Skyscraper vs. paper hat (click for much larger image)
by Paula Bosse
Great shot of the Farmers Market area, showing the 400 block of South Pearl. South Pearl intersects with Canton at the light, halfway up the photo. Just past the intersection on the left is the IOOF Oddfellows Temple. And the Republic National Bank Building — which, until 1959, was the tallest building in the city — looms at the top left. (I think this is the same view seen here a decade or so earlier.)
Below, a map of the area today, with an X marking the spot seen in this photo. This area — where all the wholesale produce markets used to be — is now, largely, condos. Call me crazy, but I will always prefer gritty street corners to sterile condos. …Always.
(click for larger image)
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Photo from the Dallas Farmers Market — Henry Forschmidt Collection 1938-1986, Dallas Municipal Archives; it can be viewed via the Portal to Texas History, here (with a not-entirely correct description).
Map from Bing.
Previous Flashback Dallas posts on the Farmers Market area can be found here.
Carl Anderson & friends (John Dominis, Time-Life Pictures/Getty Image)
by Paula Bosse
Carl Axel Anderson (1892-1983) was a mild-mannered internal revenue executive by day and a mild-mannered Monarch butterfly expert by night (and weekend … and probably every waking second). Anderson had been interested in insects and butterflies from an early age, and he studied entomology at the University of Minnesota and Columbia. When he was away from the office, he was raising, tagging, tracking, and, perhaps, training Monarch butterflies at his University Park home on Centenary Avenue, which writer Frank X. Tolbert dubbed “the Butterfly Ranch.” Even the neighborhood children — who called themselves The Centenary Monarchs — joined in and learned all about Monarchs from Anderson, their butterfly mentor.
Anderson’s primary interest was studying the migration patterns of the Monarch butterfly, and, conveniently, Dallas was on their pathway, twice a year, so he had a front-row seat. Not only did he observe them passing overhead, he also raised them from eggs laid on the underside of his milkweed plants, enjoyed them as caterpillars, and when they became butterflies, he “branded” their wings painlessly (see below) and released them into the wild, hoping to be able to track their migration from fellow butterfly spotters around the country. He wrote letters to newspapers around the country and mailed hundreds of postcards to groups and individuals, hoping to get his message out. His message, in part:
Monarch butterflies raised from the egg are being released. A number is placed on their wings before they are released. Members of the public are invited to join the observers on the magic carpet of these wings to see where it will take us. Invite your friends and associates to come along, too…. Examine the wings of the Monarch…for numbers or other marks. Allow the butterfly to go on its way after your observation. Please report any observation where marked wings are found….”
In 1950, big news was made when one of his butterflies — one with the number “9” on its wing — was reported to have been seen in California by a 10-year old boy named Ben Harris in Santa Monica, California. That must have been one of the happiest moments of Anderson’s life.
Every year during Monarch migration over Texas, Mr. Anderson was a reliable go-to story for the local media. Particularly fascinated by Anderson and his “butterfly ranch” was Dallas Morning News writer Frank X Tolbert, who wrote about him numerous times. A very early profile by Tolbert rhapsodized about Anderson’s “pet” butterfly Pete which set the tone for all his very sweet subsequent articles about Anderson that appeared over the years. (Next time you’re wandering around in the Dallas News archives, check out Tolbert’s story “An Affectionate Fellow Was Pete the Butterfly” published on May 16, 1948 — but if you like happy endings, beware of the last two paragraphs of the story: personally, I’d advise readers to stop reading when Pete sets off on his journey.)
Anderson was the subject of newspaper and magazine articles all over the country, but the high point was, undoubtedly, his appearance in the pages of Life magazine in 1954, accompanied by the striking photo of him with several of his butterfly pals resting on his face.
The caption for this photo reads: “Mottled with Monarchs, butterfly breeder Carl Anderson stares serenely ahead as the domesticated insects swarm all over his face.” (That is NOT a “swarm,” Life!)
The two-page photo spread was titled “Monarch Man: Texan Breeds Bushels of Them To Help Map Butterfly Migration.”
