Postcards | Flashback : Dallas

May 13, 2014

Theatre Row — A Stunning Elm Street at Night

Elm Street, looking east… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Damn you, suburban theaters and television, for killing this! (Hang in there, Majestic!)

Favorite thing gleaned from the postcard above? That Dallas had a newsreel-only theater — the Telenews. (See the original, somewhat pedestrian, daytime photograph which was transformed by all sorts of dazzling magic in order to turn it into that striking postcard, here.)

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All images are larger when clicked — some MUCH larger!

8 Comments

May 7, 2014

A Painterly View of Commerce Street

by Paula Bosse

I could be WAY off, but this MIGHT be approximately Commerce and Poydras, looking … east? For present-day reference, it’s about where the McDonald’s is on Commerce. Possibly. Click it to make it larger. Misinformation is likely.

1 Comment

April 25, 2014

The Republic National Bank Building: Miles of Aluminum, Gold Leaf, and a Rocket

republic-national-bank_beacon_front

by Paula Bosse

THIS is another great idealized image of a great building, The Republic National Bank Building, built in 1954. The blurb on the back of this postcard reads:

40 stories, cost 25 million dollars, the world’s tallest building faced in aluminum and glass.The mighty half-billion candle-power beacon atop the 150-foot spire is visible up to 120 miles.

This building was built to be the tallest building in Dallas — to dwarf the rival Mercantile (by a whole 53 feet!). Which it did for a while — it boasted of being the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Until … the Southland Life building came along a few short years later and knocked it off its pedestal (although, dammit, it was the “WORLD’S TALLEST BUILDING FACED IN ALUMINUM AND GLASS”!). For years, the powers-that-be seemed overly concerned with the “tallest” building thing and engaged in architectural pissing contests for years.

But forget the exterior. INSIDE. Lordy. Legendary bank president Fred Florence went all out, with Life magazine saying the lavish interior reflected Florence’s belief that a bank’s design and appointments should be “an outward showing of solvency.” This included generous helpings of gold leaf, inlaid teak, and endless marble imported from Italy and Peru (“nearly as long as a football field”). One wonders if Florence muttered something about “Rosebud” on his deathbed. Of its forty-one teller’s cages, two were — for some reason — reserved exclusively for women. There was a full-time gardener on staff. And, of course, there were “gold curtains in the executive washrooms.” There was “all-season air-conditioning.” There was a motor bank in the basement. And, if they couldn’t have the tallest building in town, they were damn sure going to have the fastest elevators in the elevator-using world. And they did.

And then there was that rocket. I love that rocket. Sixty years later, it’s still one of the most recognizable buildings on the skyline.

The missed-by-my-mother’s-generation Pulley Bone diner is in the foreground (click for larger image).

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An absolutely fantastic collection of photographs apparently shot by Life magazine to accompany the article from their Feb. 28, 1955 article (linked below) but not used (and, seriously, check them out) are on an unassuming message board. Scroll down a little ways and you’ll see 13 large images of the interior and exterior — see them here. (UPDATE: These photos seem to have disappeared. I’ll keep the link in hopes that user “Dallas boi” will repost!)

Scroll through the 4-page spread “Dazzler for Dallas: Its New Bank is Huge, Handsome and Full of Gold” in Life magazine (Feb. 28, 1955) here.

And here are a couple of readers’ responses to the story, which appeared in a later issue (Mrs. Ward Derhammer is not amused):

republic-national-bank_life_032155

Republic National Bank Building info from the Republic Center website can be found here, from Wikipedia here, and from the Dallas Public Library here.

All postcard images (except the first one) are larger when clicked.

10 Comments

April 22, 2014

Back When Preston Royal Was “Exotic” and Had Its Very Own Elephant

safari-preston-royal-back

by Paula Bosse

Dallas had a restaurant like this?! Yes, it did. (EDIT: It has been brought to my attention in the comments that the image above shows the *Houston* location. But I have been assured that the Dallas location had its very own elephant standing guard outside — so I will not have to ignominiously change the title of this post!)

The Safari Steak House was in the Preston Royal Shopping Center at the northeast corner of Preston & Royal (in the space now occupied by the venerable Royal China restaurant). The decor shown in the postcard above is something else — someone put their whole heart and soul into that, from the elephant and, um, elephant wrangler (“mahout“?) out front, to the ornate wood carving and the somewhat… busy murals inside. And the uniformed staff is pretty impressive, too.

