Flashback : Dallas

Cockerell Hill, we salute you!

by Paula Bosse

2022 will soon be history, and I can’t say I’ll be sad to see it go. These recent years have been trying times for many of us. I feel I’ve just been slogging through, hoping that “normal” times will return soon (I implore you, 2023!). 2022 saw the fewest number of new posts from me since I created this blog, a fact which kills me, because I would love nothing more than to do this every day, all day long. (As I mentioned in my previous post: if you know how I can earn a living doing just that, please let me know. Or if you are seeking a Dallas-history researcher (etc.), please contact me!) It’s hard to believe, but I am about to embark on my 10th year of writing about Dallas history here at Flashback Dallas. I’ve really loved it, and I truly appreciate all of you who stop by to read! 

This final post of 2022 showcases the year’s Most Popular Posts, determined by page-views, clicks, likes, shares, etc. These are the most-read Flashback Dallas posts of 2022, starting with the most popular. To see each full post, click on the title; to see larger images of the thumbnails, click on the picture.

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1.  “THE SUNNY SIDE GROCERY — 1915”  (May)

I’m kind of stumped by this one. It was hugely popular when I posted it back in May, and it just keeps getting hits. I have no idea why. I thought the photo was interesting when I saw it, but it’s not that interesting. Perhaps this is just the world’s way of telling me that I need to post more Cockrell Hill content. Represent!

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2.  “TRIPLE UNDERPASS — ca. 1936”  (December)

Wow. This was posted only about a week ago — and it has rocketed all the way up to the #2 spot … for the year. But it totally deserves it. It’s a great photograph. 

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3.  “THE UNIVERSITY PARK BROWN BOOKS — AN UNBELIEVABLE RESOURCE!”  (March)

See my previous post where I listed my personal favorites of 2022 to read my teardrop-dabbing bittersweet overview of this indispensable and amazing resource. …I enjoyed it while I could. 

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4.  “CEDAR CREST, L. O. DANIEL’S COUNTRY HOME”  (SEPTEMBER)

The high ranking of this one surprised me. Perhaps it’s because I am not as familiar with Oak Cliff history and its landmarks as I should be. When I started writing this, I had never heard of this beautiful, historic house (which is still standing). But now I’m a fan.  

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5.  “OLD LAKE HIGHLANDS”  (August)

Team Oak Cliff vs. Team East Dallas. I’m not sure which is more fervent in neighborhood pride, but it’s clear that those groups really love where they live. O.C. just nosed out East Dallas in this list (even though both trailed Cockrell Hill significantly!). The great bird’s-eye-view photo of Old Lake Highlands and White Rock Lake helped rack up strong numbers.

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6.  “WHEN SMU THEOLOGY STUDENTS WERE SPRAYED WITH INSECTICIDE AT A UNIVERSITY PARK LUNCH=COUNTER SIT-IN — 1961”  (January)

This post has shown up in all three “best of” lists this year. In a nutshell: angry man fills his drug store with clouds of bug spray in an attempt to chase off peaceful students protesting his refusal to serve non-white customers at his lunch counter. And there’s film of it. Despite the subject matter, I enjoyed writing this.

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7.  “BETTY AND BENNY FOX, SKY-DANCING IN DALLAS — ca. 1935”  (April)

This post about people doing crazy things in the name of entertainment is also represented in all three “best of” lists. This was a lot of fun to research. (I never did find out how many “Bettys” there were.)

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8.  “3635 BEVERLY DRIVE, THE RESIDENCE OF ARCHITECT ANTON F. KORN — 1926”  (July)

The popularity of this post also surprised me. I was determined to find out the location of this house, but all I had to go on was a grainy photo from an ad for metal window casements. I tracked it down and ended up with something very interesting. Thank you, eBay, for the useful ephemera.

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9.  “ELM & ERVAY — EARLY ’60s”  (June)

I love these photos, but I wish I had higher resolution copies. I almost didn’t post these because the image quality isn’t great. (I’m sure the Dallas Public Library originals — by the fantastic photographer Squire Haskins — are crisp and wonderful.) Lack of sharpness notwithstanding, I love these photos (especially the second one).

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10.  “THE FOUNTAIN: ‘A RESORT FOR GENTLEMEN’ — ca. 1911”  (August)

I’ve looked at SO MANY postcards of Dallas that it’s always a bit of a shock when I come across one I’ve never seen before. Like this one. I love the fact that people were mailing picture-postcards of bars to the fam back home. “Wish you were here!”

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SPECIAL MENTION: Two old posts had more hits than any of the posts above, one of which is a bit sobering: “‘DALLAS IS A MAJOR TARGET AREA! — KNOW WHERE YOUR NEAREST FALLOUT SHELTER IS.” Interest in this post on the threat of nuclear war exploded (as it were) in February, when Russia invaded Ukraine. That post received more hits this year than it has cumulatively in all the years since I originally wrote it in 2018.

