Dallas TX | Flashback : Dallas

August 13, 2024

Telesign: Flashing News to Downtown Dallas — 1951

All the news that fits… on a moving sign

by Paula Bosse

Well, this is pretty interesting.

Once upon a time, downtown Dallas had one of those moving “tickertape” electronic news message signs. It debuted on the exterior of the First National Bank (and part of an adjacent building) at Main and Akard on December 11, 1951. It was Dallas’ version of the famous New York Times news-ticker-bulletin sign (“the Zipper”) in Times Square. The sign was comprised of 3,136 light bulbs; the crawling, flashing letters were 30 inches high, and the sign stretched 190 feet, with the moving message bending around the bank building. The “hot news” could be really “hot” — like only minutes old, unlike the NYT sign, which could take hours to get a constantly repeating message up and running. The sign flashed the news to downtown passersby from 7:30 AM until 10:30 PM.

This “traveling-message” sign was the creation of Irving Naxon, of the Naxon Telesign Corporation of Chicago. (Naxon, a prolific inventor, is perhaps best known as the man who introduced the Crock Pot slow cooker to the world.) See the 1929 patent application for his “traveling-message sign” here.

How did it work? Briefly, United Press wire copy received in the WFAA newsroom was punched onto a paper ribbon and then fed into a transmitter. Theoretically, a hot-off-the-wire newsflash could be racing across the Main Street sign in the amount of time it would take to type the message — seconds. (Read more about it the article at the bottom of this post.)

There is silent footage from December 1951 of the Telesign in action, with shots of inventor Irving Naxon demonstrating how his system works: see the WBAP-TV footage on the Portal to Texas History website here. (The accompanying news script is here.)

I don’t know how long this sign was operational, but I have a feeling it wasn’t very long — but at least through 1953. Imagine how frequently those 3,000 light bulbs burned out and had to be replaced! I had never heard of this sign — or seen photos of it — so this was a very interesting little discovery.

Dallas magazine, Dec. 1951

A 1953 ad for Federal Signs:

Dallas magazine, Jan. 1953

A couple of screenshots of the sign in action from a Channel 5 news clip (Dec. 12, 1951, Portal to Texas History). The first shows men in hats checking out the new sign as darkness falls:

And here’s what they were looking at:

UNT Libraries Special Collections

How it worked (click for larger image):

Dallas magazine, Dec. 1951

Excerpts from a couple of trade magazine articles:

The First National Bank in Dallas, Dallas, Texas has recently installed this telesign containing 3,136 individually controlled bulbs which form letters corresponding to those punched on tape as it is fed through a cigar-box size transmitter. Following formal dedication ceremonies, the sign flashed its first message: “UNCENSORED NEWS IS THE BASIS OF FREEDOM.”

The Telesign is operated continuously from 7:30 A.M. to 10:30 P.M., bringing to the people of Dallas, as a public service, news bulletins highlighting the latest developments in the big stories of the day, local, national and international. (Bankers Monthly, Feb. 1952)

Bank Installs Telesign: The first fast-moving line of words — “UNCENSORED NEWS IS THE BASIS OF FREEDOM: — chasing each other across First National Bank of Dallas’ new sign, echoed the dedicatory statement of President Ben H. Wooten. The telesign is operated as a community service to give downtown crowds a constant flow of news reports. Second in length only to that of the New York Times, it is believed to be the first ever installed by a bank. (Trusts and Estates, March 1953)

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo is from Bankers Monthly, Feb. 1952.

More about this can be found in the following article from the Dallas Morning News archives: “Bank Unveils Its New Telesign, Latest Word in News-Flashing” (DMN, Dec. 12, 1951).

In a related vein — as far as giant outdoor news signs downtown — check out the 2016 Flashback Dallas post “How Dallas Used to Get Election Returns.”

6 Comments

July 30, 2024

Second Presbyterian Church — 1905

Live Oak & Germania (Liberty)

by Paula Bosse

Hello! I’ve been gone for a while — the longest period of not posting here since I started 10 years ago! Life has been chaotic for the past month or two, but things have settled down a bit, and it’s good to be back.

I’m cheating a bit with this post, as it’s basically a reworking of something I put up on the Flashback Dallas Patreon page a few weeks ago, but I’m a big fan of this church building and thought I’d go ahead and share it here.