Here are photos of the DALLAS Safari, taken in 1961 by Squire Haskins (photos from the UTA Libraries, Special Collections — click the links below the photos for full descriptions and large images). (Thanks, Tom Bowen, for sharing these links in the comments.)

via UTA Libraries, Special Collections

via UTA Libraries, Special Collections

Guy T. Jones opened the Safari in mid 1956 (I think the Houston location was opened later — it was open by at least 1959). I could find almost no early advertising for the place — perhaps Jones blew his advertising budget on elephants and murals. At this point, the shopping center was basically still under construction — the eastern-edge building (home of the Safari) opened about a year after the larger northern-edge building. There used to be a gap between the two buildings, which can be seen in the photo immediately above and can (sort of) be seen in the 1955 ad below, which shows a model of what the finished shopping center would look like.

Ad detail, March 1955

In 1974, Royal China (which is a fantastic place, by the way) took over the space.

I really wish I’d seen that elephant, which — according to the comment below — “was highly visible and well lit at night.” I certainly hope so!

From the cover of the menu:

safari-matchbook-a

safari-matchbook

safari-matchbook_story

safari-preston-royal_menu-1969

Below, the steak menu. One could choose between the “Maharajah (Man’s) Size” and the “Maharanee (Ladies’) Size.” Or get the kebabs of skewered beef “deliciously seasoned with Safari Sauce — A Treat.”

One of the stars of the restaurant was Iqbal “Ike” Singh Sekhon, who started working as the restaurant’s host while studying for his Master’s degree at SMU. He left a few years later to run the fabulous La Tunisia.

safari_dmn_062756-photo

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Sources & Notes

Edit (Sept. 2022): Wow. This post had a bunch of problems! All I can say is that this was one of my very earliest posts. I was so enamored of that elephant that I made a couple of very glaring errors.

First off, the original title of this post was “Back When Preston Royal Village Was ‘Exotic’ and Had Its Very Own Elephant.” The Safari Steak House was in the Preston Royal Shopping Center, located on the northeast corner of Preston and Royal; the Preston Royal Village shopping center, is on the northwest corner. I’ve (ignominiously) changed the title, but… yikes.

And, as mentioned in the first paragraph, the postcard at the top shows the Houston location, not the Dallas location. Incidentally, the Houston building is still there — it can be seen in a 2011 Google Street View capture here.

The two photos by Squire Haskins (linked below the images) are from the Squire Haskins Photography Inc. Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections (thanks, Tom!). They are dated 1961, one year before a major fire at the restaurant. They reopened the following month, with what sounds like quite an update in decor. I’m not sure when the “gap” between the two shopping center buildings was filled in, but that would have been a good time to expand.

35 Comments

April 20, 2014

The Lighthouse Church That Warned of Sin’s Penalty with a Beam of Blue Mercury Vapor Shot Into the Skies Above Oak Cliff — 1941

Still standing in Oak Cliff… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Sometimes an image just grips you. That’s what happened when I saw this postcard featuring The Gospel Lighthouse Church. The building was so odd-looking and cool. Who designed it? Where had it been? And what was that thing on top of it? I did a bit of research on the church and found out that it was organized in Dallas in 1940 by Pentecostal preacher J.C. Hibbard and his wife Nell, who was also a preacher. The two had been preaching at the Oak Cliff Assembly of God Church until J.C.’s divorce from his first wife (and subsequent second marriage to Nell) became such a point of controversy that the two felt compelled to leave (or were asked to leave) the Assemblies of God, and they formed their own church.

And that was the Gospel Lighthouse Church, located in the 1900 block of S. Ewing (at Georgia) in Oak Cliff. While their first church was being built, they held services in a large circus tent in the parking lot. The congregation helped with the physical labor of the construction, and progress on the building continued non-stop, 24 hours a day. In January of 1941, the church was completed, and an article appeared in The Dallas Morning News soon after with the grabber of a headline, “Lighthouse Church Warns Oak Cliff of Sin’s Penalty.” Sadly, the article has no byline, which is a shame, because I’d love to know who wrote the piece, because he or she pulled out all the purple-prose stops. The introduction is fantastically over-the-top:

A towering forty-foot lighthouse 300 miles from the sea was blinking out its warning signals across the dry land of South Ewing Sunday. At the front of a neat new white stone church house at 1914 South Ewing, near Louisiana, the white stone lighthouse reared far above the other buildings. Eventually, its big circular light tower will shoot a bluish mercury-vapor beam through the night to guide shaken mariners adrift on the sea of sin. Its semi-fog horns will broadcast a soft carillon of sacred music. This is the Gospel Lighthouse, built by a preacher with a new idea of church architecture and a dream of a denomination all his own. (DMN, Feb. 10, 1949)

gospel-lighthouse_first

Wow. A “bluish mercury-vapor beam” shooting through the Oak Cliff skies! (The full article is linked below.)