Each spring Mr. Anderson raises hundreds of Monarchs in cages. If released, they flutter about him, looking for a sip of sugar water. When the Monarchs mature, he brands them and turns them out, alerting friends across the U.S. to watch for them. One of Anderson’s butterflies turned up 1,200 miles away. But instead of clarifying the northward migration it added another enigma by flying cross-country and winding up almost directly west of Dallas. (Life, May 24, 1954)
Anderson died at the age of 91, having spent the bulk of his long life engrossed in the study of his beloved Monarch butterflies. This excerpt from a 1955 interview shows a glimpse of the wonder and enthusiasm that kept him fascinated by the butterflies his entire life:
“Just at dusk on Oct. 26, the wind shifted to the north with a velocity of 15 MPH. It brought in a huge cloud of Monarchs riding ahead of the cool front. The cloud changed into the shape of a tremendous, brown, moving carpet of unusual surging design. A signal from some leader or leaders in the great flight designated a grove of our hackberry trees as the resting place for the night. Down came the flying carpet of thousands of butterflies. And in a few minutes every twig was bent by the weight of Monarchs. They took off in small groups the next morning, leaving our Dallas hackberries bare of leaves.” (DMN, May 3, 1955)
Thanks, Carl. I wish I’d known you.
**
Below, a short clip from Oct. 1973 featuring an interview with Carl Anderson by Arch Campbell of Channel 8 News (Campbell mistakenly refers to the park as being Tenison Park — it is Lake Cliff Park).
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Sources & Notes
Color photo of Carl Anderson by John Dominis(Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image). It is from the same session that produced the slightly different black and white image featured in Life magazine.
The profile of Anderson (which includes the text and photos reproduced above) appeared in the May 24, 1954 issue of Life; it can be accessed here.
The Channel 8 film clip is from the WFAA Collection, G. William Jones Film & Video Collection, Hamon Arts Library, SMU; the direct YouTube link is here.
Read another profile of Anderson from the Bakersfield Californian, “Lepidopterist Traces Branded Butterflies” (July 11, 1949), here.
A bunch of Monarch butterfly sources:
“The Monarch Butterfly’s Annual Cycle” from the Monarch Butterfly Fund, is here.
“The Monarch Butterfly Journey North News,” a regularly updated blog on the current (overwintering/leading-up-to-Spring 2105) migration, is here.
A regularly updated map of Monarch sightings (currently at Winter 2015, showing Monarchs warming up in the bullpen along the Texas coast) is here.
An animated map of 2014’s Spring migration is here. UPDATE: An animated map of the Fall/Winter 2015 migration is here.
“Monarch Butterflies Could Gain Endangered Species Protection,” from the Scientific American blog, is here. (“Populations of the iconic and beloved Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus plexippus) have dropped an astonishing 96.5 percent over the past few decades, from an estimated 1 billion in the mid-1990s to just 35 million in early 2014.”)
Information on the Monarch butterfly conservation program — and some beautiful photographs — can be found on the World Wildlife Fund site, here.
Keep your eyes peeled — they’ll be on their way soon
Oh, the Fifties… (click for larger image) (DeGolyer Library, SMU)
by Paula Bosse
Ralph and Potsie are just out of frame.
I love these girls’ faces. And hair!(click for larger image)
And their shoes!
The Big Men on Campus appear to be enjoying the attention.
That print is kind of … busy. Is it a cowboy motif? Are those horses? Is that Peruna?!
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Photo titled “Gazing Adoringly,” 1958, from the collection of the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; photo can be viewed here.
UPDATE:Yes, the photo does look odd, doesn’t it? Thanks to a commenter on the Flashback Dallas Facebook page, I now realize that this is a strange superimposition of separate images. The fountain is much closer to Dallas Hall, and the image of the students at the fountain has been superimposed over a long shot up Bishop Blvd., with Dallas Hall way in the distance. I’m pretty sure this photo originated at SMU — it might have appeared in a yearbook or promotional material for the university. Or maybe someone was just having fun in the darkroom. If anyone knows more about this photo — or who any of the students are — let me know!
Even if you had no idea who the man with the glasses was, this would be an attention-grabber of a photo. But if you do happen to recognize the man as international fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent, then it’s even more of an attention-grabber. Yes, that is 22-year-old Yves Saint Laurent, head of the legendary House of Dior.
…In a pasture with a longhorn steer.
…Wearing a Stetson (or something Stetson-like).
..In Carrollton, Texas! What could be more unexpectedly perfect?
