Women | Flashback : Dallas

Girl Doctors? No Way! — 1946

Photo from the UT Southwestern Library (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Female medical students were fairly uncommon back in the 1940s, and, as this photo is described in the UT Southwestern archives, they were “so rare that they merited this photo captioned ‘Freshman Girl Students’ in the 1946-47 Southwestern Medical College yearbook, Caduceus.” I love this photo.

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Photo is from the UT Southwestern Medical Center Library and can be accessed here.

Click photo for larger image.

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April 15, 2014

“Start Your Day the Happy Way … with The Dallas Morning News” — 1961

(click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

A word from a secretary:

I’m a secretary, and I prefer The Dallas Morning News.

My boss refers to me as his “Girl Friday” because I am more than an ordinary secretary. I make more money than an ordinary secretary makes, too.

Questions come up from time to time and I am able to supply the answers … simply because I start my day the happy way … with The Dallas Morning News.

I read it all … the news, editorials, even glance through the business and sports sections. I pay particular attention to current affairs, both foreign and domestic.

For myself, I browse the women’s pages … the fashion news, club activities, and all the special features. The advertising is very helpful. I do most of my shopping during the lunch hour. I always know where to go for what I want without having to shop around.

If you are a secretary and would like for your job to be more interesting … and valuable, too … here’s a tip. Start your day the happy way with The Dallas Morning News.

April 8, 2014

Western Union Telegraph Girls Taking a Break — 1912

by Paula Bosse

“Beat this if you can.”

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Photo “Group of Printer Department Clerks, Dallas, Texas” from the Western Union Telegraph Company Records, Smithsonian Institution.

Click photo for larger image.

2 Comments

March 22, 2014

Nicholas J. Clayton’s Neo-Gothic Ursuline Academy

by Paula Bosse

Over the years, Dallas has been the site of dozens and dozens of beautiful educational campuses, almost none of which still stand — such as the long-gone Victorian-era Ursuline Academy, at St. Joseph and Live Oak streets (near the current site of the Dallas Theological Seminary). The buildings, which began construction in 1882, were designed by the Catholic church’s favorite architect in Texas, Nicholas J. Clayton of Galveston. Such a beautiful building in Dallas? It must be demolished!

Six Ursuline Sisters, sent to Dallas from Galveston, established their academy in 1874 in this poorly insulated four-room building (which remained on the Ursuline grounds until its demolition in 1949). When they opened the school, under tremendous hardship, they had only seven students. But the school grew in size and reputation, and they were an academic fixture in East Dallas for 76 years. In 1950 the Sisters moved to their sprawling North Dallas location in Preston Hollow where it continues to be one of the state’s top girls’ prep schools. After 140 years of educating young women, Ursuline Academy is the oldest continuously operating school in the city of Dallas.

Construction took a long time. (ca. 1894)

When Latin cost extra. (1894) (Click for larger image.)

It even had a white picket fence. (ca. 1906)

1908-ish

1909 city directory

1912 (click for large image)

After a year and a half on the market, the land was sold in 1949 for approximately $500,000 to Beard & Stone Electric Company (a company that sold and serviced automotive electric equipment). The property was bounded by Live Oak, Haskell, Bryan, and St. Joseph — acreage that would certainly go for a lot more these days (according to the handy Inflation Calculator, half a million dollars in 1949 would be the equivalent in today’s money of about five million dollars). A small cemetery was on the grounds, in which the academy’s first chaplain and “more than 40 members of the Ursuline order” had been buried. I’m not sure how these things are done, but the cemetery was moved.

From a November, 1949 Dallas Morning News article on the vacated buildings’ demolition:

A workman applied a crowbar to a high window casing of the old convent and remarked: “I sure hate to wreck this one. It’s like disposing of an old friend. My father was just a kid when this building was built in 1883.” (DMN, Nov. 13, 1949)

And one of East Dallas’ oldest and most spectacular landmarks was gone forever. Looking at these photographs, it’s hard to believe it ever existed at all.

Where was it? In Old East Dallas, bounded by Live Oak, Haskell, Bryan, and St. Joseph. See the scale of the property in the 1922 Sanborn map, here (once there, click for full-size map). Want to know what the same view as above looks like today? If you must, click here.

Bing Maps

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Sources & Notes

Photo of the school’s first building is from the Ursuline Academy of Dallas website here. A short description of the early days of hardship faced by the Sisters upon their arrival in Dallas is here.

The photograph, mid-construction, is by Clifton Church, from his book Dallas, Texas Through a Camera (Dallas, 1894).

1894 ad is from The Souvenir Guide of Dallas (Dallas, 1894).

1912 text is from an article by Lewis N. Hale on Texas schools which appeared in Texas Magazine (Houston, 1912).

Aerial photograph from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, here. Bottom image also from the Cook Collection, here.

Examples of buildings designed by Nicholas J. Clayton can be seen here (be still my heart!).

DMN quote from the article “Crews Begin Wrecking Old Ursuline Academy” by William H. Smith (DMN, Nov. 13, 1949).

Another great photo of the building is in another Flashback Dallas post — “On the Grounds of the Ursuline Academy and Convent” — here.

Many of the images are larger when clicked.

6 Comments

March 16, 2014

When Coco Chanel Came to Dallas — 1957

Stanley Marcus and Coco Chanel

by Paula Bosse

In September of 1957 — way back when that much-missed hyphen was still in “Neiman-Marcus” — Stanley Marcus invited Coco Chanel to Dallas to accept the Neiman Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion. Mlle. Chanel had never been to Texas, but her visit here was a meaningful one. Following a 15-year retirement, her re-emergence as a designer in the early 1950s was met with mostly derision by the French press. The American response, on the other hand, was very different. It was because of the enthusiastic reception that her work received from American retailers (such as the even-then legendary Neiman Marcus department store) that she had been able to bounce back and, once again, be considered a force in the fashion world. When she was invited to Dallas to receive the “Oscar” of the fashion industry, Mlle. Chanel was happy to accept.

In the photo above, Coco is seen trying on hats at the downtown Neiman’s store as Mr. Stanley stands by beaming. On her Dallas visit she was also treated to a ranch barbecue (!) where she was photographed watching both a square dance (!!) and a … oh god … Chanel-themed bovine fashion show (!!!). Mlle. Chanel seemed to love the cows-in-ropes-of-pearls runway show, but she was not a fan of the barbecue and beans — she (one hopes discreetly) dumped the contents of her plate onto the ground under the table … right onto the shoes of dining companion Elizabeth Arden (whose shoes may have been ruined, but who had a truly great story to tell for the rest of her life).

From all reports, everyone seemed to enjoy (and no doubt profit) from the successful visit. Karl Lagerfeld, the current creative director of Chanel, recently brought Chanel back to Dallas (both figuratively and literally) with the house’s important Métiers d’Art fashion show which was held at Fair Park in December, 2013. The following day, Lagerfeld was presented with the Neiman Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion — just as Coco Chanel had been, 56 years earlier. And the haute-couture circle-pin of life keeps on rolling.

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n-m_chanel_telegram

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Sources & Notes

Top photo by Shel Hershorn for the AP. From the Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

N-M ad from 1957 (portion of a larger ad).

Chanel’s thank-you telegram to Marcus, from the collection of Stanley Marcus’ Papers at the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University.

Entertaining AP article about Chanel and Dallas, then and now (with photos of Stanley Marcus duded-up in an outfit you’d never see an actual cowboy in), can be found here. (Are those butterflies?!)

More photos of Mlle. Chanel in Dallas (along with text of a DMN article on the visit) can be found here.

Even more photos (bovine fashion show…) and a really great post from SMU’s “Off the Shelf” blog is here.

Video of the 2013 Chanel runway extravaganza (Métiers d’Art), held in Fair Park’s hay-stewn Centennial Hall, can be watched here. A shorter video with a few cursory shots of the Dallas skyline and Fair Park can be seen here.

For more on the first French Fortnight, see my post “Neiman-Marcus Brings France to Big D — 1957,” here.

