Neighborhoods | Flashback : Dallas

August 8, 2014

Expo Park, Circa 1946: Dry Goods, Rooms to Let, Sheet Metal, and Head-In Parking

800 block of Exposition…

by Paula Bosse

Next time you stop by the Amsterdam Bar at 831 Exposition Avenue, whip out your phone and show this photo to your drinking buddies — this is what the street looked like two doors down, just after World War II. The two-story building at 827 Exposition was home to Lief Dry Goods and the Lief Hotel, and the single-story 825 Exposition was divided into McNeill’s Tin Shop and the Fair Way Cleaners & Laundry (it currently houses the Ochre House theater space). Today the neighborhood has lost much of its grittiness (and head-in parking), but the buildings are still recognizable almost 70 years later. Below, present-day 827 and 825 Exposition Avenue.

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Sources & Notes

Top photo from Jim Wheat’s Dallas County Texas Archives.

Bottom two images from Google Street View.

10 Comments

August 7, 2014

I-35E Looking South: A Landscape Blissfully Free of Cars and Strip Malls — 1964

I-35, pre-sprawl — photo by Squire Haskins (GIGANTIC when clicked)

by Paula Bosse

This is I-35. …I-35! I’m not sure what stretch of the interstate this is exactly, but I think we’re looking ~~north toward Denton~~ south from Denton. I might cry. No sprawl!

UPDATE: I’ve had several comments about this photo from all over El Internet, and it appears that this is I-35E in Denton, looking south(east) toward Lake Lewisville ~~(then Lake Dallas)~~. More specifically, this shows the I-35 / US-77 (Dallas Dr.) interchange, with part of the old Hwy. 77 visible at the bottom of the photo. It’s been pointed out that the water tower at the top right is at the Denton State School. I hope this is correct! If anyone else has any suggestions, please let me know! (To see a 1965 road map of this area, see here.)

Here’s how it looks these days (thanks, Bill P.).

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Another amazing aerial photograph by Squire Haskins, from the collection of the Denton Public Library (with an incorrect description!). Accessible on the Portal to Texas History, here.

Click picture for larger image. In fact, it’ll get so big that it might break whatever device you’re viewing this on; proceed with caution.

5 Comments

August 6, 2014

Lucy, Desi, Dallas — 1956

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and their loaner ‘copter from Bell Aircraft

by Paula Bosse

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz came to Dallas and Fort Worth in 1956 to promote their new movie, “Forever Darling.” Their arrival times were heavily publicized, and throngs of fans showed up to welcome them — in Dallas at Love Field, and in Fort Worth at the Western Hills Hotel. For those who might have missed their arrivals, they still had a chance to see the couple at one of the personal appearances scheduled at the theaters showing their movie (in Dallas at the Majestic on February 10th, and in Fort Worth at the Hollywood on the 11th). Crowds were large and enthusiastic, and everyone appears to have had a genuinely fun time, possibly even Lucy and Desi, whose relationship in those days was frequently a bit shaky.

Best of all was the tidbit about how the famous couple traveled from Dallas to Fort Worth: by helicopter.

Two television stars will be sailing around above Dallas skyscrapers Saturday. …Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz will catch a helicopter ride from atop the Statler Hilton for a trip to Fort Worth. City Council officially sanctioned the ride at its Monday meeting. (Dallas Morning News, Feb. 7, 1956)

They left from the helipad atop the Statler Hilton and touched down at the helipad at the Western Hills Hotel in Fort Worth (hotels are nothing without helipads). There was some sort of cordial relationship between the Arnazes and the people at Bell Aircraft, because they availed themselves of this brand new deluxe chopper in New York as well as in DFW. When their promotional duties were finished, Lucy and Desi left Cowtown for California as guests of the president of the Santa Fe Railway — in his private car. Because that’s how you travel if you’re Hollywood royalty.

Feb 8, 1956
*

lucy-desi_dmn_021156-caption DMN, Feb. 11, 1956

(Leon Craker, I bet you had a great story about this for years after this momentous meeting.)

In Fort Worth, Elston Brooks (whose amusing articles I’ve really enjoyed discovering these past few months), seemed underwhelmed and a little annoyed at the prospect of “lovable Lucy and spouse” invading the city (click articles to see larger images):

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Feb. 5, 1956
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Elson Brooks may not have been very excited, but when Lucy and Desi stepped out of that helicopter, the Fort Worth crowd went wild (click text for larger image):

lucy-desi_FWST_021256-photo

FWST, Feb. 12, 1956

And here they are back in Los Angeles, with Desi Jr., at the end of a busy promotional tour. Desi is proudly wearing the cowboy hat he’d been given in Fort Worth. And he looks damn good in it.