The UPI/Telephoto caption:
9/5/58-DALLAS: Yves-Mathieu Saint Laurent, 22-year-old master of the House of Dior, got a taste of Texas tradition on his first trip to the US. Saint Laurent, in Dallas to receive an award from Neiman-Marcus, stopped off at a cattle ranch near here before departing for France and was presented a Texas-style hat and introduced to a real “Texas Longhorn” steer.
YSL (who had not yet jettisoned the “Mathieu”) was the wunderkind fashion designer who — at the unbelievable age of 21 — had succeeded Christian Dior as Dior’s head designer. His first collection was a hit, and he was 1958’s fashion superstar.
That was the year that YSL was invited to Dallas by Stanley Marcus to receive the 21st Annual Neiman-Marcus Fashion Exposition Award — known throughout the industry as the “Fashion Oscar.”
He has had many offers to come to America to accept awards but the Dallas honor was the only one he accepted. He had a sentimental reason. His late master, Christian Dior, came to Dallas to accept the Neiman-Marcus award in 1947 after he had created the New Look in his second collection. (Dallas Morning News, Sept. 4, 1958)
While in Dallas, the young Saint Laurent — whom the fashion editor of The Dallas Morning News described as looking “like a serious young man who might be coming to enroll at SMU” — soaked up a little local color: he was taken to the Orleans Room downtown to see the Dixieland jazz band The Chain Gang, and — apparently at his request — he was taken to a Texas ranch.
Saint Laurent had been quite keen to see a real Texas ranch, so Stanley Marcus’ son Richard took him out to the nearby Josey Rancho — the large ranch owned by Dallas oilmen brothers Clint and Don Josey in then-rural Carrollton. The fashionably dressed, Cartier-watch-wearing dudes took a bumpy ride in a pickup truck across the large ranch, and there was much gawking of longhorn cattle and herds of buffalo. YSL seems to have enjoyed himself and must have found the whole thing very “Texan”: he got closer to a longhorn than I’d ever get (and he squatted like a real cowboy!), he watched some calf roping, and he ate some barbecue. And he was probably the most stylishly-dressed visitor the ranch ever had (there aren’t a lot of tailored suits and French cuffs out on the lone prairie).
He headed back to Paris later that afternoon with, I’m sure, plenty of exotic stories to share with those back at the atelier. He also had a new hat. And maybe some indigestion.
Top photo by UPI/Telephoto. This wire photo is from the collection of my old friend Eric Swecker. Thank you for use of this fantastic photo, Eric!
Photo of longhorns at the Josey Rancho from a trade magazine called The Lufkin Line (Jan./Feb., 1956). Photo of Josey Rancho buffalo and the aerial photo are from the book Carrollton by Toyia Pointer, with photo credit given to Linda Sollinger; more on the book here. More information on the ranch from the book is here.
More on YSL’s visit can be found in the Dallas Morning News article “N-M Awardees Get Glimpse of Texas” by Gay Simpson (DMN, Sept. 6, 1958).
“When Coco Chanel Came To Dallas — 1957” — my post about Mlle. Chanel’s visit to Dallas to accept the previous year’s Neiman-Marcus award — is here. (Let’s hope Saint Laurent liked the BBQ more than Coco did.)
From plow company to Dallas’ most famous building (click to enlarge)
by Paula Bosse
Behold, the Southern Rock Island Plow Company building. Looks familiar? Perhaps “Texas School Book Depository” is an easier hook to hang your hat on. When Dallas seemed to be farm implement-central, there were numerous plow companies in business here. This is the second Southern Rock Island Plow Co. building — the first one (built in the same location around 1898) burned down when it was struck by lighting. The building that still stands was built in 1903, and it is, without question, the most famous building in Dallas. …And it’s probably not that far behind the Alamo.
1908
1914
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Sources & Notes
Ad from the 1908 city directory.
Photo from the Building, Plumbing, Gas & Electrical Laws of the City of Dallas (1914).
More on the history of the Dallas branch of the Southern Rock Island Plow Co. can be found here.
For more about what’s going on with the building these days, see the Dallas Morning News article “Dallas County May Move Offices Out of Historic School Book Depository” by Matthew Watkins, here.
