Leisure | Flashback : Dallas

March 24, 2014

Leaving Dallas on the Katy Flyer — ca. 1914

by Paula Bosse

Who doesn’t love kitschy novelty photos? These “Leaving Dallas on the Katy Flyer” snapshots don’t disappoint with their cartoony backdrops — like something you’d see along a seaside boardwalk.

The people above are not identified, but, below, it’s a bunch of Order of Railroad Telegraphers union bigwigs. They probably had a wild time in Dallas. One or two of them look like they might be nursing a hangover.

And just where was the point of departure from Big D for these Katy Flyer travelers? From the beautiful MKT passenger depot, formerly holding down the rails at Ross and Market.

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Sources & Notes

Top “real photo postcard” is from the J. L. Patton Collection, Dallas Historical Society.

Second photo was found on a postcard website.

Third photo is from eBay.

“O.R.T. General Committee” photo from — what else? — an issue of The Railroad Telegrapher (Feb. 1914).

Photo of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas depot is another real photo postcard, found on eBay.

See another Katy Flyer post — “M-K-T Railroad’s ‘Katy Flyer Route’ — 1902” — here.

2 Comments

March 21, 2014

Peruna, via Neiman-Marcus, a la Andy Warhol — 1965

“Great galloping Perunas … it’s a mechanical horse!”

by Paula Bosse

You’re a parent of comfortable financial standing who graduated from SMU. What do you get the future Mustangs in your life? You get them a mechanical Peruna!

Great galloping Perunas … it’s a mechanical horse!

The most amazing just-pretend horse in all the world.

He canters, turns left, turns right, all with just a flick of the reins. Peruna’s coat is silky dyed sheepskin as is his flowing all white mane and tail. He sports a cowhide saddle and bridle. Of sturdy stock, polyester and fiberglass built on a steel frame, Peruna holds up to 700 pounds. Stands 39″ high, 35″ long. An import corralled only at N-M. 150.00

Mail orders to Dallas. Add 7.00 shipping charges.

Neiman-Marcus
Dallas • Houston • Fort Worth

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Sources & Notes

I’ve had this ad for years and have no idea where I found it. I used it back in 2012 in an old advertising blog I had, so I’ll use myself as a source.

In 1965, the price of this SMU-specific toy was $150, the equivalent in 2014 money is about $1,150.

Photos of the original Peruna, the Shetland pony mascot for SMU, can be seen here.

1 Comment

March 20, 2014

Garrett Park Aburst in Spring Flowers

by Paula Bosse

Garrett Park (at Munger and Bryan) was established in 1915. The postcard above shows it filled with leafy trees and bursting with brightly colored flowers. There is playground equipment at the left and, in the background, St. Mary’s College. The park is still there — just south of Ross Ave., past the lowest bit of Lowest Greenville — but the George Kessler-designed charm is almost entirely gone. The trees are sparser, and those flower beds? Below, a modern-day aerial view (click pictures to see larger images). Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Google Earth

But back to more luxuriantly landscaped times. Before it became a city park, the land was once part of the sprawling campus of St. Mary’s College, a prestigious boarding school that prepared girls for college, run by the Episcopal Church since the 1880s. The school was on the far, far, FAR eastern edge of Dallas, and in the early days, the isolated area was so dominated by the school that it was referred to by everyone as “College Hill.” Below, a photo of St. Mary’s taken around 1908 — the land which later became Garrett Park was behind the school. (Note the tower of the school below which is seen in the postcard above. Also, note the tower of the next-door St. Matthew’s Cathedral — it is still standing at the corner of Ross and Henderson.)

St. Mary’s College, circa 1908

In September, 1914, St. Mary’s sold the adjoining five-and-a-half-acre parcel of land to the City of Dallas for $30,000 for use as a park.

Dallas Morning News, Sept. 17, 1914

The park was officially named in honor of Bishop Alexander C. Garrett in February of 1915.