3 Comments

March 14, 2014

Olsen-Stelzer Cowboy Boot Saleslady — 1939

Portrait with boots…

by Paula Bosse

Above, Dallas resident Imogene Cartlidge is seen at a shoe retailers’ convention in San Antonio in 1939. Cartlidge was an employee of the Olsen-Stelzer boot company in Henrietta, Texas, and she was said to be “the only woman boot salesman on record.” I’m a big fan of cowboy boots of this period, and I have to say that I am ashamed that I was unaware of the famous Olsen-Stelzer company, which lasted from 1900 until the 1980s. The company is back in business again, led by Tom Cartlidge, whose parents began selling the boots in 1938 — Imogene is his mother. I wish them all the best of luck, because the world needs as many great-looking cowboy boots as it can get!

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“The West begins at Titche’s”? First I’m hearing of this. Who knew? Nice ad, though.

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olsen-stelzer_1941

Best of all is this absolutely fantastic video from 1956 about the company:

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Sources & Notes

Photo of Imogene Cartlidge is from the San Antonio Light Photograph Collection, University of Texas San Antonio Libraries Special Collections, Institute of Texan Cultures.

Titche’s ad from 1946.

Bridges Shoe Store ad from 1955. (Bridges seems to have been the only place in Dallas where the boots were regularly sold — or at least regularly advertised. And you could get them ONLY IN OAK CLIFF!) (I hear the West begins at Oak Cliff….)

The video can be found on the home page of the Olsen-Stelzer website here.

The last image is the lid of an Olsen-Stelzer boot box, which belongs to my aunt — she keeps Christmas ornaments in it. (Sadly, no sign of the boots!)

The history of the company (and, again, that great video) can be found here.

7 Comments

March 10, 2014

Mrs. Turner Attacked Miss Hulsey in the Spoolroom with a Knife

Spoolroom of the Dallas Cotton Mills…

by Paula Bosse

The spoolroom of the Dallas Cotton Mills was no place for the faint of heart, as this eyeball-popping story from The Dallas Morning News will attest (click for larger image):

DMN, May 16, 1897

The story even made it into the pages of The New York Times:

NYT, May 15, 1897

(The women apparently survived.)

Sources & Notes

Photo (“Spooling Yarn, Dallas Cotton Mills, Dallas, Texas”) is from a stereograph, circa 1905, from the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs Collection, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; it is accessible here.

The descriptive text from the back of the card:

March 7, 2014

Mme. Koneman, High-Class Milliner

Madame Koneman’s fashion emporium, 1912 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Behold, the Koneman Millinery Establishment, which actually looks a little plain for a millinery shop housed in the ornate Oriental Hotel building. When I see old ads or photos like this, I always wonder about the people pictured in them. I’m assuming that the woman in the oval inset at the left was the proprietess, “Mme. Koneman.” So who WAS she, this woman who had a “high-class” business that catered to a “high-class” clientele? I poked around a little and found these ads from 1913.

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koneman-millinery_dmn_061413

(click for larger image)

Ooh. Those last few sentences of the above ad seem a little defensive, as if she’s addressing nasty gossip. “Furthermore, I want to say that I am not going out of business.” When you see a sentence like that — in an advertisement — that sends up some furiously waving red flags. And … just one month after that ad, this miniscule tidbit in teeny-tiny letters appeared in the paper at the end of 1913:

Dallas Morning News, Dec. 21, 1913

Oh dear. D-I-V-O-R-C-E. And, guess what? There were no more ads for the millinery shop.

But, alarmingly, THIS appeared on the wire services on February 17, 1917:

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Feb. 17, 1917

Oh DEAR! Shot by a widower with two children, who tried to kill both her and himself after he flew into a jealous rage in a New Orleans hotel lobby. Working with feathers and plumes and felt and velvet (probably) does not prepare one for being shot at!

Ten days after being shot, it was reported that the 36-year old Mrs. Koneman (whose first name was either “Matilda” or “Mathilda”) was released from the hospital in New Orleans. The jealous suitor, 40-year old Edgar J. Hargrave (or “Hargrove”), remained in the hospital, slowly recovering (but with a bullet still lodged in his head!). “Policemen expect to arrest Hargrave on a charge of shooting with intent to murder as soon as he is able to leave the institution.” He was an “oil salesman” from Houston.

