Transportation | Flashback : Dallas

May 3, 2016

The Union Depot Hotel Building, Deep Ellum — 1898-1968

The old Union Depot Hotel, about 1909 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Above, we see the hotel known originally as the Union Depot Hotel, built in 1898 across from the very busy old Union Depot, at the intersection of two major rail lines: the Houston & Texas Central (the H&TC, which ran north-south) and the Texas & Pacific (the T&P, which ran east-west). The tracks crossed at the intersection of Central and Pacific — streets named after the two railroads — in the area east of downtown we now call Deep Ellum. The hotel was on the southwest corner of that intersection.

The large, two-story hotel (which also housed a popular cafe and bar) was built by William S. Skelton — more commonly known as Wiley Skelton — to cash in on the large number of travelers coming to Dallas via the bustling passenger depot right across the street. When it opened, it was charging a hefty two bucks a day (the equivalent of about $60.00 in today’s money) — a large-ish sum in 1899, but … location, location, location. This two-dollar-a-day rate to stay at Skelton’s hotel was the same as the base rate of Dallas’ ritziest, priciest hotels, The Windsor and The Oriental. How could Skelton’s “wrong side of the tracks” hotel charge similar rates as the city’s most elegant hotels? Convenience, convenience, convenience. The Union Depot Hotel could not have been more convenient to weary travelers unless it had been located inside the depot.

Houston Post, Jan. 25, 1899

Skelton was a popular and successful businessman (and noted saloon pugilist) who was known far and wide for his substantial physical bulk. He was a founding member of the city’s “fat men’s club” and was reported to be the heaviest man in the city. When he died suddenly at the age of 45 (probably not a huge surprise, as his obituary mentioned that his weight had, at one time, reached 438 pounds), his new hotel had been open only weeks (perhaps only days).

Dallas Morning News, Jan. 16, 1899

His unexpected death threw the running of the hotel into confusion. His brother (another famed “fighting fat man”) took over the business side of its operations and occasionally placed ads in the paper seeking a hard-to-find buyer.

1901 ad

DMN, Nov. 16, 1902

Eventually the hotel was sold, and it went through several owners and name changes over the years. Then, in 1916, a major catastrophe struck: brand new Union Station, which was waaaay on the other side of town, opened, consolidating passenger rail service to one depot, resulting in the shuttering of most of the city’s smaller depots. Location, location, location wasn’t such a great thing for the old Skelton hotel after this.

The hotel went through many changes over the years, but after the closing (and later razing) of the old Union Depot, it was on a general, inevitable, slide downward. By the time it was demolished in 1968 — when large swaths along Central Avenue were leveled to facilitate highway construction — the building was in disrepair and, apparently, long-vacant. It stood for 70 years.

Below is a photo taken from Elm Street in 1908 or 1909, when the hotel (seen at the top left) was owned by Charles S. Conerty and named the Conerty Hotel (you can see the name on two signs, but you have to really zoom in to make them out). Conerty, an Irishman who had previously run bars, owned the hotel very briefly. By May of 1909, plagued with legal troubles stemming from his being charged with selling liquor on a Sunday, Conerty sold the hotel (which he seems to have been running as a boarding house), stating in his classified ad that he was “leaving city.” (He did not leave the city.) In 1910, with a new owner, the hotel was once again known as the Union Depot Hotel.

Back to the photo. Across Central Avenue from the hotel is the old Union Depot, where there was always a lot going on. Let’s look at the photo a little more closely. (Click photos to see larger images.)

Just seven or eight years after this photo was taken, all that human traffic was gone.

In the fall of 1968, having been vacant for years and counting down its final hours, Dallas Morning News writer Doug Domeier wrote about the old run-down hotel which had long outlived the passenger depot it had been built to serve (see the article “Demolition Leveling Once-Noisy Deep Elm,” DMN, Oct. 19, 1968). Domeier’s entertaining article about those early days includes memories of Lizzie Mae Bass, who once worked in the hotel’s cafe as a waitress and remembers when “horses back[ed] away in fright when a locomotive pulled in at the lively intersection linking the Houston and Texas Central with the Texas & Pacific.”

And today? You’d never EVER suspect that that patch of empty land at the edge of Deep Ellum was ever occupied by one of the city’s busiest train depots.

So where was it? Get a good visual idea of how things were laid out in the Sanborn map from 1905, here. Below is a street map that shows where the hotel was (red star) and where the train depot was (blue star). These days? Depressing. See it here (the view is looking north from Elm — the hotel would have been under the overpass, the train station straight ahead).

