“Its in Dallas” (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
“Ding it!”
Send those pests packing!
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Ad from the 1924 Terrill School yearbook, The Terrillian.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
They were, they were, and they did (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
In the wild-eyed throes of moving, I missed a very nice mention of Flashback Dallas (and myself!) by Alan Peppard in The Dallas Morning News in response to a “from the vault” post I posted a couple of weeks ago on Facebook and Twitter — “The Shooting of ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ — 1966,” about the location filming in and around Dallas of the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway film. Alan’s article — with amusing tidbits about Blanche Barrow — is here. Thank you, Alan!
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Teaser poster for the 1967 movie release of “Bonnie and Clyde” found here.
Other Flashback Dallas posts on Bonnie & Clyde can be read here.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
1956 modes of transport: automobiles, taxis, bikes, & feet
by Paula Bosse
Great shot of the Statler Hilton, looking east down Commerce — looks both hot and cool.
The blurb on the back: “The beautiful facade of the Statler Hilton in busy downtown ‘Big D,’ business and convention center of the Southwest.”
The message on the reverse of this postcard contained the following message to the folks back in Cincinnati:
Hi, folks, we’re having a wonderful time. This is beautiful country. We’ve been to San Antonio for a couple of days. Saw the Alamo, also San Jose Mission and went to Mexico. The children are darling and we’re having fun spoiling them. Love to all — Helen and Walter.
Tourists sure write a lot about San Antonio on picture postcards of Dallas….
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Postcard found on eBay.
Great news! After decades of that beautiful building sitting empty, it has been announced that it will finally be coming back to life — and the Hilton company is going to be part of it. More here.
See a current view of the same corner on Google, here.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Bleak campus, cool cars (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
I’m afraid my updating here has fallen by the wayside a bit as I am STILL plowed under from my recent big move. Today I will finally unpack my books! So, time for a just a quick post. Here’s a photo of some quaint little temporary buildings on the SMU campus, still in its first decade. Below is the description of this image, written in the early 1970s:
“The parking lot in the foreground and the curving driveway are basically still the same today, but the rest of the picture has changed drastically since 1925 when it was taken.
“On the left is the Southern Methodist University Engineering School with the Chemistry Department Building in the middle and the School of Commerce on the right. The smaller building was a construction shack used for carpentry work.
“Not shown, but just to the right of this location was Dallas Hall — still a landmark. Today, the Fondren Science Building has replaced the temporary buildings pictured.
“In the background to the right and left are rows of bois d’arc trees along Airline and Daniels — planted in those days as fences.”
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Photo from a postcard issued as part of the Park Cities Bank “Heritage Series” in the 1970s; the credit line on the postcard reads “Donated by Stanley Patterson.” Thanks to the Lone Star Library Annex Facebook group for use of the image.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Copper, aluminum, and alloys … EVERYWHERE!
by Paula Bosse
One doesn’t expect a cute, quirky drawing of Dallas to appear in an advertisement for an international mining company that excavates and manufactures “copper, aluminum, and alloy products.” But here you are, a 1969 Phelps Dodge ad featuring the Dallas skyline. It’s a bit reminiscent of both the delightful telephone book cover art of Karl Hoefle and the distinctive naive “matchstick men” art of L. S. Lowry. The ad copy is a lot less whimsical:
Dallas … a busy, prospering commercial center and Showplace of the Southwest. A bright, shining ever-changing city where the new is commonplace.
Look behind the splendor and the bright lights and you’ll see that Dallas is also a Phelps Dodge city. Our condenser tubes are used at the generating plants of the Dallas Power and Light Company. Our 135-kv transmission cables and other high-voltage power cables distribute power throughout the city … and the transformers, coils and motors wound with our magnet wire make things happen … from the flashing signs downtown, to factories along the river … to homes, stores, and offices everywhere.
Go north on Stemmons Freeway or west to Fort Worth on the Turnpike, or south on I-45 and Phelps Dodge buried lighting cables, telephone or coaxial CATV cables are following alongside. You’ll also find our building wire and aluminum conduit … our plumbing, gas and refrigeration copper tubing at work everywhere. Many new buildings, like the Statler Hilton Hotel, use PD building wire and copper tubing exclusively.
We specialize in conductors of electricity, liquids, gases and heat made of copper, aluminum and alloys. Look closely, and you’ll find Phelps Dodge products at work everywhere.
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Ad found on eBay.