Below, a “before” photo showing “Garrett Park at Time of Purchase” (1914):

And descriptions of the new park from a 1914-1915 Park Board publication:

1915

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Sources & Notes

Top postcard is from the wilds of the internet.

Source of circa-1908 photo of St. Mary’s College is unknown.

Text and “before” photo of Garrett Park is from the Report for the Year 1914-15 of the Park Board of the City of Dallas; a scanned copy is available at the Portal to Texas History, here.

Map of Kessler’s plan of the park is from Jay Firsching’s article in the Spring, 2003 issue of Legacies; the Garrett Park passage begins on p. 12, here.

To get an idea of the size of the St. Mary campus and Garrett Park in 1922, the Sanborn map from that year is here.

See the location of Garrett Park on a current Google map, here.

Click pictures for larger images.

(This post was updated with additional text and new images on March 23, 2018.)

March 19, 2014

Celery Cola: “It Picks You Up!” — 1909

celery-cola_logo_1906

by Paula Bosse

When you think of Dallas and soft drinks, you probably think Dr Pepper. But back in 1909, Dallas was the main office for the Western division for the Birmingham, Alabama fizzy drink Celery Cola (containing, one presumes, delicious celery-flavored syrup). Their offices were in the somewhat low-rent stretch of Exposition while rival Coca Cola was snugly housed at the cushy southeast corner of N. Akard and Ross.

Only a couple of weeks after an official state charter was granted to local aspiring soda tycoons W. A. Massie, E. O. Massie, and J. B. Green to start officially producing the elixir in Dallas, this ad — a bit on the defensive side — appeared in the Dallas Morning News (click to see larger image):

DMN, Feb. 28, 1909

Not so much an ad as testimony. Ads are usually more like this:

As it turns out, Celery Cola ceased production in 1910 after repeated findings of the presence of cocaine and large amounts of caffeine by the Pure Food and Drug Administration. Let’s hope Messrs. Massie, Massie, and Green bounced back from their ill-advised investment. The owner of the Celery Cola Company certainly bounced back — he continued to create soft drinks such as — no kidding — “Koke” and “Dope.” Dallas is better off with Dr Pepper. The only whispered allegation that’s dogged them is prune juice — and that stuff is 100% legal.

Check out the related Flashback Dallas post “‘No Mice, No Flies, No Caffeine, No Cocaine’ — 1911.”

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Sources & Notes

Top ad from a Celery Cola site here.

Third ad, with the word “its” misspelled (*sigh*) from the comments section of a Shorpy post here.

Best overview on the history of Celery Cola and its creator, James Mayfield, is here.

My favorite part of this story was reading the long list of Dallas-area “illegal” soft drinks (and other oft-tampered-with foodstuffs) in J. S. Abbott’s First Annual Report of the Dairy and Food Commissioner of Texas (Austin, 1908). The soft drink list begins on p. 46 after an interesting prologue here. Celery Cola was not alone! (And, if I’m reading this correctly, Messrs. Massie, Massie, and Green were fully aware of what was going on, having provided the food cops with cocaine-laced samples several months before they bought into the company.)

March 18, 2014

George Dahl’s Sleek Downtown Library — 1955

1DPL_cover-sm

by Paula Bosse

This little 31-page booklet was issued to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Dallas Public Library. The library was built on the site of the old (beautiful!) Carnegie Library and was vacated when the current library (the J. Erik Jonssen Central Library) opened on Young St. in 1982. Unbelievably, the building has remained empty for over 30 years.

This is the only downtown building I have very distinct memories of from childhood. My mother took us to the library often, and I LOVED that place. I loved the building, the space, the books, the adventure of being downtown — I loved everything but that creepy sculpture of the kid standing in the hands that hung on the outside of the building!

This great library was designed by the legendary (and prolific!) Dallas architect, George Dahl. He moved easily from the streamlined grandeur of the Art Deco buildings of Fair Park to the sleek mid-century-modern-cool of this wonderful downtown library.