1952 Mapsco

It’s interesting to note that during the heyday of the Union Depot, the west side of the block of Central Ave. which ran between Elm and Pacific was the only block in this area not filled with black-owned businesses or residences. When the depot shut down and white-owned businesses moved out, the block began to fill with popular African-American establishments. It’s also interesting (to me, anyway!) to realize that the Gypsy Tea Room of the 1930s was just a few steps to the left of the hotel in the top photo. It took me forever to try to figure out where the Gypsy Tea Room had been — I wrote about it here.

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Sources & Notes

Top photo is a detail of a larger photo, from the Squire Haskins Photography, Inc. Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries; it is accessible here. The same photograph is shown in full farther down the post — this copy is from the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, and it is accessible here. The quality of both photos makes it difficult to zoom in on them with much clarity, but both sites offer very large images to view.

As mentioned above, an entertaining Dallas Morning News article full of historical info about the area around the depot is highly recommended: “Demolition Leveling Once-Noisy Deep Elm” by Doug Domeier (DMN, Oct. 19, 1968). (I’m not sure why the hotel is referred to as the “Grand Central Station Hotel” throughout — just substitute “Union Depot Hotel” whenever you come across that incorrect name.) The article also has a few paragraphs about the Harlem Theater which was also about to be torn down as part of what Domeier described as the “brutal change” then affecting Deep Ellum.

See a great early-’20s photo of the hotel building (the Tip-Top Tailors moved in around 1922) in the book Deep Ellum: The Other Side of Dallas by Alan Govenar and Jay Brakefield, here (the view is from Pacific to the southwest).

A related Flashback Dallas post — “The Old Union Depot in East Dallas: 1897-1935” — can be read here.

All images larger when clicked.

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April 13, 2016

Radio Mobile Units — ca. 1940

What? You’ve never heard of KFAA? (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Check out these pre-war mobile units for radio stations WFAA and WBAP. The unit above actually had its own call letters — KFAA — and was licensed as a separate station. (That logo!) The caption, from a 1941 promotional booklet issued by stations WFAA (Dallas), WBAP (Fort Worth), and KGKO (Wichita Falls):

The WFAA Mobile Unit shown here is a complete short wave broadcasting station on wheels. The unit has its own call letters, KFAA, because it is a self-contained and separately licensed station. The amazing array of facilities contained in this one-and-one-half-ton truck includes a transmitter, generator, receiving equipment, public address system and pre–amplifiers. The transmitter tower on top of the truck can be raised to a height of 35 feet, making it possible to pick up the mobile unit’s signals for re-broadcast from a distance of 50 miles.

Here’s the WBAP/KGKO unit:

Fort Worth Star-Telegram Mobile Radio Unit – with Chief Engineer R. C. “Super” Stinson, left, and A. M. Woodford, production man, handling a remote or “nemo” pickup from Burnett Park, Fort Worth. The WBAP-KGKO Mobile Unit carries six short wave transmitters and receivers besides a power plant capable of generating electricity for a small town of 500 people. This unit “swam” through a recent flood in Brady, Texas, established communication from the stricken area and received the congratulations of the Texas Highway Patrol. It also played a star role in the Amarillo storm.

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Photos from the booklet WFAA, WBAP, KGKO Combined Family Album (Dallas-Fort Worth, 1941).

Why were arch-rivals WFAA (owned by The Dallas Morning News) and WBAP (owned by The Fort Worth Star-Telegram) co-publishing a promotional booklet? Because they shared the same transmitter and had an extremely odd broadcasting agreement. Read about it in my previous post “WFAA & WBAP’s Unusual Broadcasting Alliance,” here.

Click those photos!

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March 18, 2016

Commerce & Record Streets — 1946

Commerce St. looking east from Record (click for huge image)

by Paula Bosse

If it’s a photo of downtown in the ’40s, with people on the streets, retail storefronts, and streetcars, I’m going to love looking at it. Like this one. A lot of people might be hard-pressed to identify the location of this photograph, even if they were standing in the exact spot the photographer stood in. If you look at today’s view from the same vantage point (here), just about everything in the immediate foreground (west of the Pegasus-topped Magnolia Building) is gone — except for, most notably, the beautiful MKT Building at Commerce and Market, one of my favorite downtown buildings.