The overall most popular post of the year is the perennial #1 Flashback Dallas post of every year since it was originally posted in 2016, “BONNIE PARKER: ‘BURIED IN AN ICE-BLUE NEGLIGEE’ — 1934,” a detailed description of the preparation of Bonnie Parker’s body for burial/viewing.

Top post of all-time remains “HOW TO ACCESS THE HISTORICAL DALLAS MORNING NEWS ARCHIVE,” which, after years of updating, has gotten a bit bloated and is probably quite confusing at this point — it needs to be pared down substantially. Raise a glass, because within the next month or so, this evergreen will finally be toppled from its reign as All-Time Most Popular by memories of Bonnie Parker’s mortician.

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And that wraps it up for 2022, Thank you so much for reading!

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2022 Year-End “best of” lists here.

See all Flashback Dallas Year-End lists — past and present — here. 

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Copyright © 2022 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Snider Plaza filling station, 1934

by Paula Bosse

Another year comes to an end. I have posted so little in 2022! I miss posting more frequently, but life has thrown a few unexpected obstacles in my path this year. I hope to get back to writing more in 2023, because I miss it when I don’t do it. (If you, dear reader, know how I can make a living doing this sort of thing full-time, I’m all ears!) Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read what I’ve written. (If you’d like to receive notifications about new posts, click on the “Follow” button at the bottom of the page — you’ll then be prompted to enter an email address.)

Below are some of my favorite posts of 2022. I’ve singled one out as maybe being my favorite — the rest are in chronological order. Click titles to see the original post.

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1.  “THE UNIVERSITY PARK BROWN BOOKS — AN UNBELIEVABLE RESOURCE!”  (March)

This post was the result of learning about the most exciting Dallas-history-related thing I came across this year: the University Park Brown Books, city records which contain a staggering amount of information about individual homes and commercial buildings in University Park, from at least the early 1930s to the early 1970s. And almost all contain at least one photograph of the house or business. So. Many. Photographs. And all of this is fully digitized. I can’t tell you how wonderful this is. …But now, after bathing in that giddy happiness, I’m plunged into dark despair, because it appears that this amazingly helpful online resource is no longer available to the general public. I’m guessing you have to be a resident of University Park to access these online records now. Please say it isn’t so, UP Public Library! It appears that my links still work to see individual pages, but gone is my ability to happily wander down residential streets, or around Snider Plaza, or along the Miracle Mile to just see what everything used to look like. I’ve tried several times to access the Brown Books again, but… no luck. But please check out this post to see the sorts of things available to those who know the secret handshake. (Below, Luby’s on Hillcrest, 1948; above, a Sinclair gas station in Snider Plaza, 1934.) 

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2.  “WHEN SMU THEOLOGY STUDENTS WERE SPRAYED WITH INSECTICIDE AT A UNIVERSITY PARK LUNCH-COUNTER SIT-IN — 1961”  (January)

This was an interesting post to research and write because my mother actually participated in this event in 1961 — and because she is in the film footage! The lunch-counter sit-in was originally organized by SMU theology students after a Black classmate was not allowed to sit at the drug store’s lunch counter. When the peaceful (in fact, silent) protesters would not leave, the owner called in an exterminator to fill the store with a cloud of insecticide in an attempt to get them to leave. It’s such a crazy, hateful, inhumane thing to do. My mother had recounted this event several times when I was a child, and it was sobering to watch it actually happen.

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3.  “‘NO MICE, NO FLIES, NO CAFFEINE, NO COCAINE’ — 1911”  (January)

Advertising sure has changed a lot over the years. There really was a time when consumers weren’t sure whether their refreshing carbonated soft drinks contained bits of vermin and/or cocaine. This post has interesting info on the Pure Food and Drug Act and contains several ads which show how companies like Dr Pepper responded to an in-the-news trial involving a deceptive-advertising lawsuit brought by the U.S. Government against Coca-Cola. (I admit, though, that the title of this post is one of the reasons I like it so much.)

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4.  “THE GASTON-CARROLL PHARMACY — ca. 1929”  (February)

This post was the direct result of someone sending me an email and asking a question about the building she works in (and which, miraculously, I had a photo of). I’ve passed this building many times over the years but never really even noticed it. It was a lot of fun to research.

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5.  “3635 BEVERLY DRIVE, THE RESIDENCE OF ARCHITECT ANTON F. KORN — 1926”  (March)

I stumbled across this ad for windows on eBay. It shows a beautiful house identified only as being a residence in Dallas designed by architect Anton Korn. I was proud of myself for eventually figuring out where this house was (and still is). Best of all was that a woman who grew up in the house (and whose family still owns it) replied — her comment is my favorite thing about this post.

