of text from A Field Guide to Gas Stations of Texas by Dwayne Jones (Texas Department of Transportation, 2003).

Illustration of the two 1913 Tokheim portable gas pumps from An Illustrated Guide to Gas Pumps, Identification and Price Guide, 2nd Edition by John H. Sim (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2008).

Drawing of the Oriental Oil Company Factory from Greater Dallas Illustrated (Dallas: American Illustrating Co., 1908 — reprinted by Friends of the Dallas Public Library in 1992).

All ads and articles, unless otherwise noted, from The Dallas Morning News.

Color photo of the pink, purple, and gold Oriental Oil Bldg. is a detail from a photo taken around 1977, on Flickr, here.

For an interesting (and mostly accurate) mini-history of the Oriental Oil Company, then in its 20th year of operation, see the Dallas Morning News article “First Dallas Filling Station on Commerce Had One-Gallon Pump” (June 22, 1924).

Some nifty info on early gas stations (yes, really) here.

More info with some really great illustrations and photos here.

Another surprisingly fun and informative article is here.

2 Comments

April 1, 2014

U.S. Revenue Cutter “Carrie Nation” Successfully Navigates the Trinity In Valiant Effort to Keep Dallas Dry! — 1931

The ship’s arrival, passing under the streetcar viaduct…

by Paula Bosse

I spent a couple of hours looking through the archives of The Dallas Morning News this morning, hoping to find a nice juicy April Fools’ prank from the past. Everything was fairly run-of-mill. Until I came across this. THIS is great. I don’t know who wrote the story, but there is, at least, acknowledgement for the wonderfully weird photo above — the photo credit reads: “Perpetrated by C. J. Kaho, News Staff Photographer.”

Below is the accompanying story about the United States Revenue Cutter Carrie Nation and the news of its journey up a surprisingly navigable Trinity River in order to anchor itself beneath the Commerce Street viaduct and make sure that the rum-runners in the Gulf don’t gain a foothold in bone-dry Prohibition-era Dallas. The photo and report appeared in the pages of The Dallas Morning News on April 1, 1931, beneath the headline “Lots of Dallas People Failed to See This.”

Unwilling to let such an important story fade away — and with a few more good lines left to get into print — this appeared the next day, on April 2, 1931: “Navigation Assured!”

Then some killjoy editor probably insisted on this, which also appeared on April 2, 1931:

Rev. J. B. Cranfill was a Baptist leader and a noted Prohibitionist. I love the line “Dr. J. B. Cranfill was so overcome with joy that he wept copious tears, taking care to shed them into the canal, so as to increase its depth.”

And I laughed out loud at the “where the West begins” dig at Fort Worth.

But, seriously, that photo is great. The little streetcar chugging over the viaduct is just the perfect garnish.

Read about the famed, notorious Bonehead Club of Dallas in a 1991 Texas Monthly article by Helen Thompson, here. Thank you, Boneheads!

1 Comment

March 17, 2014

Protected: Never Tell an Irate Irishman That He Can’t Paint a Green Stripe Down Main Street — 1960

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March 7, 2014

Mme. Koneman, High-Class Milliner

Madame Koneman’s fashion emporium, 1912 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Behold, the Koneman Millinery Establishment, which actually looks a little plain for a millinery shop housed in the ornate Oriental Hotel building. When I see old ads or photos like this, I always wonder about the people pictured in them. I’m assuming that the woman in the oval inset at the left was the proprietess, “Mme. Koneman.” So who WAS she, this woman who had a “high-class” business that catered to a “high-class” clientele? I poked around a little and found these ads from 1913.

koneman-millinery_dmn_060113

koneman-millinery_dmn_060813

koneman-millinery_dmn_061413

(click for larger image)

Ooh. Those last few sentences of the above ad seem a little defensive, as if she’s addressing nasty gossip. “Furthermore, I want to say that I am not going out of business.” When you see a sentence like that — in an advertisement — that sends up some furiously waving red flags. And … just one month after that ad, this miniscule tidbit in teeny-tiny letters appeared in the paper at the end of 1913:

Dallas Morning News, Dec. 21, 1913

Oh dear. D-I-V-O-R-C-E. And, guess what? There were no more ads for the millinery shop.

But, alarmingly, THIS appeared on the wire services on February 17, 1917:

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Feb. 17, 1917

Oh DEAR! Shot by a widower with two children, who tried to kill both her and himself after he flew into a jealous rage in a New Orleans hotel lobby. Working with feathers and plumes and felt and velvet (probably) does not prepare one for being shot at!

