Flashback : Dallas

March 27, 2014

O, Fritatos, We Hardly Knew Ye — 1936

“Another Load of Pampered Potatoes”

by Paula Bosse

Hey! Did you know that the Frito Company also made potato chips for a while? They were called “Fritatos” and they were introduced in 1935. Here’s one of their snazzy-looking trucks making a much-appreciated snack delivery to Fair Park during the Centennial Exposition in 1936.

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Sources & Notes

Photo of the “pampered potatoes” truck from Kaleta Doolin’s wonderful book about the family business, Fritos Pie: Stories, Recipes, and More (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2011).

March 27, 2014

“How to Use Central Expressway” — 1949

by Paula Bosse

It got only to Fitzhugh from downtown at this point, but the freeway concept was new enough that Dallas drivers needed some instruction on how to use Central Expressway. Cute.

Cuter still, the dedication ceremony. It included the singing of — what else? — “Old Man River,” the Pledge of Allegiance, some sort of aerial fly-over, and, of course, square dancing (two square dances, one for white dancers, one for black). Oh, and the mayor’s wife christened the expressway with a bottle of cologne. (How much more Dallas can you get?) (Many of the images and articles below are larger when clicked.)

The opening ceremonies were covered extensively by the local papers. My favorite tidbit from the coverage was a quote by Mayor Wallace Savage on how the new highway will psychologically benefit the city’s drivers. His hope and expectation is that driving along Central Expressway will make drivers “more relaxed when they get home from the office, and in a better mood when they get to the office from home.” Again, cute.

central_opening_haskins_briscoe-ctr1

Above, Neal Mancill, Chairman of the Highway Committee of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce. Photo by Squire Haskins.

central_opening_haskins_briscoe-ctr2

The segregated celebration had black celebrants in one area and white celebrants in another. Photo by Squire Haskins.

central_opening_haskins_briscoe-ctr3

Mrs. Fred Wemple, wife of the Chairman of the Texas Highway Commission, cutting the ribbon on a miniature replica of Central Expressway. Photo by Squire Haskins.

But back to the lesson. THIS is how you use Central Expressway — just follow the arrows! The two halves of the larger map above are here magnified (click!) to more easily facilitate wistful inspection of an artifact from a simpler time when the city looked forward to experiencing a calm, restful, non-stop drive along the Central Expressway.

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To peruse the entire pamphlet titled Central Expressway… San Jacinto to Fitzhugh, Dedication August 19, 1949 (Dallas: Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 1949), click here.

Photos by Squire Haskins from the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

Postcard from a photo by Squire Haskins (click to see GIGANTIC image).

When in doubt, click pictures to see if images are larger.

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March 26, 2014

Cattle King C. C. Slaughter Really Knew How to Customize His Ride — 1912

slaughter_car_1912_caption_greene

by Paula Bosse

C. C. Slaughter (1837-1919) was known for being a rich cattleman, a rich Baptist, and one of Dallas’ richest pioneer businessmen. He was also pretty rich. He owned over a million acres of ranchland and more than 40,000 head of cattle. After health problems necessitated that he turn over management of his cattle interests to others, Slaughter moved his family to Dallas in 1873 and eased into the sweet life of a wealthy banker. Much of his money went to Baptist causes, including a contribution covering two-thirds of the cost of the construction of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. He was also a major investor in what became Baylor Hospital.

All of that accomplishment, and my favorite thing about Slaughter (“Lum” to his friends) is the tricked-out Packard with a built-in toilet. A. C. Greene — who wrote the caption to the photograph above — seems to have been fascinated by this as well, as he mentions it yet again, 25 years later in another book (with an added amusing tidbit about Slaughter’s response to the Baylor people on their wanting to name the hospital after him):

slaughter_portrait

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Sources & Notes

Top photo and caption from Dallas, The Deciding Years by A. C. Greene (Austin: Encino Press, 1973).

Passage of text on Slaughter from Sketches from the Five States of Texas by A. C. Greene (College Stateion: Texas A&M University Press, 1998).

The Handbook of Texas entry detailing the impressive life of Slaughter can be found here.

