Neighborhoods | Flashback : Dallas

February 4, 2018

Happy 4th Anniversary, Flashback Dallas!

tx-centennial_stamp_cook-coll_degolyer_SMU

by Paula Bosse

This weekend marks the fourth anniversary of this blog. It’s hard to believe, but, completely coincidentally, this is my 1,000th post! That’s a lotta Dallas. (Some might argue that’s too MUCH Dallas….) There are now just over 9,000 Flashback Dallas followers across various social media platforms, and it’s always nice to know there are others out there who share my interest in Dallas history. Thank you to all who read, follow, share, and comment. It wouldn’t be as much fun if I were just typing for myself.

Thank you! And now, Year 5!

–Paula

***

Sources & Notes

“Texas Centennial Exposition Stamp” from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; more information on this image can be found here.

12 Comments

January 31, 2018

Main Street Looking East — 1920s

East from the 1200 block of Main (photo courtesy Erik Swanson)

by Paula Bosse

This great photo (sent in by reader Erik Swanson) shows Main Street around 1925. The white building seen in the lower right is Hurst Bros., a men’s clothing shop, which was at the southeast corner of Main and Field (1300-1304 Main). It was a little confusing to me at first because it looks like there is a street behind it (to the south), which would have been Commerce, but then the Magnolia Building and the Adolphus would all be out of place. But what appears to be a street was just a wide alleyway/passage (seen on the 1921 Sanborn map here — Main east of Akard can be seen on the Sanborn map here).

The very tall building is the Magnolia, at Commerce and Akard (it opened in 1922 — Pegasus wasn’t added until 1934); to the right, across Akard, is the Adolphus Hotel and the Adolphus Annex. The tall building to the left of the Magnolia is the Southwestern Life Building (southeast corner Main and Akard, demolished in 1972, now a small open plaza area). The 4-story building at the southwest corner of Main and Akard is the Andrews Building. The white building in the center is Hurst Bros. (southeast corner Main and Field), and across Main can be seen the sign for the men’s clothing shop Benson-Semans.

Hurst Bros. was gone by 1929 when it became Hoover-Lehman, another clothing store, and Benson-Semans appears to have vacated that space around 1926, helping to date the photo between 1922 and 1926.

The Hurst brothers, Melvin K. Hurst and Edgar S. Hurst (along with their father, Alfred K. Hurst) began their men’s clothing business around 1912 and moved into the building seen in this photo in 1915 (it was renovated by prominent Dallas architect H. A. Overbeck, whose still-standing courts building and jail was built at about the same time). The business was dissolved in 1929, and its stock, fixtures, and lease were acquired by a longtime employee who, with a partner, remodeled the store and reopened it as the Hoover-Lehman Co. (A present-day Google Street View of this southeast corner of Main and Field can be seen here.)

Detail from top photo, ca. 1925 (click for larger image)

Ad from Nov., 1914

Late 1920s

Sept., 1929

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo sent in by Erik Swanson, used by permission. The photo may have been taken by his grandfather, F. V. Swanson, an optometrist (see the post “Thompson & Swanson: ‘The Oldest Exclusive Optical House in Dallas,” here). Thanks for the great photo, Erik! (Update: Sadly, local music favorite Erik Swanson died on Feb. 16, 2021 at the age of 57 — he had been suffering from ALS. RIP, Erik. And thanks for the great music.)

All images are larger when clicked.

3 Comments

January 25, 2018

Thompson & Swanson: “The Oldest Exclusive Optical House In Dallas”

Don’t blink… (1914 ad, courtesy Erik Swanson)

by Paula Bosse

Dr. Alfred F. Thompson (1862-1942) and Dr. Frank V. Swanson (1885-1949) opened their “manufacturing opticians” practice, Thompson & Swanson, in 1911. In addition to examining and treating patients, they also ground lenses and manufactured their own glasses, something which I gather was somewhat unusual in 1911 for such a small practice.

They first set up shop on Elm Street, and their ads — generally eyeball-themed — were always attention-grabbers: not only did they stare at you from newspaper pages, they also seemed to follow you around the room.

1911 ad

They soon moved to the Sumpter Building, in late 1912 (ad at top), directly across from the brand new Praetorian Building. By February of 1916 they’d hit the big-time and were actually in the Praetorian Building, Dallas’ tallest building and its most impressive address. Not only were they in the building, they were at street-level, which guaranteed that practically everyone who spent time downtown was familiar with Thompson & Swanson, if only because they passed the Praetorian Building. The ad below, featuring the building, is fantastic, in a weird-fraternal-order kind of way. (The ad at the top is also kind of weird — you can practically hear the spooky theremin.) (Click ads to see larger images.)