For more on the various incarnations of the building (which, by the way, is officially called the County Administration Building and which now houses county offices as well as the Sixth Floor Museum), see my previous post, “The Sexton Foods Building and the Former Life of the School Book Depository,” here.
Food, fashion, & the unmistakable whiff of Old Money (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
Two cool and sophisticated postcards from the cool and sophisticated Neiman-Marcus (although it’s debatable whether the truly cool and sophisticated N-M shopper would, in fact, mail anyone something as bourgeois as a postcard of a department store, Neiman-Marcus or not). Perhaps these were done up for the sizable tourist trade. I love these cards. Commercial art of this period is wonderful.
The description on the back reads: “One of the great dining spots of the Southwest … N-M’s famed ZODIAC ROOM. The superlative food specialties of Director Helen Corbitt and her staff are enjoyed during modeling of fashions a la Neiman-Marcus at luncheon and dinner. Also, tea served daily.”
Below, the Carriage Entrance:
(click for larger image)
The description: “‘The Carriage Entrance’ — famous passageway into one of the world’s great specialty stores.”
And another (I’d love to see the whole series of these postcards.) Sadly, no description on this one, featuring a fashionable escalator.
I fear I shall never reach the level of swan-like sophistication needed to become an habitué of The Zodiac Room. Tant pis.
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I have no idea where these postcards came from. I’m not sure of the date, either, but … “1950s”? Maybe very early 1960s? Let’s go with “Mid-Century” — everyone loves that! Whenever this was, this was a period when fashion was chic and fabulous. As was Neiman-Marcus. (I still miss that hypen!)
Need to make a reservation at The Zodiac? Info is here.
Happy First Anniversary, y’all! Fire up the klieg lights!
by Paula Bosse
Flashback Dallas is one year old today!
When I started this blog a year ago, it was mainly just for myself, because I thought it would be fun and a good writing exercise — and because so many of my friends had said over the years that I should do a Dallas history blog. And now, 388 posts (!) later, I can say without hesitation, that this has been one of the most personally entertaining and fulfilling things I’ve ever done. I’ve had fun writing every single post, and I hope my enthusiasm in reporting on the big and small of Dallas history has been apparent.
I’ve been so happy at the response. I’m really not very good at promoting myself, but, hell, it’s an anniversary, so, clumsily, here’s a patting-myself-on-the-back list of people or organizations who have graciously profiled, cited, or high-fived Flashback Dallas in the past year:
The Dallas Morning News (thank you, Robert Wilonsky, Alan Peppard, Mark Lamster, and Rudy Bush!)
The Dallas Observer (thank you, Lauren Smart and Eric Nicholson!)
D Magazine (thank you, Tim Rogers!)
The Ticket, Sportsradio 1310 (thank you, Orphanage guys!)
Candy’s Dirt (thank you Candy Evans!)
The State Fair of Texas
The DeGolyer Library, SMU
American Institute of Architects, Dallas Chapter
And all the bloggers who have linked to me or cited me!
And thanks especially to you, the reader! I’m thrilled that so many people have taken the time to email me and to read, reply to, “like,” and share my posts. After my first year, I have over 2,500 followers across social media (a small number for some, maybe, but for me … this would have been unimaginable a year ago) — and it’s interesting to note that the readers of Flashback Dallas cross all ethnic, socioeconomic, political, and perhaps most heartening, AGE lines.
I don’t consider myself a historian so much as a researcher who likes to write about things I find personally entertaining. Chances are if I find something interesting, someone else will, too. Life is too short to suffer through dull and dry historical accounts of events that were probably pretty interesting and lively when they happened.
I’ve learned more about my hometown this past year than I have in all the years leading up to it. Thanks so much to everyone for such a fun year!
SMU football star Doak Walker in an ad from Boys’ Life, Oct. 1955
by Paula Bosse
Dr. Thomas M. Marietta (1910-1995), a Dallas dentist, devised a startlingly new invention in 1947: a specially-made facemask. Initially, the mask was created to protect the face of a Dallas hockey player who had recently sustained a broken nose and would have been unable to play without a mask for fear of further injury. Marietta’s creation was a success — not only did the player get back on the ice, but tentative inquiries from other sports teams began to trickle in. But what changed everything were the masks he made for TCU’s star quarterback Lindy Berry, who had suffered a broken jaw, and Texas A&M’s fullback Bob Smith, who had a badly broken nose. Without the odd-looking masks that protected their entire faces, they would not have been able to play out the seasons. The masks were an unqualified success, and the doc went commercial.