By 1948, J.C. Hibbard had become so popular (largely as a result of his daily radio sermons) that ground was broken on a larger church, designed by J.C. himself. It was right next to the first church. And it was pretty elaborate.

gospel_lighthouse_bw

Yeah, the lighthouse part of it looks a little cheesy, but with a name like “Gospel Lighthouse Church” you kind of have to have it.

The auditorium and its mezzanine.

The nursery, with elaborate murals.

The lounge. Like the first church, this one had a nursery with a lounge — a “crying room” for mothers to tend to crying children without having to miss a single moment of the service. The crying was contained behind sound-proof glass while the sermon was piped in through speakers. The church had a lot of other amenities, but these were the only ones I’ve found deemed worthy enough to put on postcards.

I wondered if the church still stood, so I drove over to Oak Cliff yesterday and, amazingly, both churches are still there, and they are beautiful! (The original caretaker’s house is still there, too.) I’m not sure what religious group has possession of the buildings at the moment, but they are to be commended for maintaining the structures and the grounds — the 1900 block of S. Ewing really stands out from its fairly ragged surrounding neighborhood. Below are photos I took on April 19, 2014. (Click pictures for larger images.)

Above, the first church — “a modern concrete and steel building, overlaid with white Austin stone” — which was built with help from the congregation in 1941. The beam of “bluish mercury-vapor” emanated (somehow) from the squat lighthouse above the foyer.

And, below, the later church, next door. I think the “mercury-vapor” was replaced by neon. But I could be wrong. Does either beacon light up anymore?

Aside from the “lighthouse,” the most distinctive feature of this building is those rounded walls. So beautiful!

The building is actually pretty impressive to see up close. Next time you’re in the neighborhood, check it out!

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Sources & Notes

Postcards from the Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection on Flickr, here.

Period black-and-white photos are from a page detailing the history of the Gospel Lighthouse Church, here. A biography of Rev. Hibbard from the same site can be found here.

Wander around the block on Google Street View, here.

Stumbled across this ad in the 1957 Dallas directory:

And I found this ad in, of all places, the 1967 Carter High School yearbook:

I also found this rather hair-raising ad for a 1967 Christmas-season production — an ad which somehow contains no exclamation marks:

Dec. 8, 1967

47 Comments

April 17, 2014

George Dahl’s Titche-Goettinger Building

by Paula Bosse

Such a beautiful building! Such a beautiful font!

George Dahl designed the original building (on the left) in the late-1920s, and Thomas, Jameson & Merrill designed the expansion (on the right) in the early ’50s.

Ad from the 1929 yearbook of Sunset High School

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Read about the building here.

Everything you could want to know about Titche-Goettinger/Titche’s is here.

UNT owns the building at 1900 Elm now, and it’s installed windows in that cool solid wall where the store’s name used to be. Check out photos of key renovations and read why they were made here.

More on the Titche’s building (including news on its expansion in 1952 and an architect’s drawing) can be found in the Flashback Dallas post “Main Street — ca. 1942,” here. See the expanded building here.

Click for larger image!

4 Comments

April 15, 2014

The Hyperbolic Paraboloids of the Prairie

The future is NOW! (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

In amongst things the things I’ve haphazardly collected (and I use the term loosely) over the years is this postcard. The image looks familiar to me, as if I remember actually seeing it — but I think that might just be because I’ve looked at this postcard so long. The first thing that popped into my head when I saw it was “turnpike,” but until I read up on the history of local highways (my days are fun-filled!), I wasn’t entirely sure where the turnpike had been other than “the other side of downtown, toward Fort Worth.” Did I ever see this sign and attendant weird looming structures when I was a child? Unless it was still up in the ’70s, I probably didn’t. So what is it?

Here’s the text from the back:

Concrete wings
THREE HYPERBOLIC PARABOLOIDS
GREAT SOUTHWEST INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT
Midway between Dallas and Fort Worth
“Located on U.S. 80, these hyperbolic paraboloids stand as insignia of the vast Great Southwest Industrial District in the center of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. This thin shell ‘concrete umbrella’ construction form was pioneered in the Untied States by Great Southwest Corporation, developer of a 5500-acre planned industrial district.”

It was somewhere around Arlington and Grand Prairie, back when it was still a vast, undeveloped area being planned in the mid-1950s by Angus Wynne who would, a few years later, bring us Six Flags Over Texas. (US Hwy 80 no longer runs west of Dallas — that stretch is now, I think, Hwy 180 — it was shoved off its Great American Interstate Highway pedestal by the DFW Turnpike and the arrival of what is now Interstate 30.)