I know there are fans of this sculpture (“Youth in the Hands of God” by Marshall Fredericks), but I’m afraid I am not one of them. I loved art as a child (in fact, I can remember checking out framed art reproductions from this very library), but, as I said, even as a kid, I strongly disliked that creepy sculpture. The kid was fine, it was those giant disembodied hands. When the library moved to its current location in 1982, this sculpture was left behind to languish for years inside the empty building. It was eventually sold, and the boy and the hands are now resting comfortably in retirement, somewhere in Michigan.

There was a huge controversy about the Harry Bertoia sculptural screen seen above, hanging over the circulation desk. (I LOVED this piece as a kid!) The mayor — R. L. Thornton — HATED it, and the brouhaha-loving newspapers launched themselves into the fray by running apoplectic editorials which, of course, only fanned the flames of outrage. After the “scandal” died down, the art was eventually given the okay to stay, but not before a lot of people made a lot of noise about how the city of Dallas had wasted the $8,500 it had spent on the commission. Unlike the discarded hands sculpture, the screen was moved to the new library, where it remains today.

This is how I remember the library. Lots of space, cool furniture, and flooded with light.

I LOVE this photo!

A detail of the front cover artwork, by Texas artist E. M. “Buck” Schiwetz. I love the driver in the cowboy hat (he must have been awfully small or that car must have been awfully big to accommodate that hat). The energetic frisson of downtown Dallas in the Mad Men era is dampened a bit by those damn hands on the building that seemed to follow you everywhere you went!

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Sources & Notes

All images from the booklet Five Years Forward: The Dallas Public Library, 1955-1960, compiled and written by Lillian Moore Bradshaw and Marvin Stone. Drawings by E. M. (Buck) Schiwetz. Photographs by C. D. Bayne. (Dallas: Carl Hertzog for Friends of the Dallas Public Library, 1961). (Photos from the archives of the Dallas Public Library.)

More on the history and construction of the Old Dallas Central Library (as well as tidbits about the ridiculous controversy regarding the commissioned art) is here.

Even MORE on the artwork scandals (the hands, the hands, the HANDS!) as well as photos of the beautiful Carnegie Library that was razed to build the 1955 library can be found here.

And just because it’s weird, here’s a postcard showing an early, possibly even creepier depiction of the “hands” sculpture (if those are the “hands of God”…). I guess they wanted to get a postcard out before the sculpture was finished and installed.

I’ve posted one further image from this booklet — a drawing of the 1961 Dallas skyline by E. M. “Buck” Schiwetz — here.

UPDATE — Dec., 2017: The Dallas Morning News has moved its operations to the long-vacant library, insuring this wonderful building’s continued existence for many more years! More here.

Click pictures for larger images (some are MUCH larger — click twice!).

18 Comments

March 17, 2014

Tipperary Beer from the Dallas Brewery: “Insist Upon Having It”

tipperary-beer 1908

By Paula Bosse

I’m pretty sure there’s no real Irish connection here — other than the name — but how could I pass this up on St. Patrick’s Day!

tipperary-beer_dmn_071806a tipperary-beer_dmn_071806b Dallas Morning News, July 18, 1906

dallas-brewery_tipperary_dmn_090107 DMN, Sept. 1, 1907

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Sources & Notes

Top ad addressing the Elks’ conventioneers who were visiting Dallas in 1908 is from an Elks’ historical site, here.

1 Comment

March 16, 2014

When Coco Chanel Came to Dallas — 1957

Stanley Marcus and Coco Chanel

by Paula Bosse

In September of 1957 — way back when that much-missed hyphen was still in “Neiman-Marcus” — Stanley Marcus invited Coco Chanel to Dallas to accept the Neiman Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion. Mlle. Chanel had never been to Texas, but her visit here was a meaningful one. Following a 15-year retirement, her re-emergence as a designer in the early 1950s was met with mostly derision by the French press. The American response, on the other hand, was very different. It was because of the enthusiastic reception that her work received from American retailers (such as the even-then legendary Neiman Marcus department store) that she had been able to bounce back and, once again, be considered a force in the fashion world. When she was invited to Dallas to receive the “Oscar” of the fashion industry, Mlle. Chanel was happy to accept.