Dr. Marietta (Marion Ohio Star, Nov. 22, 1951 — full article is here)
In 1951, football players did not generally wear facemasks. It was commonplace for players to rack up a dizzyingly large number of injuries such as broken and dislocated jaws and noses, knocked-out teeth, facial lacerations, major bruising, concussions, etc. An article appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Aug. 31, 1951 describing what this whole facemask thing was about and how the Texas Aggies were about to try a revolutionary experiment by equipping “possibly half of the A&M team” with Dr. Marietta’s newfangled masks. Coach Ray George approved a trial test of the masks, saying that his primary concerns were reduction of facial injuries, elimination of head injuries, and improvement of athletic performance. A&M’s trainer, Bill Dayton, predicted that the wearing of facemasks would become universal among players in the coming years.
Many head injuries happen as the result of a player ducking his head. We believe that by the use of this face gear we can eliminate head ducking, and our players will see where they are going. When they watch their opponents, they are able, by reflective action, to keep their heads out of the way. (A&M trainer Bill Dayton, DMN, Aug. 31, 1951)
The various incarnations of the Marietta Mask over the next couple of decades were used in various sports by children, by college athletes, and by professionals. Dr. Marietta patented several designs for masks and helmets and had a lucrative manufacturing business for many years. In 1977 the business was sold, and the Marietta Corp. became Maxpro, a respected name in helmets.
Football and hockey will always be extremely physical sports with the very real possibility of injury, and though there’s need for further improvement, Dr. Marietta’s invention helped lower the danger-level quite a bit. Thanks to a mild-mannered dentist from Dallas, a lot of athletes over the years managed to avoid all sorts of nasty head and facial injuries. Thanks, doc.
Joe Perry photo from HelmetHut. To see some pretty wacky versions of early masks from a Marietta catalog, see images from HelmetHut.com, here.
Read the following newspaper articles:
“Mask Maker: Dentist Helped Wolves Win Title (Abilene Reporter-News, Nov. 29, 1950) — regarding the Colorado City (TX) Wolves and their injured player, Gerald Brasuell, the team’s tackle who wore Dr. Marietta’s mask and was able to play despite having a triple-fracture to his jaw, here
“Broken Jaw Protection: Doctor’s Face Mask Enables Injured Gridders To Play” (Marion, Ohio Star, Nov. 22, 1951), here
To see several of Marietta’s patents (including abstracts and drawings), see them on Google Patents, here.
And to read an interesting and entertaining history of the football facemask (and I say that as someone who isn’t really a sports person), check out Paul Lukas’ GREAT piece “The Rich History of Helmets,” here. (If nothing else, it’s worth it to see the cool-but-kind-of-weird-and-scary, crudely-fashioned, one-of-a-kind facemask made out of barbed wire wrapped in electrical tape!)
And because a day without Wikipedia is like a day without sunshine, the facemask/face mask wiki is here.
Frank Joseph Hengy was born in Germany in 1850. He immigrated to the United States in 1873, and in about 1880 he made his way to Dallas with a wife and children and established himself as a prosperous buyer and seller of scrap metal and other assorted “junk.” He also owned and operated a foundry, producing amongst other things, sash weights. In the 1894 city directory, there were exactly two “junk dealers” listed, which is surprising, seeing as Dallas was a sizable place in 1894 — there must have been a lot of bottles, rags, bones, sacks, paper, iron, brass, copper, and zinc lying around all over the place, just waiting to be hauled away.
Souvenir Guide to Dallas, 1894
F. J. “Joe” Hengy’s junkyard (and adjacent residence) was at Griffin and Ashland, right next to the M K T Railway tracks. He advertised in the newspapers constantly and was apparently THE man to sell your junk to. His name even made its way into the minutes of an 1899 city council meeting, when, during the discussion on how the city was going to pay for the shipping of a Spanish cannon that had been captured in Cuba and had been given to the city as a war trophy, a councilman asked sarcastically, “What will Hengy give for it?” (Dallas Morning News, Aug. 5, 1899).
