Flashback : Dallas

Forever & always, Dallas’ most beautiful building (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I love the Wilson Building. Who doesn’t? Every time I realize it’s still standing, I’m actually kind of shocked. To find a 100-plus-year-old building still standing in Dallas is a rarity. If the wrecking ball ever strikes this building, there will definitely be hell to pay.

I’d never seen the above photo, which was published along with lovely art nouveau borders in the book Greater Dallas Illustrated, The Most Progressive Metropolis of the Southwest (1908). I’m fascinated by office buildings of the first half of the twentieth century that had business names painted on upper-floor windows. I always think of Sam Spade’s office.

I was really hoping to find at least ONE detective agency in the Wilson Building at that time, but steep rents and a choosy leasing agent were probably working against such downmarket enterprises setting up shop in such a grand palace. Below is the list of occupants in the building at about the time the top photo was taken. Aside from the Titche-Goettinger department store occupying the basement and first two floors, Dallas’ premier office building was home to several important local business concerns, lots of insurance companies and agents, some notable architects (Lang & Witchell, C.D. Hill, Overbeck & Willis), and a surprising number of osteopaths (including Edna B. Brown, one of only two women specifically mentioned by name). (Click directory page for larger image.)

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Photo of the Wilson Building from Greater Dallas Illustrated (Dallas: Friends of the Dallas Public Library, 1992 — originally published in Dallas in 1908). The Wilson Building is located on Main and Elm at Ervay.

It’s doubtful that it would fall victim to the wrecking ball, but the Wilson Building may not actually be protected from any possible future threat of demolition. For clarification, see the comment near the top of the comments section in this Dallas Morning News article on recent demolition in the same block, here.

Sam Spade image is a still from the 1941 Humphrey Bogart film The Maltese Falcon, based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel. (Poor Archer….)

Directory page from Worley’s 1909 city directory.

My previous post — “The Wilson Building Under Construction — 1902” — can be found here.

Click pictures for larger images.

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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Main Street looking west, toward a ghostly courthouse (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

These three photographs were taken by prominent Dallas photographer Clifton Church, probably in 1893 or 1894. The one at the top shows Main Street looking west, taken just east of Poydras. (The then-new courthouse at the end of the street appears to have been lightly fleshed out by the hand of a photo re-toucher, giving it a mirage-like quality.) The Trust Building, on the right, was at the northeast corner of Main & N. Austin; the Dexter insurance office was in the North Texas Building, at 221-223 Main (under the old numbering system), between N. Lamar and Poydras; and the Scruggs & Scruggs wholesale liquor business was at 237-239 Main, two doors east of the Poydras intersection. The present-day view from the same location can be seen on Google Street View, here.

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The photo below shows Elm Street looking east, taken just east of Akard. In the middle of the block on the left is Mayer’s Beer Garden & Saloon, at 361-363 Elm; the tall building behind it was the Guild Building at 369-371 Elm. Across the street, the tall building on the right is the Chilton Building. In the foreground at the right is the Dallas Business College at 342 Elm (which, in the 1892 city directory, showed to be where artist Frank Reaugh had studio space). The present-day view can be seen here.

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And, below, Commerce Street, looking east from about Poydras. At the bottom left is the L. J. Bartlett Oriental Livery and stables, at 237-241 Commerce; next to it is the St. George Hotel. In the distance, across the street, is the brand new Oriental Hotel at Commerce and Akard with its distinctive rounded topknot. In the middle of the block is the famed Padgitt Bros. Saddlery at 248-250 Commerce, and in the foreground is Ballard & Burnette at 240-242 Commerce, a company that sold “wholesale hats, caps, gloves, and umbrellas.” The present-day view is here

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Below is a handy-dandy visual showing the locations of the above photos on a present-day map. (The black line shows where Poydras used to be. It exists today only as an alley-like block-long stretch of asphalt that runs alongside the downtown McDonald’s.) Click for larger image.

Google Maps

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Photos by Clifton Church (1855-1943), from his book Dallas, Texas Through a Camera: A Collection of Half-Tone Engravings from Original Photographs (Dallas: J. M. Colville, Franklin Printing House, 1894). (Sadly, these images are a bit washed out. I’d love to see the original photographs — and I’d love to see a copy of the original book.)

Address information from city directories and Sanborn maps.

Click pictures for larger images.

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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.