This is the intersection of Commerce and Record streets, when Record still extended from Elm to Jackson; the Old Red Courthouse was behind the photographer, to the left. Today, the Kennedy Memorial is at the left where the people are waiting for a streetcar; the George Allen Courts Building is across the street — at the right, in the block with the travel bureau; and the block containing the Willard and Davis Hat building — across Commerce from the Katy Building — is now a parking lot.

As with every photograph like this I see, I wish I could step into it and walk around the downtown Dallas of 1946. Maybe pop into Ma’s Cafe for a Dr Pepper before I hop on a streetcar and just ride around on it all day until someone kicks me off.

Below are a couple of magnified details (both are much larger when clicked).

Below is a listing of the businesses in this 600 block of Commerce, between Record Street and the MKT Building.

1945 Dallas directory

(The tall building on the right with the travel bureau on the ground floor is the Plaza Hotel at 202-204 Record Street. The Yonack Liquor Store on the corner is at 200 Record, with entrances on both Commerce and Record.)

Here’s a detail of a photo taken about the same time, showing an aerial view of Commerce Street.

Foscue Map Library/SMU

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Top photograph was taken on May 10, 1946 by Richard H. Young; it can be viewed on the CERA (Central Electric Railfans’ Association) website, here. (If you’re interested in Dallas streetcars, this page has some GREAT photographs!)

The caption of the photo from the above website: “May 10, 1946 — New Dallas Railway & Terminal Co. double-end PCC car 620, at speed, southbound, turning into Record St. from Commerce St. (Ervay-7th Line).”

The aerial photo was taken by Lloyd M. Long in the 1940s and is titled “Downtown Dallas looking east (unlabeled); it is from the Edwin J. Foscue Map Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University. This is only a small portion of the full photograph — the full photo is here.

Since there is an exact date for this photo, here is a large Skillern’s ad from that day’s newspaper. Coincidentally, there was a Skillern drugstore on the northeast corner of Commerce and Record — it is in this photo, behind the lamppost at the bottom left. Let’s see what was on sale May 10, 1946. (I would kill for a set of those Pyrex bowls!)

And, lastly, who doesn’t love a map?

1952 Mapsco

Everything is bigger when clicked!

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March 15, 2016

A Word From the Juvenile Court on Stealing Rides on Streetcars…

The Akard St. trolley, car #249 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

…DON’T DO IT!

Dallas Morning News, July 13, 1909

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Photo titled “Two Streetcar Employees with Dallas Streetcar No. 249,” is from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; is can be accessed here.

Both images larger when clicked.

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January 27, 2016

Collision on the Streetcar Viaduct — 1929

The new streetcar viaduct, 1946

by Paula Bosse

For many, many years there was a special trestle that spanned the Trinity River which was for the exclusive use of streetcars and Interurbans. There were also trestles and viaducts for the exclusive use of trains and automobiles. Below is a photo showing the viaductal activity in 1935, with the streetcar trestle — sometimes called the “Street Car Viaduct” or the “Trinity River Viaduct” marked in yellow and the Old Red Courthouse and Dealey Plaza (then under construction) marked in orange.

The viaduct immediately above it was the Houston Street viaduct, for automobiles.

For many, a streetcar ride across the viaduct seems to have been a little on the harrowing side. There were no guardrails to prevent a car from going over the side, and even when the original wooden trestle had been bolstered with stronger materials, it was still described by commuters as being rickety. I like this quote of a man remembering a typical ride in the 1950s:

I always enjoyed the slight tingle of fear I experienced on the trestle over the river, as one could not see the trestle itself from the car window. One had the feeling of being suspended with no support when looking out the window.

And these two memories:

The streetcar trestle ran parallel to the Houston St. Viaduct where the current newer bridge is to downtown. No railings and just depended on gravity to hold the cars on the rails. The cars would buck and sway as they crossed the river bottoms as the motormen made up time on their schedules. Seemed like they were really going fast to me at the time, but probably not in today’s terms.

The [newer streetcars] used to scare me to death rocketing across the Trinity River high in the air with no sidewalls except just over the river itself! You were able to look straight down from high above ground… those newer cars had softer springs and the faster they went, the more they rocked side to side over the less than flat tracks!

Here’s a photo when it was in its original rickety state, back in 1895 (this is a detail of a larger photo, taken on the Oak Cliff side of the river, with the trestle — and the not-yet-old Old Red Courthouse — visible in the background).

Here it is in 1914 at river-bottom level, with a happy little trolley chugging along with the Oak Cliff/Houston Street viaduct looming over and in front of it. (This is a detail of a larger photo in the George W. Cook Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU — here).