See the artwork from this same ad — only in black and white — here. Zoom in and look at the details. No Karl Hoefle, but still pretty cool.
Interested in knowing more about Phelps Dodge? Wikipedia to the rescue, here.
The drawing is by commercial artist Lee Albertson, who, apparently, did a whole series of these ads, each featuring a different “copper, aluminum and alloy product”-enriched city, a few of which can be seen here.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Waiting for a message from God
by Paula Bosse
In the winter of 1931, a woman named Hattie Henderson made news when a “vision” appeared on her window shade twice a day. She interpreted the image — which was formed by shadows cast by the sun streaming through her window onto the shade — as a warning from God that “war, pestilence and other calamity” were on their way to wreak havoc. Word of the “miracle window” spread throughout the community, and soon thousands of people were flocking to the little house on Campbell Street to see the vision for themselves.
The Dallas Morning News covered the story:
More than a thousand curious and devout negroes, and a sprinkling of whites, congregated Tuesday afternoon at 3504 Campbell street, near the Greenwood Cemetery, in North Dallas, to witness the miraculous appearance of images on a drawn window shade. […] Sister Hattie Henderson, whose husband is a preacher in the Holiness Church, reports the images have been appearing twice daily, at 8 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. each day since Oct. 19. She firmly believes they are divine warnings. (DMN, Nov. 11, 1931)
Waiting patiently….
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Campbell St. is a short street that runs between the Jewish section of Greenwood Cemetery and the Freedman’s Memorial Cemetery. In 1931 it was in the large African American community of “North Dallas.” The scene in the photograph took place in what is now a Walmart parking lot in the heart of “Uptown.”
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Photo by an uncredited photographer, ©Underwood & Underwood/Corbis; found on the Corbis website.
Read more about this in the Dallas Morning News archives in the story “Thousand Negroes Gather to View in Awe Warning Miracle in House Near Cemetery” (DMN, Nov. 11, 1931).
Map — with location of sacred window shade circled in red — from Google Maps.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
(Click to see a larger image of this wonderful color photo!)
by Paula Bosse
This is one of my favorite photos of Dallas — mainly because it’s in COLOR! This absolutely fantastic photograph is from Noah Jeppson’s great website, Unvisited Dallas. Here we see Elm Street, looking east along Theater Row, taken from about the middle of the 1400 block of Elm. (To get your bearings, Gus Roos was at the northwest corner of Elm & Akard.) I LOVE this!
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Photo from Noah Jeppson’s Unvisited Dallas post, “Elm Street 1945” — see the original post and read Noah’s description of the buildings seen in the photograph here. I don’t know where this photo came from, but I hope there are more color photos from this era out there. I would love to see them!
Other photos of this block (sadly, none in color) are in an earlier Flashback Dallas post, “Building Collapse on Elm Street — 1955,” here.
See several other fantastic COLOR photos in the Flashback Dallas post “Downtown Dallas in Color — 1940s and 1950s.”
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
A man with a bow-tie will be with you presently….
by Paula Bosse
Above, Jack Wilkie’s Texaco service station at 5523 East Grand. It’s a shame gas stations are rarely this interesting anymore. The station opened in 1937 and was at this location well into the 1940s. Below, the same view today, with that tall brick building in the background of both photos. (I’m not sure what that building is, but while I was waiting for a friend in the Kalachandji’s parking lot a few months ago, I remember thinking what a strange building it was — especially when seen from the side. It’s had some weird additions made to the original building.) This part of East Dallas still has pockets of charm, but it’s never again going to be as cool as it was when Jack Wilkie’s service station was holding down the fort at the corner of Beacon and E. Grand.
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Top image from Flickr, here.
Second image from Google Street View.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
“Shoring a Specialty”
by Paula Bosse
Imagine what moving entailed before the advent of large motorized moving trucks.
I, myself, will be moving soon, and this will be my last new post for a while. I will probably link to old posts on Twitter and Facebook (see the tab at the top of the page to follow me and “like” me). I’ll be back sometime next week. Maybe by then the rain will have finally stopped!
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Ad from the 1908 city directory.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
Okay, this will be my last Trinity River post for a while. This is what some clever person imagined Dallas would look like today as an inland port had anyone ever managed to make the Trinity a navigable commercial waterway between DFW and the Gulf. So there you go!
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This image was linked to a Reddit post linking to a Flashback Dallas Trinity River post. I have no idea who created this, but the image link is here. If anyone knows the source, I’d love to credit the person responsible.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 