1923 ad (courtesy Erik Swanson)

Thompson & Swanson’s business history:

(courtesy Erik Swanson)

Similar ad, but aimed at the Texas Centennial visitor. “Good glasses if you need them, good advice if you don’t.”

June, 1936

The successful partnership of Thompson and Swanson lasted into the early 1940s. After Dr. Thompson’s death in 1942, Dr. Swanson continued at the same address as “Swanson & Son,” a practice with his son, Dr. F. V. Swanson, Jr.

***

Sources & Notes

The top ad, the ad with the Praetorian Building, and the “85 Years’ Experience in Optometry” ads were very kindly sent to me by Erik Swanson (grandson of Dr. Swanson); they are used with permission. I love old ads, especially ones that feature Dallas buildings. Regarding the location of his grandfather’s business in the Praetorian Building, Erik wrote: “Little did he know there would one day be a giant eyeball at the location where he had his optician shop.” Ha! Now when I see that giant eyeball I’ll think of Thompson & Swanson (and hear that spooky theremin).

I was doubly happy to exchange emails with Erik because I’ve been a fan of his Western Swing bands for many years. His current band is Shoot Low Sheriff (listen to them here), but I first became a fan when I heard his former band, Cowboys & Indians. Thanks for the ads, Erik!

UPDATE: Sadly, Erik Swanson died on Feb. 16, 2021 at the age of 57. He had been suffering from ALS. RIP, Erik. Thank you for the hours of entertainment your music provided me and thousands of others.

1 Comment

January 20, 2018

“A Glimpse of Dallas” — ca. 1909

Commerce Street, looking west from St. Paul…

by Paula Bosse

This very attractive postcard shows a growing downtown Dallas, looking west from Commerce and St. Paul, photographed by Charles E. Arnold from the YMCA building (which once sat in the block now occupied by the Statler). The Wilson Building can be seen at the top right, the Praetorian Building (then the tallest building in the city) is to its left, and the Post Office and Federal Building is in the center. The photo was probably taken in 1909 or 1910 (the Praetorian was completed in 1908 and the Adolphus Hotel (not seen in this postcard) was under construction in 1911.

The photo below, taken by Jno. J. Johnson from the exact same vantage point, shows the many changes to the skyline which happened over a very short span of time. The photo below is from about 1913.

via DeGolyer Library, SMU

I zoomed in on this photo in a previous post, “Horses, Carriages, Horseless Carriages: Commerce Street — 1913,” here.

The large “Barrett Cigar” sign seen in the top postcard image is also visible in a 1909 photo by Clogenson, below — it can be seen at the left, atop the Juanita Building on Main Street, opposite the Praetorian.

via DeGolyer Library, SMU

I zoomed in on this photo in the post “Parade Day — 1909,” here.

This was the beginning of staggering growth for Dallas, and new skyscrapers seemed to be going up every month.

***

Sources & Notes

I came across the postcard image a couple of years ago — I noted that the photographer was C. E. Arnold, but I did not note the source.

The two photos are from the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; further information on each photo can be found at the links posted immediately below the images.

All images are larger when clicked.

2 Comments

January 18, 2018

“All the Beer You Can Drink In an Hour For 60 Cents” — 1935

LOOK!

by Paula Bosse

Summertime in Big D. It’s hot. REAL hot. For some, the only way to properly slake that nagging thirst is with a tall frosty mug of beer. In the summer of 1935, the management of the Texan Hotel Drug Store (at the northeast corner of S. Houston and Jackson streets) decided to offer a headline-grabbing promotion: “ALL THE SCHEPPS BEER YOU CAN DRINK: 60¢ PER HOUR!” (60¢ in 1935 would be the equivalent of about $11.00 today.) Sounds like a bargain, right? Maybe. Depends on your constitution — it meant that you would have to consume over a gallon of beer in one hour to save any money. (Not a problem for some, I realize.)

This made national news — there’s even newsreel footage. The photo above is from an AP wire story, accompanied by this caption: “A Dallas beer parlor offered ‘all the beer you can drink’ for 60 cents an hour. There were plenty of takers, but the proprietor said none had beaten him. The drinker would have to consume more than nine pints an hour to show a profit.”

Scranton (PA) Republican, July 29, 1935

Speaking of newsreel footage, you can watch it here. As you can see, there certainly were a lot of very enthusiastic Dallas beer-drinkers doing their very best to surpass that gallon hurdle in order to feel they’d spent their money (and their hour) wisely.

Ah, back when you could guzzle beer in a drugstore. (Several drugstores that same year — including this one — were routinely getting busted for selling illicit whiskey.)

The promotion appears to have been a hit, both publicity-wise and beer-sales-wise. The Dallas proprietor said no drinker had managed to come out ahead, but in Fort Worth, men appear to be made of stronger stuff. Cafe operator Byron Gaines hadn’t anticipated Chauncey C. Brown, a hops-loving patron described as “heavy-set” and “amiable.”