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Sources & Notes

Top photo of Lucy and Desi standing next to the 1956 Bell 47H-1 (“one of the world’s first executive helicopters”) is from the August 2012 issue of Vintage Aircraft Magazine; photo from Bell Aircraft. The article concerning this helicopter model is contained in a PDF here.

The bottom photo is from a Pinterest page, here.

UPDATE: I had originally identified the photo of Lucy and Desi with the train as having probably been taken in Fort Worth as they were about to depart for Hollywood, mainly because they’re wearing similar clothing from the FW appearance, but a rail historian noted that this photo was actually taken in California at the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal — he could tell because he recognized the part of the platform structure over their heads! (“I can name that song in TWO notes!”) The photo he directed me which shows the LAUPT platform (and, in fact, the same engine, two years earlier!), is here. They probably took the final photo for the Santa Fe company as thanks for providing them with transportation back home in the president’s private car. (Thanks, Skip!)

And because today is Lucille Ball’s birthday (which I know only because she shares a birthday with my aunt — happy birthday, Bettye Jo!), it seems like a good time to wheel out this strikingly beautiful portrait of Lucy, along with a wonderful photograph of her from about the same time (probably between 1928 and 1930).

4 Comments

August 5, 2014

William Lescaze’s Ultramodern Magnolia Lounge — 1936

by Paula Bosse

The sleekly cool Magnolia Lounge, designed by Swiss-born American architect William Lescaze for the Texas Centennial, is considered the first International-style building built in Texas, and though it feels perfectly at home in Art Deco Fair Park, it looks completely different and much more modern that the buildings around it. It was built by the Magnolia Petroleum Company as a place for visitors to the Centennial Exposition to relax and cool off (it boasted a 20-ton refrigeration plant). The Magnolia Company’s slogan for their building was “Be Our Guest and Rest at the Magnolia Lounge.” In other words, this was the most insistently fabulous rest stop ever built!

How did we GET this cool building? Two words: Stanley Marcus.

“Young retailer Stanley Marcus was dispatched to New York City by Dallas-based Magnolia Petroleum to find the most up-to-date architect of the United States for their Centennial pavilion. Marcus chose William Lescaze, who had just designed the first International-style skyscraper in the United States [the PSFS Building in Philadelphia, which opened in 1932].” (– Virginia Savage McAlester)

It was a popular oil company-branded “comfort station” for fair visitors until 1942 when the Magnolia Petroleum Co. (who had owned the building), gave title of the Magnolia Lounge to the State Fair, which used it for many years to house its general offices. In 1947, the space became Theatre ’47, Margo Jones’ legendary regional theater where, among other achievements, she produced plays of a young Tennessee Williams and introduced the innovation of theater-in-the-round. After Jones’ death in 1955, the theater carried on for a few years but eventually closed in 1959. After some difficult lean years for the building (during which demolition was considered!), it has been home to organizations such as the Friends of Fair Park, and it is now an active performance space again. And all is well with the world.

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Sources & Notes

Postcard of the Magnolia Lounge from the vast wilds of the internet. Click it. It’s huge.

The Virginia McAlester quote is from a Friends of Fair Park advertising section in the Oct. 1989 issue of Texas Monthly.

Photograph of Theatre ’56 from Historic Dallas Theatres by D. Troy Sherrod, from the collection of the Dallas Public Library. (The theater struggled to continue after the sudden death of Margo Jones in 1955, which I wrote about here.)

For more on the history of the Magnolia Lounge, see the official Fair Park home page here; also, check out the the City of Dallas page devoted to this building, here.

And for more on this cool building, particularly in connection with Margo Jones, see the page on the always informative Watermelon Kid site, here.

A lengthy description of the building can be found in the article “Daylight Movies of Texas Scenes To Reward Visitors to Magnolia’s Cool Lounge” (The Dallas Morning News, April 26, 1936).

The Wikipedia page on architect William Lescaze is here.

4 Comments

August 2, 2014

Send Your Kids to Prep School “Under the Shadow of SMU” — 1915

Powell University Training School, 1915

by Paula Bosse

Nathan Powell (1869-1963) was a former Methodist minister who opened his prep school, Powell University Training School, on thirty acres of open land, just across an unpaved road from SMU (which was still in the very early days of its construction). SMU and the Powell school shared more than just adjacent addresses — which they both rather idealistically touted as being “situated on high ground overlooking the university campus and the city” — they also opened on the same day, September 15, 1915.

The location and the opening date were not a coincidence, as Dr. Powell was one of the Methodist movers and shakers who originally promoted the idea of Dallas as the site for a new Methodist university. The following (perhaps exaggerated) sentence can be found in the (perhaps overly laudatory) profile of Powell in one of those ubiquitous late-19th, early-20th century “mug books,” A History of Texas and Texans (1916):

Beyond his activities as a minister and teacher, the most notable achievement in the life and career of Doctor Powell lies in the fact that he was the sole originator and promoter of the great Southern Methodist University at Dallas, which began its first year September 15, 1915.