Ten days after being shot, it was reported that the 36-year old Mrs. Koneman (whose first name was either “Matilda” or “Mathilda”) was released from the hospital in New Orleans. The jealous suitor, 40-year old Edgar J. Hargrave (or “Hargrove”), remained in the hospital, slowly recovering (but with a bullet still lodged in his head!). “Policemen expect to arrest Hargrave on a charge of shooting with intent to murder as soon as he is able to leave the institution.” He was an “oil salesman” from Houston.

One week later, Hargrave/Hargrove was released from the hospital and was transferred to Parish Prison where he awaited arraignment on attempted murder. Meanwhile, Matilda/Mathilda, a material witness in the case, had been arrested when the D.A. heard she was about to leave town. Out on a $650 bond, she was ordered to stay in the city until the arraignment.

On March 16, one month after being shot in the lobby of the Grunewald Hotel, Mrs. Koneman was in court recounting her near-death experience, and I’m sure the people back in Dallas were eating up every last morsel in the scandalous testimony about the spurned lover who tried to kill the divorcée who used to sell them great big hats with aigrette plumes in that bleakly unadorned hat shop over on Ervay!

DMN, March 16, 1917 (click for larger image)

(UPDATE: A reader kindly forwarded me a more detailed account of the shooting incident between the spurner and the spurnee, in a longer article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune (Feb. 17, 1917). Click here to read the article, with a blurry photo of Hargrave.)

And then — rather anticlimactically — the trail ran cold. What was the verdict? What happened to Edgar? Whither Mme. Koneman? Mrs. Koneman was reported to be living in Galveston at the time of the shooting, but by the summer of 1922 she was back in Dallas, checked into the Southland Hotel. The last shred of info I found about her was this classified ad from June, 1922, which raises even more questions.

DMN, June 15, 1922

I’m not really sure what this was all about, but it’s safe to say there would have been very few lags in the conversation between Dallas and California!

***

Top ad from The Standard Blue Book of Dallas, 1912-1914 (Dallas: A. J. Peeler & Co.).

“Dallas Woman Shot” article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Feb. 17, 1917. This was a wire service story that was printed around the country, but, oddly enough, the news doesn’t seem to have made its way into the DMN until ten days after the shooting!

All other ads and articles from the Dallas Morning News. The Koneman Millinery ads were from 1913.

5 Comments

March 6, 2014

Mr. Peppermint!

by Paula Bosse

I have no idea where I came across this photo a couple of years ago, but it is without question my favorite photograph of my childhood pal and idol, Mr. Peppermint!

2 Comments

March 2, 2014

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House … In Preston Hollow — 1948

The Blandings Dream House in Preston Hollow… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I watch a lot of old movies, and one of my favorites has always been Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, the 1948 comedy about the trials and tribulations of home renovation and construction starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and Melvyn Douglas. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I learned there had been a nationwide promotion in which replicas of the “dream house” were built in cities around the country. And, to my surprise, one of those houses was built in Dallas! To be exact, in Preston Hollow. To be precise, at 5423 Walnut Hill Lane (the northwest corner of Walnut Hill and Hollow Way). Sadly, when I went looking for it last week, I found an empty lot. (Figures.) The photo above shows the house in September, 1948 when it (and, not so coincidentally, the movie) opened to the public.

Ahead of the movie’s release, Selznick Studios approached local builders around the country and provided them with architectural plans, asking that they build houses as near to the specifications of the movie house as conditions would permit. The studio contracted Dallas builder A. Pollard Simons and supervising architect Lucien O’Brien to work on the Dallas dream house, seen below in a rendering (all images are larger when clicked).

Simons greatly increased the size of the original two-story, three-bedroom house quite a bit (of course he did!), and he allowed the Junior League to raise money by selling 25-cent tickets to curious dream-house-wanters clamoring to wander through the house and gawk at its plush interior and its state-of-the art appliances. Afterwards, Simons put the completely furnished house on the market (in some cities the houses were put up as raffle prizes), and life, presumably, returned to normal for all concerned.

It was a clever way to promote the movie, and, as most of the contractors rushed to boast of their participation by taking out large ads (likely bought in conjunction with studio money), it was also an advertising bonanza for local newspapers. In amongst such ads I discovered that the company owned by my mother’s uncle and my grandfather — Fred Werry Electric Co. — did all the electrical work for the house!

Below are some of those ads that appeared at the time — and, trust me, this was just the tip of the iceberg. The ads were non-stop. This was a huge campaign, going far beyond traditional Hollywood promotion — and it certainly paid off. I’m fairly certain that most Dallasites who read the paper during that time were aware of the house (and the movie), even if they had absolutely no interest in houses (or movies). It was that that unavoidable. (Scroll to the bottom of this post to listen to a FABULOUS commercial-slash-PSA made by actor Melvyn Douglas at a local radio station during a trip to Dallas to tour the Preston Hollow house.)