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6.  “DALLAS SKYLINE MOSAIC MURAL, PRESTON FOREST SHOPPING CENTER — 1960“  (April)

I love this large tile mosaic mural which is hidden away in a nondescript shopping center office building at Preston and Forest. I took these photos in 2014, and I was surprised to find it, because it’s completely hidden. It’s even more hidden these days — I’ve been informed by several people who went to see it after I wrote this post that it is no longer in a public place. So this cool piece of local artwork is only viewable in photos (and it’s in a cramped hallway, so it’s very difficult to photograph). Come on, Preston-Forest Shopping Center — open this up again! It’s great!

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7.  “BETTY AND BENNY FOX, SKY-DANCING IN DALLAS — ca. 1935”  (April)

I really loved researching this. I still get queasy thinking about what these fearless daredevils did for a living. 

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8.  “AUTOS, AUTOS EVERYWHERE, AND NOT A PLACE TO PARK — 1971”  (June)

This is a topic that, on the surface, seems dull and dry, and why in the world would anyone write about parking problems in downtown Dallas? I know! Dullsville! But I really enjoyed writing this. Somehow, I managed to include the new Earle Cabell Federal Building, “people-moving” systems like the vaguely futuristic-looking AirTrans (then in development in Garland), and, yes, Lee Harvey Oswald into a post about the pressing problem of there not being enough parking spaces in the Central Business District in 1971. I contend that just about anything can be made interesting and entertaining. Even this.

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9.  “S. MAYER’S SUMMER GARDEN, EST. 1881”  (July)

This is one of the first photos I remember seeing when I started to become really interested in Dallas history. I saw it several times, but I didn’t know what it was or where it had been located. I just never got around to finding out more about it. …Until I was looking for something to write on July 4th — that’s when I came across an ad I had clipped years ago but had forgotten about. The ad, from 1882, was for a July 4th celebration at Mayer’s beer garden. It was a pretty impressive ad! That place had everything (including a ZOO). So I wrote this post and had a great time doing it. (I’m still wondering what a 19th-century “illuminated Chinese balloon” resembling a porcupine looked like….)

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10.  “CLAES OLDENBURG IN DALLAS — 1962”  (July)

I loved writing this one. I was an Art History major, and I’m always happy when I’m able to write about Dallas art. For me, the generally unseen 1962 WFAA news film footage I write about here — showing Pop Art icon Claes Oldenburg and his wife, Patty Mucha, cavorting at the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts — is historically important, and I was very excited when I first saw it. Unfortunately, it took Oldenburg’s death this year to get me to finally write about it. RIP, Claes.

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BONUS: “HIGHLAND PARK HIGH SCHOOL RODEO CLUB — 1973”  (November)

My weird “bonus” fave — I still can’t get over the fact that HPHS had a RODEO CLUB! 

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Those are my Top 10 personal favorite posts for 2022. Coming next… the most popular posts of the year.

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2022 Year-End “best of” lists (as they’re posted) here.

See all Flashback Dallas Year-End lists — past and present — here. 

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Copyright © 2022 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Just out of frame, Miss Crabtree…

by Paula Bosse

Time again to look back through a year of posts and pick out some of my favorite photos/images. They’re in no order. The pictures are larger when you click them. To see the posts they appeared in, click the titles; for information on image sources, scroll down to the bottom of each post to “Sources & Notes.”

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Above, this 1936 photo of kids and their dogs at the Hall of State during the Texas Centennial Exposition is so “Little Rascals” it hurts. I love this photo! It’s in the post “Stereoview Souvenirs of the Texas Centennial — 1936” (a post which has tons of great photos!).

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Below, a photo of the way-way-WAY-over=the-top decoration of The Dallas Morning News Building (northwest corner of Commerce and Lamar) to welcome the huge Elks convention to town, I mean… it’s a lot. There are little elks everywhere you look (one in every window!). I love this. It’s so ridiculously excessive. From a post where I zoomed in to look at all the crazy details, “Elks-a-Plenty — 1908.” 

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Fair Park is such an amazing place. Color photographs from 1936 showing the new buildings which were built for the Centennial are pretty unusual (are there any?) ( I discovered one a few years ago in an ad for linoleum, but I’m not completely sure the photo wasn’t colorized). For color images you pretty much have to rely on old postcards with their postcard colorization magic (like here) to try to imagine how fantastic that bright, new, vivid color must have been in real life. This postcard shows the Praetorians Life Insurance exhibit inside the Varied Industries building. Those are some pretty bold color choices. From the post “Miscellaneous Postcards.” 