Powell University Training School lasted for only about twelve years, until Powell’s rather sudden retirement in 1927 (the good reverend’s “retirement” might have been precipitated by numerous lawsuits and mounting debt). When the school closed, Dr. Powell and his family moved to Harlingen to — as his obituary states — “help organize the grapefruit growers of the Rio Grande Valley.” He operated a citrus nursery himself for a while until it was destroyed by a 1933 hurricane. Nathan Powell died in Harlingen in 1963 at the age of 94.

It’s always exciting to see old buildings still standing in Dallas, and, happily, this one is still around — and it still looks good. Fittingly, it’s currently home to an early-child development center. Next time you’re near the intersection of Binkley and Hillcrest, go take a look.

powell_tx-trade-rev-industrial-record_071515a *Both items from the Texas Trade Review & Industrial Record, July 15, 1915

SMU Times, Dec. 18, 1915 (click for larger image)

powell_school_smu-times_121815 SMU Times, Dec. 18, 1915

1915 (click to read text)

Below, after the school closed. Looking a little shaggy. I would have guessed the photo was from much earlier, but it’s dated 1931. Complete with horse.

1931, Brown Book, University Park Public Library

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Sources & Notes

Top image and bottom ad appeared in the very first edition of The Rotunda, SMU’s yearbook for their inaugural year, 1915-16.

More on Rev. Powell’s early life and involvement with the founding of Southern Methodist University can be read in A History of Texas and Texans by Frank W. Johnson (Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1916), here.

Information regarding Powell’s retirement in Harlingen is from “The Chronological History of Harlingen” by Norman Rozeff (circa 2009), in a PDF here.

Powell’s obituary can be found in The Dallas Morning News, Nov. 8, 1963: “Dr. Powell Dies; Helped Found SMU.”

Currently occupying 3412 Binkley is The Community School of the Park Cities. According to the history page of their website (here), the building has been operated as a school since at least the 1950s.

I’m not sure what the actual facts are concerning Nathan Powell’s role in the founding of SMU. There are very few results when searching the internet. Most newspaper articles connecting him with the university seem to have been generated by Powell himself. If Powell was as important in the history of SMU as he claimed to be, it’s surprising to see so little information on any connection. Was Powell’s assertion that he was the driving force behind the creation of SMU a blatant lie? Was it merely an exaggeration of the truth? Or was it accurate, but something happened to cause the university to distance itself from him? A collection of papers in the SMU archives (which I have not seen) seems to indicate that there were those in Methodist circles who disputed Powell’s claims, as Elijah L. Shettles took it upon himself to prove that Nathan Powell was the driving force behind the very existence of SMU. An overview of the collection — The Elijah L. Shettles Papers on the Founding of Southern Methodist University — can be found here.

(I’ve found an article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1910 that had Powell all but saying Fort Worth — not Dallas — would be the best choice for the university’s location. Read that article and see other photos of the school — and also read about the lawsuit against Powell (which had nothing to do with SMU) that took thirteen years to reach trial and ended in quite a hefty judgement, in a PDF here.)

See more of SMU’s first year in previous posts here and here.

15 Comments

July 31, 2014

Up North in Denton: “Famous School and College County”

Denton County Courthouse, 1928 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Okay, so it’s not Dallas, but who in Big D doesn’t love Little D? Besides, this is just too great a photo to keep to myself.

And in case you need to bone up on your 1928 Denton County stats for “Jeopardy” or something, look no further (click for larger image):

“Kindergarten to College Degree —
Board at home and be educated free.”

Free!

Might as well see where the photo of the courthouse was taken from: the Wright Opera House (now Recycled Books). Here it is, about 1900:

The Wright Opera House, built in 1899, shown here in 1900 (click for much larger image)

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The photo of the courthouse and the ad are both from, where else, the program for the 52nd Annual Convention of the State Firemen’s Association of Texas, held in Denton in June of 1928. If you’re into firefighting ephemera or old Denton photos, you might want to peruse it yourself: click here. (From the collection of the Denton Public Library.)

Photo of the Opera House from the article “Faded Echoes: A History of the Wright Opera House in Denton” by Clare Adkins, featured in the September, 1982 issue of Texas Historian, accessible through the Portal to Texas History, here.

Click pictures for larger images.

4 Comments

July 31, 2014

Interurban vs. Streetcar

Oh dear…

by Paula Bosse

I’m not sure what’s happened here, but it looks like the interurban has emerged victorious.

