Flashback : Dallas

A tense situation in Fair Park…

by Paula Bosse

The four-and-a-half-month Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition, held at Fair Park in 1937, was the extravagant Latin-themed follow-up to the previous year’s even more extravagant Texas Centennial celebration. A bitter disagreement about whether the reenactment of an Aztec human sacrifice would star a man or a woman pitted the Mexican Consul (who insisted on a male warrior in a bid for historical accuracy) against a profit-minded director (who just wanted a sexy, flesh-baring girl to draw the crowds). Things got pretty tense. Read about this politically-charged contretemps in the 2015 Flashback Dallas post “When a Virgin Sacrifice at Fair Park Almost Caused an International Incident — 1937,” here. One of my favorite weird slices of Dallas history.

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Copyright © 2018 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

by Paula Bosse

I love this color photo of a street-rail mishap, looking north on Record Street from inside what would one day be called Communications Center. More on the logistics can be found at the original post from 2014, “Interurban vs. Streetcar,” here.

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Copyright © 2018 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserve

by Paula Bosse

The photo above appeared in The Dallas Morning News in November, 1909, shortly after the official opening of the new buildings of the Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitarium (the name would later be changed to Baylor Hospital). The buildings seen here faced Junius Street, in Old East Dallas. See several photos and postcards of these early days at the post “Baylor Hospital — 1909-1921,” here. (Scroll down to the bottom of that page for links to read the breathlessly enthusiastic article that accompanied the photo above.)

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Copyright © 2018 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved

Standing in line for a movie, 1918… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I’m always coming across photos and information regarding subjects I’ve already written about, and sometimes I find new things I want to add to old posts.

Like the photo above. I had originally used a cropped version which I had found on the Cinema Treasures website, but this one was larger, and I found it at the original source, describing what was going on. This photo from 1918 shows (mostly) children standing in line to see a World War I-related movie at the Hippodrome Theatre, with the line reaching past the nearby Dixie Theatre. They had participated in a clever marketing strategy which encouraged school children to write essays about why the United States was at war with Germany (first prize: $20 in gold!). The photographer was standing on Elm about where Field is, looking east (which today looks like this). I’ve added this photo to the post “Three of Dallas’ Earliest ‘Photoplay Houses’ — 1906-1913.” (Source: The Moving Picture World magazine, June 22, 1918)

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Below, a nice early ad (1889) for Dallas Telegraph College. I’ve added it to the post “Start Your Brilliant Career at Dallas Telegraph College — c. 1900.” (Source: 1889 Dallas directory)

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The grand Thomas L. Marsalis house seen below was built in 1889 — the same year that the Dallas Telegraph College was setting up shop downtown. The house, built in Oak Cliff (which was not yet part of Dallas), reportedly cost $65,000 (more than $1,750,000 in today’s money); it was, apparently, never occupied, and it was under foreclosure just a few short years after its construction. I’ve added this drawing of a house that I never tire of looking at to the post “The Marsalis House: One of Oak Cliff’s ‘Most Conspicuous Architectural Landmarks.'” (Source: Dallas Morning News)

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The roots of Dallas’ Buell Planing Mill reach back to 1886 — it once sat near-ish to the old Dallas High School (aka Crozier Tech). This 1896 ad is a nice companion to a photo in the post “The Buell Planing Mill — 1901.” (Source: 1896 Dallas city directory)

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I have very fond memories of the old downtown Dallas Public Library, and I’ve always loved the building, so I was relieved to hear that the Dallas Morning News had made the long-vacant building its new HQ. This postcard of the George Dahl-designed building is pretty strange because of the depiction of the sculpture on an exterior wall  — an artwork that people either loved or loathed (I’m afraid I include myself in the latter category). It’s not the fabled “naked” figure envisioned by the artist which had caused such controversy, but it’s some weird version of sort of what the sculpture ended up looking like (here). (Postcard manufacturers have deadlines, and the finalized sculpture must not have been completed before those cards had to hit the streets.) The sculpture was titled “Youth In the Hands of God,” and if those are the hands of God, um…. I’ve added this postcard image to the post “George Dahl’s Sleek Downtown Library — 1955″ — mostly for my own amusement. (Source: “the internet”)