I love this building. The design is so interesting — I don’t think I’ve seen another church that looks quite like this one. It was built in 1904 (the first service was in March 1905), and the architects were Sanguinet & Staats of Fort Worth, who had designed the beautiful Wilson Building downtown a couple of years earlier.

The Second Presbyterian Church sat on the southeast corner of Live Oak and Germania (the latter street name was changed to “Liberty” during WWI, for patriotic reasons). Below is the original design, when a new building was to have been built on the church’s then-current property at the northwest corner of Wood and South Harwood — the Presbyterians sold the corner property to the Methodists not long after this drawing was published in The Dallas Morning News on Feb. 16, 1904 and decided to relocate to Old East Dallas. It’s interesting to see what changes were made to the design for the Live Oak church. (I prefer it without a steeple.) See it brand-new on a 1905 Sanborn map, here (top left).

Feb. 16, 1904 (DMN)

The article below is from June 21, 1904 (DMN):

June 21, 1904 (DMN)

See what this corner looks like now, on Google Street View, here. The building on the corner (at 2900 Live Oak) is a really, really strange-looking one. The Dallas Central Appraisal District (DCAD) says it was built in 1950. DCAD is almost always wrong with construction dates of older buildings. …But it’s so strange. Is it possible that the heart of the old Sanguinet & Staats church is still beating under all that weirdness? If so, it’s one of the oldest non-residential buildings in the neighborhood.

Google Street View, Jan. 2024

And to wrap this all up, this photo of the 1957 tornado was taken at this corner.

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo is from the booklet “Come to Dallas” (ca. 1905), DeGolyer Library, SMU Libraries — it is accessible here.

Drawing and article from The Dallas Morning News.

2 Comments

June 23, 2024

Zephyr, Meet Ox Cart — 1936

…Ox cart, meet Zephyr

by Paula Bosse

On Oct. 4, 1936, the Sam Houston Zephyr — the very first streamlined passenger train in Texas — made one of it very first public appearances, at the Texas Centennial in Dallas. This beautiful train (check out a photo of its interior here) was operated by the Burlington-Rock Island railroad between Fort Worth and Houston, with stops in Dallas, Waxahachie, Corsicana, and Teague. (See footage of it arriving it what might be Dallas in what might be 1936 in cool home movie footage here — then go to the beginning to see great Centennial footage — some of it in color! — and other footage shot in Kidd Springs.)

Back to the Zephyr. At its Centennial stop, a photo-op presented itself: the super-new (Zephyr) alongside the super-old (an ox cart). This photo ran in newspapers around the world, accompanied by variations of the following captions:

PROGRESS! Just a zephyr in the breeze is the Burlington Zephyr, particularly when compared to an ancient ox cart. The two were shown together at the Texas centennial fair at Dallas. The speedy streamliner runs from Dallas to Houston, Texas.

MARCH OF PROGRESS. An excellent contrast in the modes of transportation of today and yesterday is presented here as the Sam Houston Zephyr, streamlined train running between Dallas, Tex., and Houston, enters the grounds of the Texas Centennial exposition with an ox cart plodding along beside it. The presentation is part of the Cavalcade of Texas given at the exposition in Dallas. The girls are LaNeyl Brown and Peggy Humphreys.

From a Dallas Morning News article on the Centennial exhibit at Fair Park:

The streamlined Sam Houston Zephyr, operated between Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston by the Burlington-Rock Island, will be displayed on the siding in the grounds east of the Hall of Transportation. One of the powerful Opp Mogul freight engines of the Texas & Pacific also will be shown. To furnish a contrast with modern and ancient transportation the ox cart and stagecoach used in Cavalcade will be rolled out. (DMN, Oct. 4, 1936)

zephyr_sam-houston-zephyr_oxcart_DMN_100436_events

An interesting sidelight regarding the older modes of transportation is this blurb about the difficulty Centennial personnel had in finding authentic stagecoaches, covered wagons, and ox carts to use in various Fair Park productions celebrating the history of Texas, forcing them to resort to building reproductions (seems hard to believe that there were only two authentic stagecoaches to be found in the entire state!):

AP wire story, May 1936

The article is referring to props needed for the giant Cavalcade of Texas historical pageant, but check out the nice little novelty “prairie schooner” below, which served as a quirky, casual Centennial restaurant (“Smacking of the old West is the Chuck Wagon, a dining place for 250, with an overgrown chuck wagon serving as the kitchen and service counter” — Dallas Morning News, June 7, 1936):

Dallas Historical Society

via Worthpoint

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo was found on eBay (German wire photo).