In the photo above, Coco is seen trying on hats at the downtown Neiman’s store as Mr. Stanley stands by beaming. On her Dallas visit she was also treated to a ranch barbecue (!) where she was photographed watching both a square dance (!!) and a … oh god … Chanel-themed bovine fashion show (!!!). Mlle. Chanel seemed to love the cows-in-ropes-of-pearls runway show, but she was not a fan of the barbecue and beans — she (one hopes discreetly) dumped the contents of her plate onto the ground under the table … right onto the shoes of dining companion Elizabeth Arden (whose shoes may have been ruined, but who had a truly great story to tell for the rest of her life).

From all reports, everyone seemed to enjoy (and no doubt profit) from the successful visit. Karl Lagerfeld, the current creative director of Chanel, recently brought Chanel back to Dallas (both figuratively and literally) with the house’s important Métiers d’Art fashion show which was held at Fair Park in December, 2013. The following day, Lagerfeld was presented with the Neiman Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion — just as Coco Chanel had been, 56 years earlier. And the haute-couture circle-pin of life keeps on rolling.

n-m_chanel_ad_dmn_090957

n-m_chanel_telegram

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Sources & Notes

Top photo by Shel Hershorn for the AP. From the Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

N-M ad from 1957 (portion of a larger ad).

Chanel’s thank-you telegram to Marcus, from the collection of Stanley Marcus’ Papers at the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University.

Entertaining AP article about Chanel and Dallas, then and now (with photos of Stanley Marcus duded-up in an outfit you’d never see an actual cowboy in), can be found here. (Are those butterflies?!)

More photos of Mlle. Chanel in Dallas (along with text of a DMN article on the visit) can be found here.

Even more photos (bovine fashion show…) and a really great post from SMU’s “Off the Shelf” blog is here.

Video of the 2013 Chanel runway extravaganza (Métiers d’Art), held in Fair Park’s hay-stewn Centennial Hall, can be watched here. A shorter video with a few cursory shots of the Dallas skyline and Fair Park can be seen here.

For more on the first French Fortnight, see my post “Neiman-Marcus Brings France to Big D — 1957,” here.

3 Comments

March 14, 2014

Olsen-Stelzer Cowboy Boot Saleslady — 1939

Portrait with boots…

by Paula Bosse

Above, Dallas resident Imogene Cartlidge is seen at a shoe retailers’ convention in San Antonio in 1939. Cartlidge was an employee of the Olsen-Stelzer boot company in Henrietta, Texas, and she was said to be “the only woman boot salesman on record.” I’m a big fan of cowboy boots of this period, and I have to say that I am ashamed that I was unaware of the famous Olsen-Stelzer company, which lasted from 1900 until the 1980s. The company is back in business again, led by Tom Cartlidge, whose parents began selling the boots in 1938 — Imogene is his mother. I wish them all the best of luck, because the world needs as many great-looking cowboy boots as it can get!

olsen-stelzer_dmn_120146

“The West begins at Titche’s”? First I’m hearing of this. Who knew? Nice ad, though.

olsen-stelzer_dmn_120146det

olsen-stelzer_dmn_103055

olsen-stelzer_1941

Best of all is this absolutely fantastic video from 1956 about the company:

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Sources & Notes

Photo of Imogene Cartlidge is from the San Antonio Light Photograph Collection, University of Texas San Antonio Libraries Special Collections, Institute of Texan Cultures.

Titche’s ad from 1946.

Bridges Shoe Store ad from 1955. (Bridges seems to have been the only place in Dallas where the boots were regularly sold — or at least regularly advertised. And you could get them ONLY IN OAK CLIFF!) (I hear the West begins at Oak Cliff….)

The video can be found on the home page of the Olsen-Stelzer website here.

The last image is the lid of an Olsen-Stelzer boot box, which belongs to my aunt — she keeps Christmas ornaments in it. (Sadly, no sign of the boots!)

The history of the company (and, again, that great video) can be found here.

7 Comments

March 10, 2014

My Birthdays at Kirby’s: Filet Mignon for Everyone!

kirbys-birthday

by Paula Bosse

I grew up in the Lower Greenville area, and since we had a nice steakhouse just a couple of blocks away, that’s where we always went for family birthdays and special occasions: Kirby’s. I had forgotten about the birthday cards they sent out until my mother came across one in a recent move which was addressed to “Miss Paula Bosse.” Other than receiving actual mail, the thing that made these cards really exciting for a child was the inclusion of a dime. I always thought of it as a little birthday treat, but my mother suggested it was more of a subtle reminder to the parents to spend that dime on a call for reservations.

I loved that place. It was very dark. My brother and I always had the same thing: a non-alcoholic, super-sweet Shirley Temple from the bar, a salad with big chunks of roquefort in the salad dressing, a baked potato, and, oh my god, a filet mignon. I was mesmerized by the bacon wrapped around the steak. And the little wooden marker that showed how the meat was cooked. It was a nice, friendly neighborhood steakhouse. It was loud and happy. You could hear the steaks sizzling on the grill. It was always a treat to go to Kirby’s. And the place smelled GREAT! Even out on the sidewalk.

I was sad when they tore the building down, and even though there is now a chain of restaurants with the name “Kirby’s” — they even built a new one a couple of blocks down from the original location — there’s no way it could ever be the same.

Looking around for the history of the original “Kirby’s Charcoal Steaks,” I was surprised to discover that the man who owned Kirby’s — B. J. Kirby — was the son of the man who founded the Pig Stand chain of drive-ins. The Pig Stand started in Dallas, and it was the first drive-in restaurant EVER. They had the first carhops. The first onion rings. The first Texas toast. The Kirby’s steakhouse location — 3715 Greenville — had actually been a Pig Stand! B. J. Kirby had grown up working at his father’s restaurants, and when his father died, he sold all the Pig Stands except for the Greenville Avenue location (i.e. Pig Stand No. 4). In 1954 he turned the pig-sandwich-serving drive-in into a nice sit-down steakhouse which remained popular until the restaurant closed in 1987 when Mr. Kirby retired.

Watch Ch. 5 news footage of B. J. Kirby and the auction of the restaurant fixtures at UNT’s Portal to Texas History site, here.

I could really go for a bacon-wrapped filet mignon right about now. And one of those Shirley Temples would even hit the spot.

kirbys_1958

kirbys_color

kirbys_1951

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Sources & Notes

“Something to Crow About!” card from the author’s collection.

Color photo of the Kirby’s sign is a screenshot from the Channel 5 news coverage of the auction of the Kirby’s fixtures, which aired April 14, 1987, viewable here; from the KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection, UNT Libraries, via the Portal to Texas History.

First ad from 1958; bottom ad from 1951.

Watch the 14-minute documentary “Carhops,” in which B. J. Kirby remembers life working as a kid for his father, here (also interviewed are other drive-in Dallas icons, J. D. Sivils and Jack Keller).

An entertaining history of the Pig Stand No. 4 and its transformation into Kirby’s Charcoal Steaks can be found here.

3 Comments

March 7, 2014

Booker T. Washington Marching Band — 1937

by Paula Bosse

Marching band. Everyone’s favorite class in high school. Band director A. S. Jackson is at the right.

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Sources & Notes

From the J. L. Patton Collection, Dallas Historical Society.

Category: Leisure

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