One week later, Hargrave/Hargrove was released from the hospital and was transferred to Parish Prison where he awaited arraignment on attempted murder. Meanwhile, Matilda/Mathilda, a material witness in the case, had been arrested when the D.A. heard she was about to leave town. Out on a $650 bond, she was ordered to stay in the city until the arraignment.

On March 16, one month after being shot in the lobby of the Grunewald Hotel, Mrs. Koneman was in court recounting her near-death experience, and I’m sure the people back in Dallas were eating up every last morsel in the scandalous testimony about the spurned lover who tried to kill the divorcée who used to sell them great big hats with aigrette plumes in that bleakly unadorned hat shop over on Ervay!

DMN, March 16, 1917 (click for larger image)

(UPDATE: A reader kindly forwarded me a more detailed account of the shooting incident between the spurner and the spurnee, in a longer article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune (Feb. 17, 1917). Click here to read the article, with a blurry photo of Hargrave.)

And then — rather anticlimactically — the trail ran cold. What was the verdict? What happened to Edgar? Whither Mme. Koneman? Mrs. Koneman was reported to be living in Galveston at the time of the shooting, but by the summer of 1922 she was back in Dallas, checked into the Southland Hotel. The last shred of info I found about her was this classified ad from June, 1922, which raises even more questions.

DMN, June 15, 1922

I’m not really sure what this was all about, but it’s safe to say there would have been very few lags in the conversation between Dallas and California!

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Top ad from The Standard Blue Book of Dallas, 1912-1914 (Dallas: A. J. Peeler & Co.).

“Dallas Woman Shot” article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Feb. 17, 1917. This was a wire service story that was printed around the country, but, oddly enough, the news doesn’t seem to have made its way into the DMN until ten days after the shooting!

All other ads and articles from the Dallas Morning News. The Koneman Millinery ads were from 1913.

5 Comments

February 5, 2014

Ruetta Day Blinks, Hostess of “The House of Happiness” (WFAA, 1937)

by Paula Bosse

RUETTA DAY BLINKS. On the air she’s Margaret Day, and you’ll recognize her as the charming hostess at The House of Happiness, who acts as general counsellor to the housewives of the Southwest. Years of experience as a home economist, teacher, author, and radio lecturer qualify her admirably for her post.

I’m sure Ruetta was a lovely person, but that photograph does not really scream “charming hostess.” A more flattering photo, in which Mrs. Blinks is shown with a slight Mona Lisa smile, was printed the previous year in the Dallas Morning News:

The House of Happiness seems to have premiered on WFAA radio in the spring of 1936 and was broadcast on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday mornings at 10:45. “Margaret Day” would address homemaking concerns of her listeners, including topics such as “Stream-lined Living–the Objective of the Modern Homemaker,” “Better Home Gardens,” “Home Management Declares an Exact Management,” and “Safeguarding Health in the Home.” …I’m guessing the shows were a little dry.

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Top photo from the WFAA Radio Album of 1937. (Click picture for larger image.)

Flashback : Dallas

Category: Women

April 24, 2014

Girl Doctors? No Way! — 1946

April 15, 2014

“Start Your Day the Happy Way … with The Dallas Morning News” — 1961

April 8, 2014

Western Union Telegraph Girls Taking a Break — 1912

March 22, 2014

Nicholas J. Clayton’s Neo-Gothic Ursuline Academy

Sources & Notes

March 16, 2014

When Coco Chanel Came to Dallas — 1957

Sources & Notes

March 14, 2014

Olsen-Stelzer Cowboy Boot Saleslady — 1939

Sources & Notes

March 10, 2014

Mrs. Turner Attacked Miss Hulsey in the Spoolroom with a Knife

Sources & Notes

March 7, 2014

Mme. Koneman, High-Class Milliner

February 5, 2014

Ruetta Day Blinks, Hostess of “The House of Happiness” (WFAA, 1937)

Category: Women

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