Photo of the Chuck Wagon restaurant is from the Texas Centennial Exposition Collection, Dallas Historical Society, Object ID V.38.3.245 — more info on this photo is here.

Consider becoming a member of my Flashback Dallas Patreon page for as little as $5 a month — I post there daily. No strings attached. Cancel at any time!

3 Comments

June 17, 2024

Ulterior Flashback

A picture-perfect abattoir…

By Paula Bosse

Every couple of months I offer up a list of posts from the Flashback Dallas Patreon page — with the reminder that if you’d like to receive daily Dallas-history tidbits, please consider becoming a member, for as little as five dollars a month.

One of the posts from May concerned the unusual subject of a picture postcard: the massive Armstrong meat-packing plant in South Dallas (see it on a 1921 Sanborn map here). I’m not sure how many people would choose — or seek out — a postcard showing a slaughterhouse to send to their friends and family back home (“Having a lovely time! Wish you were here!”), but this was, verily, available for those who wanted it. (This postcard was mailed in 1921.)

Here are the topics I’ve covered recently on Patreon. You can see titles of all the posts I’ve done over the past year or so here.

MAY 2024

Butterfly Greetings from Dallas, Texas – ca. 1909
The North Texas Building, Main Street
The Oriental Hotel Welcomes the Elks – 1908
The Official Neiman-Marcus Flag – 1966
Alamo Beer, “For Mothers Who Require a Natural Tonic” – 1910
Mister Ice (The Freezit Corp. of America) – ca. 1954
Alpha Epsilon Party
Audie Murphy Book Signing at McMurray’s – 1949
Gaston Avenue Baptist Church (Domeless) – ca. 1961
Arbuckle Bros. Grain Elevators – 1899
The A. Harris Employees’ Symphony Orchestra – 1923
Elm Street, East from Lamar — ca. 1906
New Yorker Become Texas Citizen, Obtains Texas Passport – 1949
The Dallas Skyline and “Dresser Couplings” – 1947
Kids on KRLD-Channel 4
An Evening at The Chalet, Lakewood
Roger Corman, RIP
Business Section – 1928
Commerce Street Bridge During the Great Flood – 1908
Houston Street Viaduct at Night
Spider-Man and the Hulk Save the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders – 1982
Bush & Gerts/Bush Temple of Music
North from Cobb Stadium – 1957
Topper: “Tops in Eats” – ca. 1940
Fire Drill Training Tower, Fair Park – 1936
Armstrong Meat Packing Plant
David Hardie Seed Co. – 1922

APRIL 2024

Big Tex’s Big Teeth – 1962
Knox Theater/Linda Darnell – 1945
Mystery Boarding House
The Dallas-Fort Worth Pike at Chalk Hill – ca. 1920
Ernie Banks, Baseball Legend from Dallas
Nighttime Melba – 1955
Warren Beatty (et al.) in Denton – 1967
The Cloverleaf
Juliette Fowler, From the Air – 1956
A Fistful of Corny Dogs – 1979
Hello, Weekend! Hello, Schlitz!
Big D Jamboree – 1955
Northwest Highway, If You Must – 1945
Love Field Hospital – 1918
Minit-Man Automatic Car Washing Station
SMU Graduation Procession – 1919
Drink Dr Pepper for Vim, Vigor, and Vitality – 1900
Oak Cliff: Free from Mosquitoes and Malaria – 1907
Springsteen Canceled at the Sportatorium – 1974
Fooshee & Cheek Building on Gaston Avenue – 1926
Love Field Interior, Empty – 1958
Mr. Tweedy: Lovable, Hapless Sap
DP&L Substation, South Dallas — 1925
“The Coziest Gift Shop In the South” – 1912
Texas Has So. Many. Things. – 1936
Preston Road Shopping Center
Happy Anniversary: Thank You!
The Ford Building at Fair Park – 1936

***

Sources & Notes

Armstrong postcard found on eBay.

