by Paula Bosse
Main Street, looking east from the old courthouse, at Houston Street. 1875. Wow.
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Stereograph from the George A. McAfee collection, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; more info on this image can be found here.
Click to see larger image.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
The beautiful Southwestern Bell Telephone Company building, designed by Lang & Witchell in 1929.
From the book Dallas Landmarks:
Dallas’ first telephone exchange opened on June 1, 1881, with 40 subscribers. There were several competing telephone companies before 1925 when Southwestern Bell became the sole provider. The number of telephones in used quickly soared from 30,000 in 1922 to 200,000 in 1949.
The relatively few telephone subscribers at the time the building was going up might explain this folksy little notice about a “personal telephone directory” that the fine folks at Southwestern Bell have been working on night and day, just for you. Next time you’re in the neighborhood, why don’t you just drop right on in and pick one up? Set a spell. Take your shoes off. Y’hear?
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Postcard from the Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection on Flickr, here.
Quote from the book Dallas Landmarks, by Preservation Dallas and Dallas Heritage Village (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2008). p. 31.
Quaint little ol’ phone book ad, from, of all places, the Nov. 1928 issue of “The Stampede,” the school magazine published by and for the students of Sunset High School in Oak Cliff.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Nov. 22, 1963
by Paula Bosse
Sorry, Dr Pepper, but this might be the most unfortunate, unintended instance of product placement ever.
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AP photo, November 22, 1963.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
Such an incredible building, designed by architects Lang & Witchell in the zig-zag moderne/Art Deco style and built in 1931 to house the corporate offices of the Dallas Power & Light company. I wondered from that night scene whether the building was illuminated at night, and it was. From the city’s application to the National Register of Historic Places: “The building was spotlighted with revolving colors at night, emphasizing it as a downtown landmark; this was discontinued during the energy crisis in 1975.” Argh!
This is a building that is beautiful by night and beautiful by day.
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A detailed description of the architectural elements of the DP&L building is in a PDF containing the city’s application of several buildings to be considered for the National Register of Historic Places. The section on the DP&L building begins at page 68 and can be found here.
A photo of one of the portrait busts on the facade of the building is a nod to Thomas A. Edison, King of Electricity, and it can be seen here in an almost Hitchcockian cameo.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
L. Craddock ad, 1912
by Paula Bosse
L. Craddock, an Alabama native born in 1847, arrived in Dallas in 1875 and opened a liquor business at Main and Austin streets in a building built by the Odd Fellows. It was a success, becoming one of the largest such businesses in a young, thirsty city.
Feeling a flush of civic pride, Mr. Craddock branched out beyond the retail world of alcohol sales, and in the late 1870s he opened the city’s second theatrical “opera house,” conveniently housed on the second floor of his liquor emporium, above his saloon and retail business. The theater was immensely popular and hosted the important performers and lecturers of the day, until the much larger Dallas Opera House arrived on the scene and siphoned off Craddock’s audiences. He closed the second-floor theater in the mid-1880s (a space which, presumably, continued to be used as an IOOF meeting hall) but kept the business on the ground floor.
The first location, at Main & Austin, with theater on second floor (1880s)
In 1887 Craddock decided to change careers. He sold his company to Messrs. Swope and Mangold (more on them later) and retired from the liquor trade — if only temporarily. I’m not sure what prompted this somewhat unexpected decision (I’d like to think there was some juicy, illicit reason), but, for whatever reason, he decided to give real estate a whirl. Craddock was certainly a savvy wheeler-dealer and he probably did well buying and selling properties in booming Dallas, but (again, for whatever reason) he seems to have tired of real estate, and, by at least 1894 (if not sooner), he had returned to the whiskey trade and had built up an even more massive wholesale liquor business than before.