1961 (Texas Highways photo by Willis Albarado)

But … “hyperbolic paraboloids”? Those things are so cool. The “hyperbolic paraboloid” was developed by Mexico-based Spanish engineer-architect Felix Candela who worked in the Dallas area with the great architect O’Neil Ford (on, specifically, the Great Southwest Industrial District and the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Building). Candela is pretty interesting — look him up. Without Candela’s paraboloids and his contributions to engineering and architecture, Santiago Calatrava probably wouldn’t be doing the sort of thing that he’s doing.

Here’s another view of (other) paraboloids out on the Texas prairie. They’re like elegant, curved, inverted parasols. Kind of. Made from thin shells of concrete. (One source identified these paraboloids as being part of the Great Southwestern Industrial District and another source as being from the Texas Instruments campus. (See 1958 TI ad below.) Either way, it’s Felix Candela, all the way.)

paraboloid_texas-instruments

I’m still trying to figure out if I ever saw that fantastic sign and those three silent, looming paraboloids. It’s all pretty cool-looking, and it must have been an unexpected sight in the middle of what was, then, basically nothing.

Speaking of Candela and Calatrava, here’s a photo of the two together:

calatrava-candela

And here’s another paraboloid-y structure that stands out in the DFW area — you might have seen it:

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Sources & Notes

Photo of Calatrava and Candela from the blog An Engineer’s Aspect, here.

Photo of the Calatrava bridge from Pinterest, here.

A good overview of Felix Candela’s work, with photos and a video, is on the Columbia University website, here.

The Great Southwest Industrial District (Arlington and Grand Prairie) still exists, and their website has a history page which explains its creation and development by Angus Wynne, here.

Lastly, who could resist reading up on just what the heck a “hyperbolic paraboloid” is (warning: math) — Wikipedia’s on it, here.

A 1958 Texas Instruments ad wants you to know that “hyperbolic paraboloids form roof-ceiling” (click to see larger image):

1958

UPDATE: Thanks to comments below, I’m happy to present another photo of the paraboloids, this one from the cover of the 1960 Arlington High School yearbook, complete with Shetland pony! Click the image below to see a larger image of the photo inset. (Thanks to Brad McCorkle for alerting me to the photo — it was taken by his father, Lynn McCorkle, intrepid student photographer!)

ANOTHER UPDATE, from the comments: this still-standing building at 10830 Preston Road (Preston Royal Shopping Center) was one of many that utilized hyperbolic paraboloids in its design. The American Savings Association building (designed by Brock & Mabrey of Corpus Christi, with Braden & Jones of Dallas as associated architects) opened in March, 1966.

15 Comments

April 14, 2014

A Colorful Elm Street — 1920s

by Paula Bosse

A bustling Elm St. — looking west from Akard — in “color,” in the early ’20s. I love this. You can practically walk down the street and window-shop.

Click for very large image.

April 4, 2014

“If You Don’t Come to Dallas, the Laugh Will Be On You!”

by Paula Bosse

“Hee! Haw! Hee! Haw!” Sa-LUTE!

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Click to get the donkey bigger, y’all.

March 28, 2014

Joe Yee Cafe: The Best Chop Suey in Town

Chop suey *and* famous chicken house…

by Paula Bosse

I came across the above image and was enthralled. I’ve never heard of the Joe Yee Cafe, but this (granted) idealized picture is wonderful. The postcards above and below were from the early 1950s, and if you are familiar with the generally run-down neighborhood around Columbia and Fitzhugh these days, you may well shed a tear that something this charming and picturesque has been gone for many, many years.

I love the surprising color scheme of the restaurant’s interior — those fabulous purples and greens! (The colors are a bit unexpected because they so loudly clash with the bold tomato red of the exterior.)

I did a little research to see what I could find out about Joe Yee’s Chinese restaurant. Seems that Mr. Yee’s cafe was in business by the 1930s, downtown, on Main Street near Field. It advertised steadily over the years, and its ads proudly proclaimed that the restaurant served “the best Chinese food you ever tasted” and was “completely air-conditioned.” Several newspaper accounts (particularly the society columns) mentioned it as a popular place for young people to grab a bite before and after dances at nearby downtown hotels. Business must have been pretty good for the place to have lasted so long at such a primo location. The cafe moved to the Columbia Street location in 1950 where it remained in business until at least late 1956 when a major fire struck.

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1938-joe-yee_dmn_112538 1938

1943

1953

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Sources & Notes

Top two early-’50s postcards are from the great Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection on Flickr, here.

In old photos of downtown Dallas one often sees “Chop Suey” signs along the streets. I’d love to know more about these restaurants in general, and about Chinese and Chinese-Americans in Dallas in the first half of the 20th century, if anyone can point me to a good source.

If background on Chop Suey is needed, might I point you to to the Wikipedia entry here, or the Snopes entry here.

2 Comments

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