Subscribe to my Patreon page for the rock-bottom price of only five bucks a month! In return, you get a post every day. Cancel anytime! No strings attached! The page is here. Thank you!

June 16, 2024

The Cloverleaf

Behold... (via TxDOT)

by Paula Bosse

I have such a weird fondness for the old Central Expressway/Northwest Highway cloverleaf interchange, at NorthPark. In fact, I kind of forget it’s not there anymore. I have fairly scary memories of my mother driving like a bat out of hell on it. I’m pretty sure the car was tipped at an angle on two tires as we rounded those curves. And I remember being behind the wheel myself when I was a new driver, white-knuckling it until I hit the straight-away. Strange that I have such fond memories of it, because a lot of those memories were kind of terrifying! I guess it has to be the design. It was cool. COOL! The photo above is just great. The view is to the south from Northwest Highway, across open Caruth farmland. Mid-’50s. Pre-NorthPark. Pre-people. Pre-traffic.

Below, after NorthPark’s arrival (photo from Oct. 1967):

Here’s an interesting photo I stumbled across in an issue of SMU’s Daily Campus newspaper from 1951 — a personal-size cloverleaf:

SMU Daily Campus, May 5, 1951

I really miss the Northwest Highway cloverleaf. I think about it almost every time I drive past NorthPark on Central. Shoulda kept it, Dallas.

***

Sources & Notes

The top two photos are from the book Dallas-Fort Worth Freeways by Oscar Slotboom (top photo from TxDOT, second photo from UTA Libraries, Special Collections).

This post appeared in a slightly different form on the Flashback Dallas Patreon page.

patreon_cloverleaf_south_txdot_slotboom_ca-mid-1950s_color

9 Comments

June 4, 2024

KVIL: The “VIL” Stands for Village

Northeast corner of Preston & Mockingbird…

by Paula Bosse

Sewell Village Used Cars and a Mobil station were at the northeast corner of Preston and Mockingbird (Sewell was at 5460 Preston Road), catty-corner from Highland Park Village. The KVIL studios were right around the corner, at 4152 Mockingbird Lane, across the street from the Dallas Country Club — you can see the jauntily-lettered sign in the background of this undated.photo. I am really bad at determining car-model years, but let’s say this is about 1960. What does this corner look like these days? It looks like this.

I just learned (from the KVIL Wikipedia page) that the “VIL” in the station’s call letters stood for “Village,” as in Highland Park Village. Who knew? The AM station began broadcasting on March 1, 1960, and the FM station hit the airwaves on Aug. 25, 1961. I believe both stations had a strict “no-rock-and-roll” policy. In the early days, a block of programming was aimed directly at housewives:

The program policy followed by the station is designed to fit the various hours of the day. For the driving hours when listeners drive to work (5:45 to 9 a.m.) and return (4:30 to 6:55 p.m.) the music is livelier. “Sing Along” is the order of the day from 9 a.m. to noon for the housewife’s work hours. (“KVIL Mark’s First Birthday Wednesday,” Dallas Morning News, March 1, 1961)

Here are a couple of hep, caffeinated KVIL ads from those early days:

1961 ad

1962 ad

1962 logo

Most of my sort of generally vague awareness of KVIL was in the 1980s, when it was an absolute powerhouse in the ratings. But even its most stalwart fans would probably not describe its playlist as “bright,” “exciting,” or “swinging.” But look how much fun the promotions department imagined the effect on “young adults” was!

And what about Sewell Village Cadillac and its selection of “Village Fine” used cars? If circa-1960 Highland Park is going to have a used car lot, you better believe it’s going to be populated with Cadillacs. (UPDATE: Thanks to Peter K’s link in the comments, check out what appears to be the original photo by Squire Haskins, with a wider view, at the UTA Libraries website, here.)

March 1958

***

Sources & Notes

Photo from eBay.

KVIL ads from the 1961 and 1962 Highland Park High School yearbooks.

KVIL logo is a detail from an ad that appeared in the Dec. 24, 1962 issue of Broadcasting magazine.

This post appeared in an abbreviated form on the Flashback Dallas Patreon page.