And here’s a sturdier version of the viaduct, in 1946.

But now to the collision on the viaduct, which happened on the morning of November 23, 1929. Back then — at that iteration of the viaduct — the trestle had only a single track. While one streetcar or Interurban car crossed the bridge toward Oak Cliff, a car wanting to cross over from Oak Cliff had to wait until the westbound car had made its mile-long trip. That must have made for a lot of impatient riders. Even though the so-called “block signal” system worked well for the most part, there were the occasional accidents, including the one involving three cars on Nov. 23, 1929. Below, a front-page report of the collision(s) from The Waxahachie Daily Light (click for larger image).

Waxahachie Daily Light, Nov. 23, 1929

The Waxahachie paper even had a local angle (although it’s unclear just how this man “nearly lost all of the clothes he was wearing”).

Waxahachie Daily Light, Nov. 23, 1929

Since it happened during the morning rush hour, just about every other newspaper in Texas scooped The Dallas Morning News, which wasn’t able to run its story until the next day (and its report was surprisingly dull).

The UP wire story that ran in the Joplin, Missouri paper was far more exciting.

Joplin Globe, Nov. 24, 1929

Thankfully none of the streetcars fell off the trestle, but I’m sure that possibility was probably the daily fear/resigned expectation of generations of nervous travelers.

The most interesting thing in the DMN article is the last paragraph:

Plans in the making for the new street car crossing of the Trinity River call for a double track over the channel, eliminating the necessity of waiting on block signals.

In February 1931, that new double-track streetcar viaduct opened for business, and I’m sure there was a citywide sigh of relief.

One last little amusing tidbit about this viaduct: it was not unheard of for those having indulged in excessive amounts of alcohol to try to drive their automobiles (either on purpose or by accident) over this already-kind-of-scary trestle intended for electric-powered railway use only.

Mexia Weekly Herald, Jan. 13, 1933

Beaver Valley (Pennsylvania) Times, Dec. 8, 1952

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Sources & Notes

Top photo titled “T. E. clouds, sky, city, from east levee close to wooden trestle 320 just passed, at rear, car 320 on Trinity River Bridge, Dallas, Tex.,” taken on Feb. 16, 1946 by Robert W. Richardson, is from the Western History/Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library.

Photo showing the viaducts across the Trinity is titled “Central Levee District,” taken on May 20, 1935 by Lloyd M. Long, from the Edwin J. Foscue Map Library, Southern Methodist University; the labeled photo is here, the unlabeled photo is here.

Don’t know what “block signaling” is? Wikipedia to the recue.

Lastly, just because I like it, a magnified detail from the top 1946 photo, showing a streetcar at the downtown end of the viaduct.

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January 6, 2016

The Forney Car

Eastbound on Commerce (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I’m a sucker for streetcars. Here’s car 764 heading east on Commerce, between Prather and S. St. Paul.

Google Maps

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Photo from eBay.

The Underwood Corporation was at 1805-7 Commerce, and Dallas Multigraphics was at 1807 1/2 Commerce — they both moved to this location sometime between 1936 and 1943. This stretch of Commerce was once jam-packed with typewriter companies.

Forney Avenue ran along the northeastern side of Fair Park, about where Haskell does today, starting at Parry — if one continued along it past the city limits, one would reach the town of Forney. In 1922 Interurban track was laid between Dallas and Terrell, with the train entering Dallas along Forney Avenue, terminating at Union Station. The Forney streetcar and the Interurban traveled over the same tracks.

Dallas Morning News, June 16, 1921

Detail of a map from 1919

For more on the Dallas-Forney-Terrell Interurban, check out the 1925 publication “Making Neighbors of the People of Dallas and Kaufman Counties and the Towns of Terrell, Forney, Mesquite and Dallas by the Opening of the Texas Interurban Railway” — the 16-page pamphlet has been scanned by the fine folks at UNT’s Portal to Texas History, and it can be accessed here.

Images larger when clicked.

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December 21, 2015

Merry Christmas From the Dallas Police Department’s Parking Enforcement Squad

Santa on Elm Street (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I don’t know what the story is behind this photograph of Santa Claus riding on the back of a three-wheeled motorcycle (they were used by the Dallas Police Department to patrol downtown streets for parking violations). Maybe Santa’s sleigh has broken down and he’s thumbed a ride to get to a scheduled event at a department store. Let’s hope it wasn’t the result of said sleigh being parked in a No Parking zone and a rather too strenuous ticket dispute by Mr. Claus necessitating a visit to the station to discuss the situation further. (Look at the brick-paved street!)