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March 25, 2014

City Park Skating Rink — 1906

Don’t miss the “artistic skating” exhibition…

by Paula Bosse

CITY PARK RINK
Morning Session for Beginners.Special Attraction for Friday and Saturday
G. S. Monohan, champion fancy and trick skater of the Pacific Coast.
A wonderful exhibition of artistic skating Friday and Saturday afternoons and nights at 4 and 9 o’clock.
The admission fee of 15¢ will be charged all spectators and skaters for these four performances.
Tickets at Kramer’s Cigar Store.

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Sources & Notes

Ad from the Dallas Morning News, March 14, 1906.

An article by Michael V. Hazel about the short-lived Old City Rink is here. (Legacies has covered absolutely EVERYTHING!)

March 25, 2014

City Hospital, a Pump Station, and the County Jail — 1894

Hospital, pump house, jail (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

From 1894, an odd grouping of buildings: the City Hospital, a Dallas Waterworks Pumping House, and the Dallas County Jail. From a distance of 120 years, they’re all rather pleasant-looking, a word that would never be used to describe their 21st-century institutional counterparts. I wondered how many of the buildings had made it to the 20th century. Happily, they all did.

City Hospital opened in May of 1894 at Maple and Oak Lawn (it later became known as Parkland Hospital, the name coming from the 17 acres of land it occupied that had originally been planned as a city park). Here it is in about 1903, as a patient arrives in a horse-drawn ambulance. This wooden building was replaced in 1913 by the brick building that — yay! — still stands (in amongst its recent expansion and expansion and expansion by real estate mogul Crow the younger).

I looked all over for a later photograph of the “pumping station” but was unable to find a definite photo. I knew that it was built after the original pump house at Browder’s/Browder Springs in City Park and before the one now housing the Sammons Center for the Arts and the one at White Rock Lake. I think it might be this one, the Turtle Creek station, shown above during the devastating 1908 flood. If this is the same pump station, it looks as if there was quite a bit of expansion to this structure, too.

Dallas Morning News, Feb. 4, 1914

The building that changed the most from the pristine structure in the original 1894 photo was the Dallas County Jail, which was located at Houston and Jackson streets. Built in 1881, it was 13 years old in the original photograph. By the time it was 33 years old, it was almost unrecognizable, as can be seen (…sort of) in this photo, even with the horrible resolution. The jail had to keep expanding to keep up with demand and became a hulking mess. In the first decade of the century, reports began to appear in the newspapers of the deplorable conditions of the old jail and demands were made to improve conditions for prisoners. A new jail was built and the old one was auctioned off to the the Union Terminal Company which demolished the building in 1916, as the finishing touches were put on its Union Station, mere steps away from the former jail.

DMN, May 23, 1916

UPDATE: Thanks to reader M.C. Toyer, I have a couple of really great photos of the Old County Jail!

I’m not sure of the date of the one above, but the one below (such a great photo!) is dated 1915, the year the Old County Jail was finally emptied of its inmates, and a year before it was demolished.

Thanks for the great photos, MC!

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Original photograph of the three buildings is by Clifton Church and appeared in his wonderful book Dallas, Texas Through a Camera (Dallas, 1894).

The photo of the ambulance in front of City Hospital is from the UT Southwestern Archives, with another photo of the same period here. A collection of newspaper articles on the hospital’s early history is here. An article on the City Hospital that pre-dated this one, with some harrowing descriptions of medical care in Dallas in 1875 is here.

The flooded Turtle Creek pump station is from the Dallas Municipal Archives. Other photos of this station can be seen here.

Bottom two photos of the Old County Jail sources are as captioned.

For more photos on the Dallas Waterworks/Turtle Creek Pump Station/Water Filtration Plant, see a later post of mine, here.

Click photos to enlarge.

3 Comments

March 24, 2014

Alexandre Hogue and the Lost “Dead Eye Dick” Bookplate — 1927

by Paula Bosse

I am a huge fan of the paintings and prints by the Dallas Nine group, and Alexandre Hogue — one of the members of the group — has always been one of my favorite artists. I stumbled across this early, uncharacteristic work by him last night while looking for something else. I was browsing though a digital bookplate collection (…as one does…), and when I saw the thumbnail image of this western scene, I wondered who had drawn it. The citation had no artist attribution and noted merely that it was produced for the University Club of Dallas. As I have a background in rare books and Texas art, I thought I might know the artist, so I checked the signature. I never expected this drawing to have been done by Alexandre Hogue.