9 Comments

May 29, 2024

A Few Photo Additions to Past Posts — #23

Hometown hero… (Dallas Historical Society)

by Paula Bosse

Time for another installment of whatever this is, in which I add photos I’ve recently come across to old posts on the same topic, in order to keep things together.

The photo above shows baseball great (and Dallas native) Ernie Banks, and his wife, Mollye, on a trip back to Dallas to participate in an all-star game and to be the man of the hour on Ernie Banks Day in Big D (Oct. 11, 1955). I’ve added this photo to the 2014 post “Ernie Banks: From Booker T. Washington High School to the Baseball Hall of Fame to the Presidential Medal of Freedom.” (Source: John Leslie Patton Jr. Papers, Dallas Historical Society, Object ID V.86.50.902)

Below is a somewhat odd-looking, down-at-the-heels house, as seen in 1975 — at the time, it was the HQ for community radio station KCHU. The once-palatial residence, built in 1897, was on Maple Avenue, a favorite residential street of the upper crusters. It still stands, and is, somehow, more beautiful today than it was when it was built 127 years ago. It is now Hotel St. Germain (2516 Maple). I’ve added this screenshot of a house that has seen some STUFF to a post from 2019, “The Murphy House — Maple Avenue.” (Source: screenshot and detail from footage shot in December 1975 by KERA-Channel 13, probably for their local show “Newsroom”; KERA Collection, G. William Jones Film and Video Collection, Hamon Arts Library, SMU — watch the short report about KCHU on YouTube here)

This photo shows the former Powell University prep school at Binkley and Hillcrest, across from SMU. The school was dissolved in 1927/1928. This photo is from 1931, and the old place is looking a little shaggy. Not sure what it was at that time. The building still stands (or last time I looked, anyway!). Nice to see a horse grazing on the property (in the Park Cities…). This photo has been added to 2019’s “Send Your Kids to Prep School ‘Under the Shadow of SMU’ — 1915.” (Source: Brown Book, University Park Public Library)

In 2014, I wrote about the Metzger’s Milk home delivery drivers wearing a new uniform, which included Bermuda shorts and knee socks. This was pretty shocking at the time, and it made news around the country — it was featured in Life magazine, and there was even newsreel footage. I’ve added the silent footage to the post “Metzger’s Milkmen in Bermuda Shorts — 1955.” Watch the 1-minute silent clip from 1955 here. (Source: Grinberg, Paramount, Pathe Newsreels, via Getty Images)

For those who couldn’t afford to be a member of the swanky Lakewood Country Club, the nearby Bob-O-Links course was the affordable neighborhood answer for those looking to play an affordable round of golf. This matchbook cover art has been added to 2016’s “Bob-O-Links Golf Course — 1924-1973.” (Source: eBay)

I haven’t had a Great Flood mention in a while. I’ve added this photo (a real photo postcard) to the 2015 post about a boat that served an important role in rescuing victims, “The Nellie Maurine: When a Pleasure Boat Became a Rescue Craft During the Great Trinity River Flood of 1908.” (Source: John Miller Morris collection of Texas real photographic postcards and photographs, DeGolyer Library, SMU, here)

A photo of the all-dressed-up Oriental Hotel (southeast corner of Commerce & Akard), draped in bunting and various festoonage to welcome the Elks Convention to Dallas in The Year of Our Flood 1908, is now squeezed into 2022’s “Elks-a-Plenty — 1908.” Note the woman with the parasol at the bottom right corner. (Source: eBay)

Fast-forward to 1939 and a screenshot from a fantastic bit of color (!!) film brought to our attention a few years ago by author Mark Doty and local bon vivant Robert Wilonsky (I HIGHLY encourage you to watch the short film here). It shows the legendary (to me, anyway) animated neon Coca-Cola sign which once stood at the 3-way downtown intersection of Live Oak, Elm, and Ervay. I’ve added it to “Tomorrow’s Weather at Live Oak & Elm — 1955-ish,” from 2016. (Source: screenshot from a 1939 color film — see link above to watch it)

I posted about Salih’s earlier this year, and Mark Salih, the son of co-owner Jack Salih, sent me this photo showing the interior of the restaurant and a glimpse of the carved Western mural on the walls. Owner George Salih is on the far right, and his brother Jack is next to him. I’ve added it to “Salih’s, Preston Center: 1953-1977.” (Source: Mark Salih, used with permission — thank you, Mark!)