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I’m not sure of the original source of this photo, but I want to thank reader Chris Walker for sending this to me. Thank you, Chris!

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December 11, 2015

Get Your “Flying Merkel” at the Texas Motorcycle Co. — 1911

“All shaken to pieces?”

by Paula Bosse

I might have bought a Flying Merkel in 1911 for the name alone.

The Texas Motorcycle Company was at 1605 Commerce. This ad is from 1911, but see what that block of Commerce looked like two years later in the detail of a larger photo, below. The motorcycle company was next to Worley’s, in the building with the Knight Tires/Stutz Auto signs.

Imagine two years before: Commerce would have been filled with Flying Merkels on test drives, zipping in and out of traffic!

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Sources & Notes

Ad from the 1911 Dallas High School yearbook.

Photo is a detail from a larger photo contained in my earlier post “Horses, Carriages, Horseless Carriages — Commerce Street, 1913,” here.

Read about the 1911 Flying Merkel, here.

One of these bikes recently sold for more than $200.000!

Click pictures to see larger images.

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December 5, 2015

Downtown Parking Innovations

Splendiforous parking garage, 1945

by Paula Bosse

Here are a couple of ways developers have attempted to cope with the parking needs of downtown Dallas. I’m not sure how long either of these parking garages lasted, but I give them both A’s for effort.

First, 1945: Nichols Bros. Garage & Rent-a-Car Service at 1320 Commerce (just east of Field). Just look at all these amenities — women and chauffeurs are not forgotten.

…Fluorescent lighting — Air-conditioned waiting room for customers — Beautiful powder room for women — Waiting rooms for chauffeurs — Complete facilities for auto storage, washing, lubrication and motor tune-up service.

1945 Dallas directory

I don’t know how long this lasted, but if you’re going to have a garage downtown, it might as well look like that one!

Then in 1954, the 8-story Dallas Carpark at Jackson and St. Paul arrived (a second one at Jackson and Lane was under construction that same year). It was a franchise of the Pigeonhole Parking System of Spokane, utilizing “car-parking machines” invented by Leo Sanders of Spokane, Washington. I’m not exactly sure how these worked, but cars were hoisted and lowered on elevators, and the whole parking process, from start to finish, was conducted without an attendant ever actually touching the cars. Again, I don’t know how long this endeavor was in business (at least through the early 1960s), but — parking-garage-history neophyte that I am — I’ve never heard of such a thing. (There’s a video showing how it worked — thanks, “Not Bob” for posting this in the comments)!

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UPDATE: “Found” film footage of a family’s trip to Dallas in 1962 actually shows this pigeon-hole system in action. The whole short video is interesting, but the pigeon-hole footage is what got me really excited — it begins at the 1:32 mark.

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A couple of screenshots:

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Sources & Notes

Nichols Bros. ad from the 1945 city directory.

The 1951 Universal Newsreel segment can be found on Vimeo here (thanks to “Not Bob”).

1962 YouTube video of found footage can be seen here (thanks to Robert Wilonsky of The Dallas Morning News for posting this link!).

See photos and read about the elevator-centric Dallas Carpark at Jackson and St. Paul in these Dallas Morning News articles:

“Parking Gets Lift in Downtown Area” by Robert F. Alexander (DMN, Sept. 26, 1954) (with photos)
“Pigeonhole Parking Now in Operation” (DMN, Oct. 10, 1954)

See several photos of the “pigeon-hole” parking system in other parts of the country in the article “Pigeon Hole Parking — An Amusement Park Ride for Your Car,” here. Here’s one in Portland, Oregon (the Dallas Carpark was 8 levels high):

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December 1, 2015

American Airlines, Planes-a-Plenty — 1951

by Paula Bosse

A few photos of Love Field, hangars, and American Airlines airplanes, all taken in 1951 by Russell Lee for a story in Fortune magazine.

american-airlines_briscoe-2

american-airlines_briscoe-3

american-airlines_briscoe-4

american-airlines_briscoe-5

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Photos ©Dolph Briscoe Center for American History; all photos are by Russell Lee from the collection of his photographs at the University of Texas at Austin. I am unable to post links because I can no longer find them on the website (!).

This time pictures aren’t larger when clicked. All apologies to fans of the wonderful Russell Lee, for these less-than-crisp images.

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Category: Transportation

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