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Sources & Notes

I don’t know the original source of this photo, but I came across it on the Northern Texas Traction History Group on Facebook. The electric-powered interurban car is the big red one on the left; the puny (but cute) electric-powered green streetcar is on the right. The view here is looking north on Record, from just south of Young Street, inside what would one day be called “Communications Center”: the Dallas Morning News Building is on the left, and the not-yet-built WFAA studios will later be to the immediate right (east). The long-gone Hotel Jefferson is north of Ferris Park (the hotel was catty-corner from Union Station, across Houston Street). In the distance you can see the tippy-top of the Old Red Courthouse, just above the green streetcar. Also, those now-gone smokestacks that were such a fixture on the skyline are straight ahead.

5 Comments

July 31, 2014

“Speed With Safety” on the Crimson Limited — 1930

by Paula Bosse

A 1930 ad for the Crimson Limited deluxe interurbans (electrified railway trains) that ran between Dallas and Fort Worth, a couple of years before the company went into receivership, put out of business by the rise of automobile culture. Even though the writing was pretty much on the walls, the Northern Texas Traction Company fought hard to reverse the decline in ridership by introducing these fancy Crimson Limited cars:

The most notable of their moves was the introduction of the Crimson Limited in October of 1924. The Crimson Limited was the name given to the upgraded interurban service to Dallas because the cars were painted bright red. The trailer car saw the most extensive upgrades. The bench seats in the rear half of the car were removed and replaced with wicker chairs. The rear doors were converted to windows giving the car a ‘parlor car’ appearance. Additional upgrades were implemented in 1927. Although the public approved of the new more luxurious trains and more modern streetcars, they continued to abandon mass transit for the automobile. (–North Texas Historic Transportation, Inc.)

Wicker chairs? Pure LUXURY!

interurban-map

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Sources & Notes

The ad is from an old magazine I can’t cite because it’s stuck in a box in a closet somewhere.

The quote is from a page on the North Texas Historic Transportation site.

For more on this topic, check out the nice, meaty, image-filled post (which includes an ad touting the somewhat vague “Special Conveniences for Ladies”) on the Hometown by Handlebar blog, here. (Hometown by Handlebar is a really great Fort Worth history blog that might prove I was separated at birth from a twin sibling I knew nothing about!)

Not quite sure what an “interurban” is? Fret not. Wikipedia’s here to help, here.

2 Comments

July 25, 2014

Skate Date!

Skating at Fair Park…

by Paula Bosse

The Fair Grounds Skating Rink opened in the old Machinery Hall in 1906 at the height of the roller skating fad that was sweeping the nation. Over 1,000 people were “on the floor” on opening night, and the rink was an immediate hit with the city’s “roller-maniacs.” Though apparently very popular, it closed rather suddenly in 1907 when it was discovered that the concessionaires were selling more than cold drinks to patrons — they had also been operating a prostitution business right there on the (city-owned) premises.

It wasn’t until 1921 that the rink re-opened (managed by a man who may well have been one of the guys who operated the lucrative illicit side-business back in the aughts). It seems to have closed again for a while and then re-re-opened sometime in the ’30s, a time when business was steady and booming. But, sadly, the building burned down in 1942. BUT, a new, flashier rink was built right away, near (…next to? …in?) the Cotton Bowl (the ad below mentions the Automobile Building), and this one lasted a good long time, until at least 1957.

So, 1906-1957, give or take a few years — not a bad run for roller skating in Fair Park (…unless you count the bleacher bordello and the fiery conflagration). All skate!

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Sources & Notes

Top photo (of an attractive but unidentified couple) from eBay. Click it for a MUCH larger image (and check out the cool Fair Park Skating Rink logo to the right of the man’s head).

Postcard from the Watermelon Kid’s site, here. (It is also larger when clicked!)

Bottom image from eBay.

3 Comments

July 24, 2014

“The Riviera of the South” — On Harry Hines!

The paradise of Harry Hines awaits…

by Paula Bosse

The Tower Hotel Courts opened in the fall of 1946. Their address makes my had spin: at “The Circle” where highways 77, 183, 114, and Loop 12 intersect. “10108 Harry Hines” would have been easier to fit on the stationery, but mention of all those highways just made everything more exciting. (It also gave some indication to prospective guests of what would be awaiting them, such as constant traffic noise and the ever-present whiff of exhaust in the air. “You can’t say we didn’t warn you, madam.”)

The fancy motel was five speedy minutes away from Love Field, which seems handy, because if you had an hour or seven to kill before your flight, wouldn’t you want to spend it there in the fabulous-looking Bamboo Room? I would! (Even though I’m pretty sure that matchbook cover is a little more glamorous than the actual Bamboo Room.)

If you were going to stay for a day or two and not just a few drinks, there were all sorts of things waiting for you: two pools (one a very large children’s wading pool), a theater, a croquet court AND a shuffleboard court, “circulating ice water,” and … stand back … a 2-station radio in every room. Somewhere in amongst all of this was a 46-unit trailer park (“with individual bathrooms”).

It’s not hard to see why they called the Tower Hotel Courts “The Riviera of the South.”

tower-hotel_bw