Finally, I recently updated an old post from 2014, “Ned Riddle: Dallas Artist and Creator of ‘Mr. Tweedy.'” My parents were fans of the Mr. Tweedy single-panel comic that appeared in newspapers around the country, and I used to read those little books over and over. Poor Mr. Tweedy. Nothing ever went right for him! I added this panel to the post. (Source: somewhere online — the panel appeared in newspapers on Nov. 5, 1969)

That should do it for now!

banks-ernie_wife-mollye-ector-banks_101155_patton-collection_DHS

4 Comments

May 22, 2024

Rudolph Gunner: Dallas Bookseller and Emperor Maximilian’s “Best Friend”

238 Main, circa 1894

by Paula Bosse

For the past several years, I’ve been posting bookstore-related posts on the birthday of my late father, Dick Bosse, an antiquarian bookseller who began his career straight out of SMU at The Aldredge Book Store, a literary landmark to many, which he eventually ended up owning. This year’s offering goes back to 19th-century Dallas.

Above is a photo of the bookstore owned by Austrian immigrant Rudolph Gunner, located at 238 Main (later 1006 Main), between Poydras and Martin. Gunner (1833-1911) had, perhaps, one of the most impressive and colorful historical pedigrees of any Dallas resident. He served in the Austrian navy all over the world, but his most important service was as confidante and aide-de-camp to Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota of Mexico in the 1860s. That story is too big to tell here (Wikipedia is here to help), but it’s interesting that a man who was often referred to as “Maximilian’s best friend” eventually wound up in Dallas in 1885 and opened a bookstore, first on Elm Street, later on Main.

My father had a fascination with Mexico and used to talk about Maximilian quite a bit. I wonder if he knew Maximilian’s right-hand man lived out his days in Dallas, having spent several years as a bookseller?

Dallas city directory, 1896

In a sidenote, Gunner mentioned in several interviews that he had a LOT of historical documents and souvenirs from his military career serving in the Crimea, Egypt, Africa, and, especially, Mexico. I winced when I read this passage from an article by A. C. Greene in The Dallas Morning News (“Bookstore Owner Once Was Colorful General — He Headed Maximilian’s Mexico Palace Guard.” DMN, Apr. 18, 1993):

[A]t the time of his death in 1911 [his] home was at 1506 Fitzhugh. [His wife] was still living there, with a considerable collection of historic memorabilia, books, medals and military items, when the home burned, destroying everything but Gen. Gunner’s sword with the emperor’s crest.

Wow. All of that, gone. (And to answer my question above, I’m pretty sure my father would have known this, if only because he read A. C. Greene’s columns and probably even discussed this with him on a visit to the store.)

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo by Clifton Church, from his book Dallas, Texas, through a camera: a collection of half-tone engravings from original photographs (1894) — from the DeGolyer Library, SMU, here.

Read a first-hand account of Gunner’s time in Mexico in a Dallas Morning News article from Jan. 14, 1886 here; his DMN obituary (Aug. 25, 1911) is here.

Read previous Flashback Dallas articles on Dallas bookstores here.

I would love you to join me over on Patreon, where I upload Dallas history posts daily for subscribing members (as little as $5 a month!). If you would like to support what I do, check out Flashback Dallas on Patreon.

books_rudolph-gunner_dallas-through-a-camera_1894_degolyer-lib_SMU

3 Comments

May 15, 2024

Col. McCoy’s Residence, Commerce & Lamar — 1879

McCoy homestead… (photo: Dallas Historical Society)

by Paula Bosse

Imagine the “village” of Dallas in its very, very early days. 1852. That’s when pioneer Col. John C. McCoy (1819-1897) built the very pretty frame house seen in the photograph above. It had the honor of being the first frame house built in Dallas (and, in other firsts, McCoy had the distinction of being the first practicing lawyer in Dallas).