The bookplate was executed by Hogue for the University Club, a group whose well-heeled and literate members met in a tony downtown penthouse. It was done in 1927 when Hogue was working as an art instructor at the Dallas YWCA; his own work had begun to attract positive critical attention, but he had yet to make a big splash. I’ve checked various sources, but I don’t see mention anywhere of Hogue doing this sort of thing. Was he commissioned? Did he do it on spec, hoping to possibly network with influential members and perhaps improve his chances of showing his work there? Whatever his reason, things seem to have paid off, because he was showing his art at the club and participating in group shows there by 1928.

So here it is, art-lovers, a heretofore mostly (if not totally) unknown piece of Alexandre Hogue-iana from 1927 — a little piece of anonymous ephemera which has been stashed away for years in a bookplate collection in Illinois.

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Sources & Notes

This bookplate is from the John Starr Stewart Ex Libris Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It can be seen here.

If you are unfamiliar with Alexandre Hogue’s work, see here for a few examples of his work as well as those of his fellow Dallas Nine artists.

Also, there is a show featuring Hogue’s works currently on at the Dallas Museum of Art. For details see here.

And a short, informative video, presented by Susan Kalil, author of Alexandre Hogue: An American Visionary, can be viewed here.

Another uncharacteristic example of Hogue’s work, is the incredible “Calligraphic Tornado” (1970), which I’ve posted here.

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March 24, 2014

Leaving Dallas on the Katy Flyer — ca. 1914

by Paula Bosse

Who doesn’t love kitschy novelty photos? These “Leaving Dallas on the Katy Flyer” snapshots don’t disappoint with their cartoony backdrops — like something you’d see along a seaside boardwalk.

The people above are not identified, but, below, it’s a bunch of Order of Railroad Telegraphers union bigwigs. They probably had a wild time in Dallas. One or two of them look like they might be nursing a hangover.

And just where was the point of departure from Big D for these Katy Flyer travelers? From the beautiful MKT passenger depot, formerly holding down the rails at Ross and Market.

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Sources & Notes

Top “real photo postcard” is from the J. L. Patton Collection, Dallas Historical Society.

Second photo was found on a postcard website.

Third photo is from eBay.

“O.R.T. General Committee” photo from — what else? — an issue of The Railroad Telegrapher (Feb. 1914).

Photo of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas depot is another real photo postcard, found on eBay.

See another Katy Flyer post — “M-K-T Railroad’s ‘Katy Flyer Route’ — 1902” — here.

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 21, 2014

Peruna, via Neiman-Marcus, a la Andy Warhol — 1965

“Great galloping Perunas … it’s a mechanical horse!”

by Paula Bosse

You’re a parent of comfortable financial standing who graduated from SMU. What do you get the future Mustangs in your life? You get them a mechanical Peruna!

Great galloping Perunas … it’s a mechanical horse!

The most amazing just-pretend horse in all the world.

He canters, turns left, turns right, all with just a flick of the reins. Peruna’s coat is silky dyed sheepskin as is his flowing all white mane and tail. He sports a cowhide saddle and bridle. Of sturdy stock, polyester and fiberglass built on a steel frame, Peruna holds up to 700 pounds. Stands 39″ high, 35″ long. An import corralled only at N-M. 150.00

Mail orders to Dallas. Add 7.00 shipping charges.

Neiman-Marcus
Dallas • Houston • Fort Worth

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Sources & Notes

I’ve had this ad for years and have no idea where I found it. I used it back in 2012 in an old advertising blog I had, so I’ll use myself as a source.

In 1965, the price of this SMU-specific toy was $150, the equivalent in 2014 money is about $1,150.

Photos of the original Peruna, the Shetland pony mascot for SMU, can be seen here.

1 Comment

March 20, 2014

Paul Jones Blended Whiskey Ad — 1950

Pairs well with bluebonnets…. (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I’m a sucker for these kinds of state maps. Look at Dallas, home of the State Fair, symbolized by a very large Zeppelin-like, blue-ribbon-bedecked bovine hovering over our fair city. I’m not sure I would have come up with that, but it’s always nice to be remembered and/or stereotyped by the fine folks on Madison Avenue.

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