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From that same “Miscellaneous Postcards” post, this image of the Magnolia Building. As I said in that post, looking at this building never gets old.

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I love these two dreamy images of the interior of the brand-new Union Staton, taken by Frank Rogers, featured in the post “Union Station Interiors — 1916.” 

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This photo shows what I’ve called the “Pacific Avenue Warehouse District“ — an area woefully undocumented by urban photogs (and it took me a while to figure out the exact location). I think I like this early-1930s image because it’s such an odd area to photograph, and it was completely new to me as part of the historical landscape. Found it on eBay — just an old random snapshot taken by an unknown person. Thank you, eBay.

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Looking at this photo of “Betty and Benny Fox, Sky-Dancing in Dallas — ca. 1935” makes me feel a little lightheaded and queasy. It took me forever to figure this one out. I found it in one of those circuitous and impossible-to-retrace internet journeys which had me, somehow, rummaging through the digital collection of Princeton University! I loved writing this post, and the photo is exactly what it looks like: two crazy daredevils waving at the camera from way up in the sky.

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Just this week I posted a few favorite screenshots from the work I’ve been doing in the WFAA Collection at SMU. I’ll narrow it down a bit more and put my 3 favorites here. From the post “No-Context Channel 8 Screenshots: 1970-1971.” The first one shows the 1500 block of Commerce on a rainy afternoon, April 1971.

Another shows a boy in Old East Dallas holding a paper sack, staring directly into the camera, looking a little shell-shocked — he had apparently witnessed a fatal traffic accident. (November 1970)

And then there’s this one. I can’t get over this bank interior: marble and wall-to-wall green shag carpeting. The FBI is there investigating a bank robbery. (That’s not the only crime that’s been committed on these premises!) (December 1970)

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There were a few images I really liked in “Photo Additions To Past Posts — #18,” including a color photo looking north up Akard from Commece, the construction of the Dallas Athletic Club (1925), and a wholesome ad for roller skating at the Fair Park Skating Rink.

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I’ve really slacked off on posting ads, which saddens me, because I really love old advertising. The one that I perhaps got most enjoyment from this year was this 1911 ad from the fine folks at Dr Pepper, found in the winsomely titled post “‘No Mice, No Flies, No Caffeine, No Cocaine’ — 1911.”

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I posted a photo from a collection I had catalogued a few years ago as a volunteer for the Dallas Historical Society which shows the “1400 Block of Main Street, ca. 1946.” It was taken by James Bell, an amateur photographer who took a lot of interesting photos of what probably seemed like mundane things at the time, but which seem kind of magical when you look at them 75 years later. I love this photo but had some image-quality issues with it, so I posted only a detail (directly below) — but it’s the end of the year, so what the heck, the full, wonky, super-low-resolution photo which widens out the view a bit is posted below it. 

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There are so many photos I love in the post “The University Park Brown Books — An Unbelievable Resource!”, but I’ll limit myself to three. First, the old Couch Building at Hillcrest and McFarlin, seen in 1931 (I wrote about this building here when it was destroyed by a fire in 2016).

And this building at 6601 Hillcrest, which is still standing and is instantly recognizable. In 1931 it was the Mustang Garage.

And who wouldn’t love a cute little barbecue joint called the Beef Bar? Snider Plaza, undated.

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Lastly, I posted this just a few days ago — it’s such a great photograph. I wish I had a better copy to share! It shows the brand-new “Triple Underpass — ca. 1936,” looking toward Oak Cliff.

It. Is. Fantastic. And it might be my favorite photo posted in 2022.

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BONUS IMAGE: Okay, I do have a bonus image, because it shows my mother (!). It’s from the post “When SMU Theology Students Were Sprayed with Insecticide at a University Park Lunch-Counter Sit-In — 1961.” I’d heard about this awful event since childhood because my mother had been there. When I showed the news footage to her, she found herself in it. Sadly, there’s no view of her face, but I recognize the back of her head! I was surprised to see that there was footage of this sort-of “famous” historical event, but I was shocked to learn that my mother was actually in it! Here’s a very grainy screenshot from old Channel 8 news footage. She is seen taking part in a peaceful civil rights protest in a drug store which refused to serve Black customers at its lunch counter — in an attempt to run out the protesters, the owner sprayed them with insecticide. My mother is sitting at the lunch counter as the thick cloud of bug spray fills the room — she is second from the right, wearing a white coat. Pretty cool.

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And those are my favorite images that appeared in Flashback Dallas posts in 2022. 

Coming soon: my personal favorite posts and the most popular posts of the year.

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2022 Year-End “best of” lists here.

See all Flashback Dallas Year-End lists — past and present — here.

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Copyright © 2022 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.