There were other Texas “Dream Houses” built in Fort Worth (still standing, see link at bottom of page), Austin, Houston, and Amarillo. I only wish Dallas still had its “Dream House,” but I fear a tasteful-but-puny, little ol’ 3,000-square-foot house would not meet today’s definition of a “dream house” in ultra-swanky Preston Hollow.

The Ford people got into the advertising. This appears to be have been taken in front of the Dallas house.

My great-uncle and grandfather! I can now claim my six degrees of separation (LESS!) from Cary, Myrna, and Melvyn.

Kitchen porn from Lang’s.

The Baptist Book Store stocked the shelves of the Blandings library!

I really like the Wyatt’s Cafeteria ad below, which begins with an itinerary. “Program for today: go to church, eat at Wyatt’s, drive out to see the Mr. Blandings’ ‘Dream House’ in Preston Hollow.” This cafeteria ad sneaked in a mention of the Wyatt’s grocery stores by informing the reader that they had supplied the food for the Dream House’s refrigerator and pantry shelves. But this was my favorite part: “When Mr. Blandings takes his family out for a delicious meal you may rest assured that he will take them to a Wyatt’s De Luxe Cafeteria where each may choose the foods of his own liking from Wyatt’s tremendous varieties. Mr. Blandings won’t mind paying the bill because Wyatt’s prices are really modest.” If Cary Grant was going to be dining at a Dallas cafeteria, I only hope he was choking down large slabs of Wham.

The original “dream house” from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House — cute, but much smaller than its Dallas counterpart.

***

Sources & Notes

All ads relating to the Dallas Dream House appeared throughout September, 1948.

A nice look at the still-standing Fort Worth Dream House can be found in “Standing at the Corner of Hollywood and Cowtown,” here.

A short radio promo about the Preston Hollow Dream House was recorded on Aug. 10, 1948 by the wonderful Melvyn Douglas, one of the stars of the film (who, by the way, went on to win an Oscar for his role as the family patriarch in the brilliant — and iconically Texan — film Hud in 1963). It was recorded when he visited Dallas in August, 1948 at station KIXL (in which he was an investor), and it can be heard here. (By permission of the great Dallas DJ and broadcasting archivist, George Gimarc.) I LOVE THIS! Thank you, George!

UPDATE: I wrote this post in 2014, and at the time I could find no information about this Dallas Blandings house outside contemporary newspaper archives. Which is the only reason I took some small amount of credit for the house showing up in a Preston Hollow-centric mural in 2015 at the then-new Trader Joe’s at Walnut Hill and Central. I took the photo below in 2015, but, sadly, this tribute to Mr. Blandings and his Dallas dream house is no more. Last time I stopped in, it had been painted over. But here it lives on!

Trader Joe’s, Walnut Hill, Dallas (photo by Paula Bosse, 2015)

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February 27, 2014

Braniff Hangar, Love Field — 1940s

by Paula Bosse

Overnight maintenance. Beautiful sign.

Photo caption:

Night maintenance at the Braniff hangar, main entrance on Roanoke Drive at Dallas Love Field, early 1940s.

Planes being serviced include a DC-2 and DC-3.

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February 26, 2014

Not Every ‘Good Luck Trailer Park’ Story Has a Happy Ending — 1964

chimp_fwst_012864 Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jan. 28, 1964

by Paula Bosse

“Entertainer, Wife, Chimp Found Dead.” THAT is a headline.

Had I not known that the (ironically named) Good Luck Trailer Park on W. Commerce had been a favorite with visiting circus folk, I might have been a little more surprised by the weird circumstances reported in this article. As it was, I was only mildly surprised.

(I kind of think the chimp did it….)

***

Sources & Notes

Hats off to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram‘s headline writer. The story ran in the Star-Telegram on Jan. 28, 1964.

The victims — Harold Allen Ray and his wife Nadine (and unnamed monkey) — were later determined to have died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Buster Raye” (stage name of Harold Ray) had been a comedian and master of ceremonies who seems to have played a lot of burlesque joints/strip clubs as the between-stripper entertainment. He was billed as “The Mighty Mite of Mirth.” In a Feb. 24, 1948 review of his act, The Bryan Eagle wrote:

Buster Raye, diminutive master of ceremonies, stole the show with a clever line of chatter punctuated with juggling, acrobatics, songs, imitations. His jokes were well handled with none of the vulgarity common to many floor shows.

I’m not sure where the monkey fits in.

buster-raye_corpus_042948 Corpus Christi Caller-Times, April 29, 1948

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Category: HOF

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