Commerce and Lamar streets, 1879. Col. John C. McCoy, one of Dallas’ first “leading citizens,” built this house at the corner of Commerce and Lamar in 1852, and it immediately became a landmark in the village — the one frame house in a colony of log cabins. The photograph, made in 1879, shows Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Taggart, Col. John C. McCoy and Miss Eliza McCoy on the porch. Standing at the gate are Capt. John M. McCoy (nephew of Col. McCoy and brother of Mrs. Taggart) and Cora and Laura Taggart, his nieces. (Southwest Business magazine, June 1940)

See what this view looks like now, here. Sadly, the Colonel’s white fence and grove of trees are gone.

When I was looking at this photo, I thought I should check to see what it looked like on the hand-drawn map of Herman Brosius from 1872. His maps were celebrated for their incredible attention to detail. I wrote about this map in a previous post (here), and… yes! The house seen in the photo has been realistically captured in Brosius’ map. As seen below — in the center of a detail from the map — it’s right there, at the southeast corner of Commerce and Lamar (facing Lamar), just south of the Methodist church. McCoy owned the entire block, and he did not skimp on the trees.

Read about the life of Col. John C. McCoy in Sixty Years in Texas by George Jackson at the Portal to Texas History, here, and in the Handbook of Texas entry on the Texas State Historical Society site, here. He is almost as important to the history of Dallas as his business partner, John Neely Bryan.

mccoy-col-john-c_portrait_find-a-grave Col. John C. McCoy

***

Sources & Notes

Photo from the Dallas Historical Society — it and the caption appeared in Southwest Business magazine, June 1940.

Detail of “A Bird’s Eye View of the City of Dallas, Texas” (1872) by H. Brosius is from the Dallas Historical Society and can be seen in a very, very high-resolution scan on Wikimedia Commons here (click map to really zoom in on the very precise details). I wrote about this map in the 2018 post “The Bird’s-Eye View of Dallas by Herman Brosius — 1872.”

Portrait of Col. John C. McCoy from Find-a-Grave. (McCoy and his family are buried in Oakland Cemetery. More on the family can be found in a video recorded at the grave site and posted on the Facebook group Friends of Oakland Cemetery Dallas, here.)

2 Comments

May 7, 2024

On the Line at Coca-Cola — 1964

Gleaming!

by Paula Bosse

The photo above shows the sunniest factory floor I’ve ever seen. You don’t think of factories filled with sunlight, but this is what it looked like inside the new Coca-Cola bottling works at Lemmon and Mockingbird in 1964. It’s gone now (as is that UNBELIEVABLY FANTASTIC ANIMATED NEON SIGN that made me look forward to nighttime drives to Love Field). All that remains is the small syrup plant (from 1948?). (…I think it’s a syrup plant. Or a warehouse. Or something syrup-related.)

The new plant opened in June 1964. The building had floor-to-ceiling glass — I’ve read reminiscences of people who remember driving by and seeing the work going on through those huge windows. I don’t know if there was bottling work going on after dark, but here’s a grainy photo from a Dallas Power & Light ad that shows the building at night, lit up like a stage.

Dallas Power & Light ad (det), June 1964

Speaking of which, The Dallas Morning News wrote this:

The bottling room, which fronts on Lemmon, has a glass front 254 feet long and 26 feet high to provide a view of the bottling process to the passing public. (DMN, June 9, 1964)

Free show!

The woman featured in an Employers National Life Group Insurance Company ad (below), might be the same woman seen in the photo at the top. Manning her station.

Employers National Life ad (det), June 1964

And what was rolling off the automated line? Coke, Sprite, and Tab. And something called Mission (grape and orange drinks). 1,860 bottles a minute (!).

Back to the sign for a second. I haven’t invested a LOT of time in a search (but *kind of* a lot…), but I have been unable to find footage of that truly wonderful, mesmerizing neon Coca-Cola sign. Living in an age of Instagram and YouTube, we just expect to find this sort of thing quickly, without having to set aside large chunks of time to devote to searching. If YOU know where film/video of that sign might be hiding… SPEAK UP!

A couple of shots of the exterior:

April 1964

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo and last two photos are all by John Rogers and were probably taken around the time the plant began operation in mid-1964; all are from the John Rogers and Georgette de Bruchard Collection, UNT Libraries Special Collections, via the Portal to Texas History, here, here, and here.

A shorter version of this post previously appeared on the Flashback Dallas Patreon page in November 2023.

patreon_coca-cola-bottling-plant_john-rogers_portal_ca-circa-1964

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