But, seriously, got junk? Call Hengy. Got tons of it? By god, he wants it. A couple of examples of the endless ads placed over the years — two ads, 12 years apart (the 1887 one getting his first initial wrong).
DMN, Aug. 24, 1887
DMN, Oct. 22, 1899
In the mid-1890s, Joe took his son Louis on as a partner, which, in retrospect, was probably not a good idea, because it wasn’t long before Joe found himself in the middle of years and years of lawsuits: father against son, son against father, father and associates against son, son and associates against father, etc. Not only was he constantly being sued by his son, he was also sued for divorce … twice … by the same woman. He turned around and sued her for custody of their youngest children (and won). She sued him for the business when he was threatening to sell it and retire. He sued her back for something or other. And on and on and on.
Not only was Joe spending all his non-junk-hauling time traipsing about courthouses, but he also found the time to suffer the occasional partial destruction of buildings on his property — twice by fire and once by the massive flood of 1908. The fires were suspicious (the flood was not).
Then there was the time he was charged with the crime of mailing an obscene letter (I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that it was probably a letter sent to his wife — or maybe ex-wife by that point — who was in the midst of suing him and their son). Even though this was a potentially serious federal offense, he was ordered to pay only a small fine for “misuse of the mails.” He was also charged at one point with “receiving and concealing stolen property,” but I’m not sure that got past a grand jury investigation, and one might wonder if there wasn’t some sort of “set-up” by aggrieved relatives involved. It was something new anyway. Probably broke up the monotony a little bit.
But the thing that seems to have been Hengy’s biggest headache and was probably the root of most of the lawsuits filed BY him and AGAINST him concerned property he owned which had been condemned in the name of eminent domain by the M K T Railway. The condemnation was disputed, the appraisal of land value was disputed, the question of which Hengy actually owned the land was disputed, etc.
By the end of 1913, Joe Hengy had been engaged in at least 10 years of wall-to-wall litigation. He moved to Idaho at some point, remarried, started another business, and, finally, died there in 1930. Let’s hope his later years were lawsuit-free.
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Hengy’s business and residence (which was, surprisingly, right next door to his litigious son) was at 2317 Griffin, very close to the present-day site of the Perot Museum. (Full map circa 1900, here.) (Click for larger image.)
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Lastly, two odd, interesting tidbits.
Joe Hengy took time out from junk and courtrooms to invent new and improved … suspenders! I’m not sure exactly what was so revolutionary about them, but a patent was granted in 1912 — you can read the abstract here, and see them in all their suspendery glory here. (With so much foundry and scrap metal know-how, you’d think he’d go in a more … I don’t know … anvil direction or something.)
And, then there’s this — a kind of sad ad for a tonic called “Sargon” with a testimonial from Mrs. Ollie Hengy, the no doubt long-suffering wife of perennial plaintiff/defendant Louis Hengy. “Was On Verge of Breakdown.” I don’t doubt it! (Incidentally, Ollie and Louis divorced the same year this advertisement appeared in Texas newspapers. Maybe that stuff did work.)
1929
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Sources & Notes
Top ad from Dallas’ 1890 city directory.
Sargon ad appeared in The Vernon Daily Record, Sept. 6, 1929. More on the quack tonic Sargon here.
Sources for other clippings and images as noted.
Lastly, an interesting article that answers the questions “Why was the scrap metal game profitable?” and “Just where did all that metal GO, anyway?” can be found in the article “Many Uses for Junk: How Wornout and Discarded Metal is Utilized,” originally published in The Brooklyn Citizen in 1899; it can be read here. I’m nothing if not exhaustive.
A 1940 lithograph by one of my favorite Dallas artists, Charles Bowling (1891-1985). I don’t know if this trailer park was in Dallas, but I certainly hope so.
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This lithograph is in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, a gift of A. H. Belo Corporation and The Dallas Morning News. More info can be found at the DMA website, here.
Biographical information on Bowling can be found here.
Skyscraper vs. paper hat (click for much larger image)
(click for larger image)
Josey Rancho
1908
1914
Oct. 1954 (©Bettmann/CORBIS)
Souvenir Guide to Dallas, 1894
DMN, Aug. 24, 1887
DMN, Oct. 22, 1899
1929
Flashback : Dallas 