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As one might imagine, my blog gets tons of JFK assassination-related hits — simply because I write about Dallas history. Assassination-ologists are often more interested in arcane aspects of Dallas history that those of use who actually grew up and/or live here. One such post that continues to get more hits than it might actually warrant (not that the subject isn’t interesting, but it’s not THAT interesting) is the awkwardly titled “Nardis of Dallas: The Fashion Connection Between ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ and the Kennedy Assassination.” (Nardis was a Dallas garment manufacturer who had in its employ for many years one Mr. Abraham Zapruder. And, yes, there actually was a Dick Van Dyke Show connection.) ANYWAY, I’m adding these two late-’50s/early-’60s Squire Haskins photos of the plant at 410 S. Poydras (at Wood Street) because they’re cool. (Source: Squire Haskins Photography Inc. Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections — the exterior shot is here, the interior shot is here. The ad is a detail from a 1954 ad which appeared in The Texas Jewish Post.)

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I really enjoyed writing about the strange square-dancing fad that swept the county in the late 1940s and early 1950s, affecting everyone from those in rural communities to Neiman-Marcus customers. I’m adding this photo from the 1951 SMU yearbook which shows the well-dressed “Promenaders,” a group whose purpose is described in the yearbook as being “to promote the appreciation of square and folk dancing on this campus.” I’m adding this to the post “The Square Dancing Craze in Big D — Late Forties.” (Source: Southern Methodist University Rotunda, 1951. If you think you might recognize one of these Promenaders, the members of the group seen in this photo can be found here.)

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Below, a postcard of the Texas Seed & Floral Co., which later became the Lone Star Seed & Floral Co., located at the northwest corner of Elm and Ervay. In 1921 the beautiful Palace Theater opened up right next door, and I actually ended up writing about the seed company because a tiny part of it can be seen in a 1926 photo of the Palace. (The left image on the postcard shows the Pacific Avenue location; the one at the lower right is the Elm Street location, with a view looking north on Ervay.) Might as well add it to the post “Next-Door Neighbors: The Palace Theater and Lone Star Seed & Floral — 1926.” (Source: Dallas Heritage Village via the Portal to Texas History)

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Below, a cool photo of the Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitarium (later renamed “Baylor Hospital”), with some pretty great automobiles parked out front on Junius Street. I’ve just added three photos and three postcard views of Baylor to the post “Baylor Hospital —  1909-1921.” Basically, I’ve just written an entire new post — the original post consisted of one image and one sentence — so go see all the new stuff populating this 2014 post. (Source: The circa-1915 black-and-white photo is from the 1917 Baylor University yearbook; the postcard — that horse! — is from eBay.)

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And lastly, a fantastic photo showing a Weber’s Root Beer stand on a busy night, with a parking lot full of thirsty teenagers, rumble seats, and future jalopies. In the background is a sign for Eady’s Famous Hamburgers, which would indicate that this photo was taken at one of the two locations where both Eady’s and Weber’s were neighbors: in Oak Cliff in the 1100 block of Zang, or near the Lower Greenville intersection of Greenville and Richmond. I’ve added this to the post “Weber’s Root Beer Stands: ‘Good Service with a Smile.'” (Source: Traces of Texas Twitter feed; original source unknown)

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Copyright © 2018 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Anticipation…

by Paula Bosse

Why was future-Texas Ranger Nolan Ryan being served 302 pancakes at the Sheraton on September 26, 1972? Find out why in the 2015 Flashback Dallas post “Nolan Ryan’s Celebratory Pancake Breakfast — 1972,” here.

Happy (belated) Opening Day!

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Copyright © 2018 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.