1907 (click for much larger image)
He had a new, larger building, this time on Elm, between N. Lamar and Griffin. In the company’s incessant barrage of advertising, he touted the company’s unequaled, unstoppable success as purveyors of the finest alcohol available. One ad even took on something of a hectoring, lecturing tone as it admonished the reader with this snappy tagline:
“We are the Largest Shippers of Whiskey to the Consumer in the South. Does it not seem Plain to you that the reason for this is that we sell the Best Goods for the Money.”
1906
Arrogant or just supremely confident, Craddock was rolling in the dough for many, many years. Until … disaster struck. Prohibition. With the inevitable apocalypse about to hit the alcoholic beverage industry, L. Craddock threw in the towel and retired. For good this time. I’m sure many a faithful L. Craddock & Co. customer stocked up on as much as they could hoard in the final weeks of the prices-way-WAY-higher-than-normal going-out-of-business sale.
Craddock retired to Colorado, but in 1922, he returned to present to the city a valuable ten-acre tract of land in the old Cedar Springs area — land he asked be used as a park. Craddock Park remains a part of the Dallas Parks system today.
Dallas Morning News, Dec. 3, 1922
It’s interesting to note that in every article about Mr. Craddock that appeared during and after Prohibition — such as the articles reporting his generous gift to the city — there was never any mention of what kind of business he had been in or how he had made his great fortune. Even in his obituary. He was always vaguely described as a “pioneer businessman.”
Speaking of his obituary (which, by the way, was the place I actually saw his first name finally revealed — it was Lemuel), L. Craddock — Dallas’ great retailer of beer, wine, and spirits — died on December 2, 1933. Three days before the repeal of Prohibition. THREE DAYS. O, cruel fate.
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ADDED: Interesting tidbit about a legal matter brought by Federal prosecutors. In 1914, Craddock was found guilty of “illicit liquor dealing” — shipping barrels of whiskey (labeled “floor sweep”) into the former Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Craddock wrote a check for the fine of $5,000 right there in the courtroom. The three men who actually did the deed were sentenced to a year and a day at Leavenworth. (I’m never sure how much faith to put in the Inflation Calculator, but according to said calculator, $5,000 in today’s money would be approaching $115,000. I think ol’ Lemuel was doing all right, money-wise. I’m guessing this “floor sweep” thing was not an isolated incident.)
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 19, 1914
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Top L. Craddock & Co. ad from 1912.
Photograph of first location, with theater, from Historic Dallas Theaters by Troy Sherrod (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2014).
Ad featuring rendering of second Craddock location at Elm & Poydras, signed Fishburn Co. Dallas, from 1906.
Photograph of L. Craddock from a Dallas Morning News interview in which he reminisces about the Craddock Opera House, published December 3, 1925. It’s an informative interview about early Dallas (like REALLY early Dallas) — the article can be read here.
Update: I’ve wondered if this building downtown is the Craddock building, cut down and uglified. The current address is 911 Elm (I assume that the addresses for that stretch of Elm changed when the cross-street configuration changed). The Dallas Central Appraisal District gives the construction date of that building as 1937, but the DCAD dates are frequently not accurate. I don’t know. It’s very similar (missing the third floor…) and in about the exact same spot. Looks like it to me. That poor 100-plus-year-old building needs some loving attention. Here is a Google street view from early 2014:
Most images in this post are larger when clicked.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Elm and Akard and familiar skyline…
by Paula Bosse
One of the top men’s clothiers, right there at Roos Corner. (Pegasus!)
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Looking west, 1964 (AP photo)
by Paula Bosse
I’m not really into the whole assassination thing, which may explain why I’ve never seen this 1964 Associated Press photo (with or without the labels). Despite the connections to “that dark day,” I think this is a really interesting view of the city, from an unusual vantage point.
Here’s another similar photo, from April 1964 — this one from United Press International. UPI’s caption:
DALLAS: Site of Memorial Park. The area outlined in white is the block where the John F. Kennedy Plaza will be created as a memorial to the late president. The outline traces buildings now on the site which will be removed on completion of the new county courthouse.
April 1964 (UPI Telephoto)
The original location for the memorial was in the block immediately to the east of the Records Building, not the Old Red Courthouse, where it eventually was placed. I’m not sure why the location changed, but by the time architect Philip Johnson, designer of the memorial, was on board, the site had moved one block south.
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The Purse & Co. sign seen at the right side of the top photo is still visible today — it’s probably the largest and most familiar ghost sign downtown. Here’s a picture that was linked to Google maps. (I think I prefer it as a ghost sign.)
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Top photo by Ferd Kaufman for the Associated Press, 1964.
Bottom UPI Telephoto found on eBay.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
The Dallas Telegraph College opened in 1889 and admitted both men and women as students (if not from the beginning, certainly by the early years of the new century).
1889 ad (click to see larger image)
In the 1904 photo below, you’ll see one lone woman in the group.
1904
Below, the text of a 1908 ad — published in a San Antonio newspaper in hopes of drawing students to Dallas from around the state — rather optimistically promised hard-working students the possibility of earning an “enormous” salary and maybe even becoming the head of a railroad!
The Dallas Telegraph College is a school of more than state reputation. Prof. L. C. Robinson is president, with J. E. Hyle as superintendent. As is well known, telegraphy is not only one of the pleasantest of studies, but offers a brilliant career to the man who ‘makes good.’ A great many railroad presidents started as operators. The men who have made good now head railroad systems at enormous salaries. What one man has done, another may do. The Dallas Telegraph College has been a chartered institution for fifty [sic — this should be “twenty”] years. Why not send for one of their beautiful catalogues?
1908 ad
1908, via DeGolyer Library, SMU
According to a 1912 article by Lewis N. Hale on Texas schools and colleges in Texas Magazine, the students learned to ply their trade by tapping (…as it were) into the actual railroad telegraph lines which, rather conveniently, ran right through their classrooms. A very murky photo from that Texas Magazine article is below.
The goal of students was to secure employment in a nice, well-appointed office, such as Dallas’ Western Union headquarters, shown below in 1914.
via Dallas Public Library
Next stop: an enormous salary!
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Top ad (“Learn Telegraphy”) from 1904. Second ad from 1889 (from the pages of the Dallas city directory). Third ad (with Guild Building address) from 1894.
Photo showing 1904 class from eBay.
1908 photo showing students standing in front of the building from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University; more info on this card is here.
Western Union office photograph — “[Western Union Telegraph Company interior main office – Trust building at 801 Main Street]” (1914) — is from the DPL Van Orden Western Union Telegraph collection of the Dallas Public Library Dallas History and Archives Division (Call Number PA2007-2/2).
An entertaining read on the history of telegraph service in Texas by Mike Cox can be found here.
The Handbook of Texas entry on telegraph service in Texas can be found here.
Absolutely EVERYTHING that you (and Ed McMahon) would ever want to know about the telegraph and telegraphy is here.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
Earl’s Continental Buffet Announces the Opening of
Dallas’ First Shuffleboard Parlor
Serving Buffet Lunches and Sandwiches in Our Taproom
Also Announcing the Opening of
Dallas’ Finest Chili Parlor and Barbecue Bar
Serving Straight Chili — Chili with Spaghetti –
Chili with Beans — Chili with Tamales
Open Evenings, 1515 Commerce
This place has EVERYTHING!
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
LADIES’ and GENTS’ CHILE PARLOR — 318 Main
I beg to call the attention of the public to the medicinal qualities of J. Delgado’s celebrated Chile con Carne. I can safely recommend it as a preventative of chills and fever, and sure cure for fresh colds. Chile is not only a wholesome food but is a blood purifier. Prepared for family orders. J. DELGADO, 318 Main.
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Chili-barking, nineteenth-century-style. From an 1893 issue of the Dallas Times Herald, which, at that time, appears to have been in need of a more careful typesetter.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 