Olean (NY) Times Herald, Aug. 12, 1935

According to United Press reports (this made national news, too), Brown took 58 minutes (rather than 53), but that “seven minutes of that time was spent in playing a slot machine.” It’s good to have hobbies.

***

Sources & Notes

AP photo, taken in July 1935, from the Press of Atlantic City site, here.

Newsreel footage is from Critical Past (and can be purchased), here.

The Texan Hotel Drug Store was located at 218 S. Houston St. (northeast corner of Houston and Jackson) — see what the corner looks like today, here.

1936 Dallas directory

And … Schepps Beer? I was familiar with Schepps dairies, but not a Schepps brewery. But, yes, the same Schepps family produced highly guzzleable beer. The Schepps Brewing Co. launched in 1933 and lasted into the early ’40s; their downtown brewery was located on Young Street, about where the current City Hall/Convention Center now stand. (Schepps Beer was founded by brothers Julius Schepps and George Schepps, sons of pioneer Dallas baker Joe Schepps, whose Schepps Bakery was a highly profitable business. Joe’s brother Nathan Schepps joined his brother in Dallas about 1912 and started his Schepps Dairy by following his brother’s bakery wagons with his dairy wagon and selling his products to his brother’s customers. So even though it’s not a DIRECT family link, it’s pretty close: Julius and George Schepps were the nephews of the founder of the very long-lived Schepps Dairy. ALSO, their sister, Rebecca Schepps, married Carl Metzger, son of another Dallas dairy titan, Jake Metzger. So the beer guys had close ties to two of the largest local dairies.)

Read a very entertaining interview with George Schepps in the September 1981 D Magazine article “Uncle George” by Connie Durham, here (scroll down for his memories of Schepps Beer).

Scheppps Xtra Light Lager (“light” meaning a light lager, not a beer low in calories) made a brief return to Dallas shelves in 1978 when the Julius Schepps Wholesale Liquor Co. brought it back; it was brewed at the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner and was sold in “shortnex” bottles (stubby non-longnecks). More can be found in the Dallas Morning News article “Dallas Firm Bottles Touch of Nostalgia” by Dennis Fulton (DMN, July 9, 1978).

(Click pictures and articles to see larger images.)

Nov. 1933

Aug. 1934

schepps-beer-bottle-cap

3 Comments

January 15, 2018

NAACP Southwest Conference in Dallas — 1950

Top delegates of the NAACP regional conference in Dallas, 1950

by Paula Bosse

The third annual NAACP Southwest Region Conference was held in Dallas, March 24-26, 1950. Above we see the top delegates (out of about 200 attendees), standing in front of the Salem Baptist Church, then located at 710 Bourbon in South Dallas. One of their main objectives was to increase NAACP membership in order to more effectively tackle issues of civil rights and social injustice.

The conference’s main speaker was special counsel to the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall. During the conference, he stated that, although there was slow and steady progress being made by African-Americans in American society, he did not expect to see racial segregation abolished in his lifetime. 17 years after this statement, Thurgood Marshall was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to serve as a justice on the United States Supreme Court.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 27, 1950

Below, the review of the conference that appeared in the April, 1950 issue of the NAACP magazine, The Crisis (click to see larger image).

The Crisis, April, 1950

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo from the June, 1950 issue of The Crisis, the magazine published by the NAACP. Many decades’ worth of scanned issues of the magazine are viewable via Google Books, here.

The Salem Baptist Church was, at the time of the photo above, located at 710 Bourbon in South Dallas. According to the church’s website, the church moved from that location in the early 1960s when the site was one of many purchased by the Texas Highway Department to be demolished for highway construction.

Click photo and news clippings for larger images.

January 9, 2018

The Cabana Motor Hotel of Dallas

“Elegant and luxurious…”

by Paula Bosse

The Cabaña Motor Hotel is remembered mostly for being where the Beatles stayed when they came to Dallas in 1964 and for being a hotel with high hopes but which fizzled out fairly quickly. …But mostly for being where the Beatles stayed. When the Cabaña opened in January, 1963 on Stemmons Freeway, it was a big deal. It was swanky and even had a very show-bizzy lounge. Celebrities stayed there. The Beatles stayed there.

The Dallas Cabaña was actually the third in a proposed chain of hotels, following locations in Atlanta and Palo Alto. It even had some Hollywood star-power attached to it: Doris Day’s then-husband Marty Melcher was an investor in the company (turned out it was Doris’ money, and she wasn’t thrilled that he was investing so much of her money in this chain of hotels).

It was fab for a while — but the high point really was John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Before the ’60s had ended, the place was shuttered and mired in litigation. Melcher had died and left Doris $500,000 in debt. Ownership changed hands several times over the years, and each time, more and more of its original hep luster was lost. The building has never really recovered. For a few years it was a rather bizarre site for a minimum-security jail! In recent months it was announced that it has been acquired by the company that has recently renovated the long-moribund Statler Hilton — so there’s hope! It needs a lot of work, but it might actually turn out to be cool again.

Under construction, by William Langley, via Dallas Public Library

From the air, by Squire Haskins, via UTA

From the ground, by Squire Haskins, via UTA

***

Sources & Notes

The postcard at the top is from the Texas History Collection, provided by Dallas Heritage Village to the Portal to Texas History, where I found it, here. I have to admit that I’ve never really been a fan of this building until I saw this postcard. It’s like a Dallas version of a subdued Vegas hotel.

Bottom two photos are from the Squire Haskins Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Special Collections — the aerial image has been cropped; more info on these photos can be found here and here.

For more history of the Cabaña (…whenever I hear reporters in historic footage pronouncing the “n” in “cabana” with that tilde, it’s a bit jarring…), read the informative article “Lost + Found: Cabana Motor Hotel” by Preservation Dallas Executive Director David Preziosi on the AIA Dallas website, here. It’s got some great photos.

27 Comments

January 7, 2018

The United States Coffee & Tea Co. — 1911

Coffee, coffee, everywhere, at Elm & Akard… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Above, a photo from a 1911 ad for the United States Coffee and Tea Company, importers and roasters. The text of the ad:

The above photograph shows a recent importation of the finest green coffees grown. Weight 40.000 pounds — just forty days supply.

A tril will convince you that our fresh Coffees are superior — Five delivery wagons covering the entire city each day insures prompt service.

UNITED STATES COFFEE AND TEA COMPANY

Corner Elm and Akard Streets – Phone Main 703

The company seems to have been founded about 1908 by George W. Wilson and a very young Henry Seeligson. (Click article to see a larger image.)

Greater Dallas Illustrated, 1908

According to a 1912 ad (which rather breathlessly promised: “WE ROAST COFFEE EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY”), the company was the “largest retail dealers in Coffee, Tea, Spices and Butter in the Southwest.”

1912

The photo at the top shows their building at the northeast corner of Elm and Akard; a few years later they moved down Elm to the northwest corner of Elm and Ervay, just a couple of doors east of the Palace Theater (you can see part of their building behind a photo of the Wilson Building here) — this location was once threatened by a fire which broke out in the bakery owned by Frank A. Carreud:

Dallas Morning News, July 3, 1922

There was a surprising amount of coffee-roasting going on in Dallas in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1922 the big boys were trying to organize a coffee spot market in Galveston, port to Brazilian coffee and West Indies spices.

DMN, Sept. 2, 1922

1922 Dallas directory

The company was bought by H. L. Hunt’s HLH Parade Co. in 1961; Hunt sold it to the Texas Wholesale Grocery Corp. in 1963 when it appears to have ceased operations under the U. S. Coffee and Tea name. Here’s a photo of a company van sometime before then:

And now I have an intense desire for a cup of coffee.

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo from an ad which appeared in a Terrell School yearbook.

Bottom photo from the City of Dallas Historic Preservation Flickr collection, here — the undated photo was taken by the city’s staff photographer.

Sources of other images/clippings as noted.

6 Comments

January 3, 2018

The Adolphus By Moonlight

Nighttime in Big D… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

When the beautiful Adolphus Hotel opened in 1912, it was the tallest building in Dallas — in other words, it was the building nearest to the moon.

Remarkably, it, the people, and the horses, looked just the same in the daylight!

Daytime in Big D…

“Postcard magic” is magic, indeed. It’s all about judicious addition and subtraction.

***

Sources & Notes

Both postcards were found lounging in forgotten corners of the internet. The cards were issued before 1914. Both are larger when clicked

December 21, 2017

Highland Park Village From Above

Plenty of parking, above & below ground… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

This bird’s-eye view of Highland Park Village is from an ad placed in the Highland Park High School yearbook by Flippen-Prather, who really wanted to stress how there was NO PARKING PROBLEM at this convenient “North Dallas” location, above ground and below ground. Don’t worry, Flippen-Prather had you covered.

1966 ad

Fifty years on from this ad, Highland Park Village is physically still recognizable, just expanded. The tenants, however, are now much more chi-chi.

Google, 2017

I’m not sure when the top photo was taken, but it appeared in the 1966 Highland Park High School yearbook. Here are the tenants of Highland Park Village in 1966 (click to see a larger image).

***

Sources & Notes

Ad for Highland Park Village/Flippen-Prather Stores, Inc. appeared in the 1966 Highland Park High School yearbook.

Color image from Google.

Listing of Highland Park Village businesses is from Polk’s Greater Dallas City Directory, 1966.

All images larger when clicked.

5 Comments

Category: Neighborhoods

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this: