Travel | Flashback : Dallas

February 24, 2014

Motel Skyline / Skyline Motel — “The Motel of Distinction” (1947)

by Paula Bosse

THIS is a great, great-looking motel. I only hope it looked half as sleek in real life. It was, rather surprisingly, designed in 1947 by the architect George Marble who was known for his large Tudor-revival homes in the pricier areas of Dallas (particularly Highland Park and Lakewood), so this is a major divergence in style. 1947 seems a little late for something this Deco-looking, but, no matter — this is just a fantastic building.

The “Motel Skyline” (or “Skyline Motel” as it was being referred to in ads not long after it opened in September, 1947) was located at 6833 Harry Hines, near West Mockingbird, just past Love Field. It’s not a great neighborhood these days, but perhaps it was better 60-some-odd years ago, when Harry Hines was the route that the old Hwy. 77 followed. The 30-unit “motor hotel” was built at a cost of $250,000 — it boasted year-round air conditioning and “mattresses of fiberglass.”

I don’t know how long the place lasted — perhaps until the mid- or late-’60s, when advertising petered out and by which time the probably no-longer-so-sleek motel seems to have started catering to customers paying by the week and by the month. It might not have gotten as seedy as I fear it might have, as I saw only a couple of fairly run-of-the-mill appearances on the police blotter (cash stolen from a sleeping customer and a likely suicide in one of the rooms). Still, I shudder to think of that once-beautiful building ending its days cheek-by-jowl with modern-day Harry Hines.

It’s nice to know Dallas once had this wonderful building, if only for a little while. If anyone has photographs of the actual building, I’d love to see them, even though I know I would probably be disappointed.

1962 ad

***

Check out the kind of architectural design that George N. Marble is actually known for (residential, palatial), here.

Second postcard from the absolutely fantastic Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection on Flickr, here.

Matchbook from Flicker, here.

Click postcards for larger images. It’s worth it.

1 Comment

February 11, 2014

Delta Air Lines’ First Passenger Flight — 1929

by Paula Bosse

Delta Air Lines has had a longer — and more important — association with Dallas than you might think. On June 17, 1929, Delta made its first-ever passenger flight, from Dallas to Jackson, Mississippi via Shreveport and Monroe, Louisiana. According to the Love Field website, “Early flights operated from a passenger terminal near Bachman Lake, which later served as Southwest Airlines’ first headquarters building.” On that first flight, the five passengers sat in wicker chairs and could roll down windows (!) for needed ventilation. The flight took five hours. One of the first ads, from the Delta Flight Museum page, looked like this:

Delta passenger service ad ca. September 1929.

Forty-some-odd years later, the ads — and Dallas — got a bit more sophisticated.

delta_dallas_fur

delta_dallas_fredric-sweney_playing-cards Artist: Fredric Sweney

And we can’t leave out Cowtown!

delta_fort-worth

UPDATE, June 20, 2017: This almost-three-year-old post got a TON of hits yesterday, and I couldn’t figure out why. Eventually, though, I tracked it down: it had to do with yesterday’s Final Jeopardy question (or is it “answer”?):

delta_jeopardy_061917

Nice to see that Jeopardy is incorporating Dallas history into the show!

***

Top travel poster — showing Fort Worth in the distance, I guess? — by Jack Laycox.

For a really well-researched article by Timothy Harper describing that first flight, click here (the Dallas bit is contained in the last seven paragraphs).

1 Comment

February 8, 2014

Ted Hinton’s Motor Lodge — From Bonnie & Clyde to Motel Heliport

“7 miles from Downtown Dallas” — choppers welcome

by Paula Bosse

What does a man who ambushed and killed Bonnie and Clyde do once he’s retired from law enforcement? He opens a motor lodge, of course!

I was initially drawn to this image because of an unexplained lifelong fascination with Howard Johnson’s restaurants (I think I was only ever in one — the one on Mockingbird at Central, where my father introduced me to the inexplicable root beer float). But the interesting thing about this postcard is not the HoJo’s, it’s the motel next door, Hinton’s Motor Lodge, an establishment that was in business from 1955 to 1970, in Irving, very near to where Texas Stadium would be built in 1971 (Loop 12 at Hwy. 183). Why would a motor lodge be interesting? Because the owner was Ted Hinton (1904-1977), the former Dallas County Deputy Sheriff who was one of the six men who tracked down, ambushed, and killed Bonnie and Clyde in 1934. (Hinton was recruited for the posse because he would be able to identify both of them: he had known Clyde Barrow growing up, and he had apparently had a crush on Bonnie Parker in the days when she was working as a waitress and he was working for the post office.)

After killing two of the most notorious celebrity outlaws of all-time, it must have been hard to know where to turn next. He retired from the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department in 1941 and, as he was a pilot, he trained flyers for the US Army Air Corps during WWII. The fact that Hinton was a pilot MUST explain the inclusion of a “heliport” (!) in the list of motel amenities, alongside Beauty Rest mattresses, a swimming pool, and a playground for the kids.

I’m sure that, on occasion, Hinton ate next door at Howard Johnson’s. But I bet none of the other patrons had any idea that the guy sipping coffee in the next booth was one of the men who gunned down Bonnie and Clyde in a hail of gunfire that even Sam Peckinpah might have considered “a bit much.”

hintons-motor-lodge_back

“Dallas” magazine, June 1954 (via Reddit)

***

Sources & Notes

An interesting short video about Ted Hinton’s connections to Bonnie and Clyde in his youth is recounted here by Hinton’s son “Boots.”

And a newsreel featuring film footage of the aftermath of the ambush — and apparently shot by Hinton himself with a 16mm movie camera loaned to him by a Dallas Times Herald photographer — can be seen here.

9 Comments

February 4, 2014

M-K-T Railroad’s “Katy Flyer Route” — 1902

by Paula Bosse

Ah, Texas rail travel in the corset-and-carpet-bag days, from a 1902 issue of Dallas’ Southern Mercury newspaper. Sign me up.

***

Sources & Notes

Color images from a 1900 MKT timetable, offered a while back on eBay, here.

An entertaining history of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (with lots of wonderful photos) can be found here.

A history of the railroads in Dallas can be found here.

And the Handbook of Texas entry for the M-K-T (known familiarly as the “Katy” railroad) can be found here.

See another post featuring the Katy Flyer — “Leaving Dallas on the Katy Flyer — ca. 1914” — here.

Click pictures to see larger images.

7 Comments

Category: Travel

Share this:

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this: