Historic Dallas | Flashback : Dallas

My overly optimistic proclamation that I would be posting here more frequently isn’t working out as I had hoped. Dealing with a new job and the continuing health challenges of a loved one have caused time and energy to have disappeared. I still hope that I will be able to post more often soon, but, at the moment, things are difficult.

I always wince when I post about my work on Patreon, fearing I’m spamming longtime readers — the very people I don’t want to turn off or annoy! But the fact is, I rely on the small income I receive from Patreon subscribers to pay pressing bills. I always love writing about Dallas history, but during this chaotic period of my life, I’m having to focus a bit more on getting those posts that earn me a bit of income out every day. (I’m not sure anyone actually wants daily posts, so I may cut those down a little in the future, but for the past year and a half, I’ve been writing short Patreon posts every day, accompanied by images I hope I haven’t duplicated from the past ten years’ worth of posts here on the blog.)

If you would like to support me over on Patreon, you can subscribe for as little as $5 a month. You are automatically charged on the same day of each month, so if you want to just check it out and see what’s over there, you can subscribe, scroll through a bunch of posts, and cancel at any time (just make sure you cancel before a new pay period starts!).

Below is a list of what I tackled in August and September, (See the previous topics I’ve covered here.)

SEPTEMBER 2024

YMCA, Commerce Street
Braniff Airways: Cowboys in Helicopters – ca. 1962
State Fair, Bubble Bounce – 1950s (in fabulous Kodachrome)
Fair Park Is Dead, Long Live Fair Park – 1935 (demolition of old buildings for the Centennial)
Campus Map: What To Know, Where To Go – 1941 (SMU)
Red Sublett, Rodeo Clown – 1922
Commerce, Near Lamar
Highland Park City Hall and Community Center – 1924
Wilson Building – ca. 1906
“No Steer Is So Fat…” – 1947 (Everette DeGolyer/Carl Hertzog card)
“Curve-Greaser” – 1935
Hall of State OG XL – 1935 (early rendering)
Fair Park Lagoon – 1936
Chief Settlements of Early Dallas (Map)
Trinity River, Before the Move
Medical Arts Building, 1923-1978
Frank Lloyd Wright, Downtown
As Iconic Shopping Malls Go… (NorthPark)
Market & Commerce, Southwest Corner
Return of (High School) Football: Booker T. Washington – 1952
Daytrip to Thurber
Tamale Seller, Elm Street – ca. 1890
Red Bryan’s Smokehouse: Be Just Like Red
Where the Boys Are: Atkins Hall, SMU – 1936
Grandma’s House/Satori House – Oak Lawn
Dallasites Inspecting Trinity Dam – ca. 1890
Main, West Towards Ervay — 1920s

AUGUST 2024

Adolphus Hotel, Favorite of Cowboys
Flashback Newsflash! (I’ve got a new job!)
Trinity Heights Streetcar, Elm Street – ca. 1943
Centennial Sightseeing Buses – 1936
McKell Street (Old East Dallas)
City Park Play Center – ca. 1914
Bye-Bye, Lloyd Estate: 1912-2024
Parkland Hospital, 1894
Typing Class – 1953 (Booker T. Washington High School)
Alexander Mansion, Ross Avenue – ca. 1905
A Beautiful Drive
Methodist Hospital, Oak Cliff
#19 Bus to Abrams, Via Baylor – 1948
Dallas Buggy and Wagon Co. – 1905
Munger Place Apartment – 1920
Sivils Carhops on Strike! – 1940
The Adolphus and Commerce Street, In Color
Perry Nichols: DMN Mural – 1949
Highland Park Village Theatre
Big D Self-Promotion – ca. 1923
Love Field Rifle Range – ca. 1918
Texas International Airlines – ca. 1969
Dallas Annual Chrysanthemum Show – 1907
The Carpenters, For Morton’s Potato Chips – 1970
Red Cross Cotton Field – 1918
Italian Village, Oak Lawn – 1956
St. Paul Additions
Galloupe Hotel/Hotel Milam – 2013 Main

***

Sources & Notes

1936 Texas Centennial postcard of the Fair Park lagoon is from eBay.

More info on supporting my Flashback Dallas work on Patreon can be found here. All subscriber levels have the same access. You can cancel, restart, or change your subscription amount at any time. Thank you! (The commercial has ended.)

10 Comments

September 23, 2024

The Bright Lights of Big D — 1951

…Forget all your worries, forget all your cares…

by Paula Bosse

This is the downtown Dallas I’ve always wished I had seen.

Check out a clipping from the 1953 city directory for a list of the businesses in this immediate block, from about Akard to Ervay, here.

Then click over to the 2015 post “Dazzling Neon, Theater Row — 1929” to see how drastically Elm Street — and Movie Row — changed in just 22 years.

***

Sources & Notes

Photo by Denny Hayes, Hayes Collection, Dallas History and Archives, Dallas Public Library; Call Number PA76-1-576-2.

8 Comments

September 1, 2024

Labor Day Weekend, 1952 (Redux)

Waiting for the fun to start… (photo: Dallas Public Library)

by Paula Bosse

Happy Labor Day! Back in 2020 I wrote a post called “Labor Day Weekend, Union Bus Depot — 1952.” I really enjoyed writing that one, and I loved the main photo in it. It turns out that the photo I’m using in this post was taken only a couple of minutes before the one I used four years ago. I discovered this photo a few weeks ago and have been waiting for Labor Day to roll around. Which it has now done.

On August 31, 1952, Dallas photographer Denny Hayes took several photos of travelers waiting to be whisked away to someplace else. (With luck, someplace cooler.) These photos were taken at the Union Bus Depot in the Interurban Building. Let’s zoom in on this great people-packed photo.

Everyone and everything pales in comparison to the young woman walking toward the camera. In her left hand she holds a box camera. She’s ready to take fun photos, if she ever gets out of that station.

(If the man above looked any more like Harvey Korman, he’d be Harvey Korman.)

If you have the day off, I hope you enjoy it. And if you’re traveling somewhere, I hope you get there quickly!

***

Sources & Notes

Photo by Denny Hayes, from the Hayes Collection, Dallas Public Library, Dallas History and Archives; Call Number: PA76-1/11420-002.

See the companion post, “Labor Day Weekend, Union Bus Depot — 1952,” and see how many people made it into both photos.

labor-day_083152_denny-hayes_PA76-1-11420-002_web

3 Comments

August 27, 2024

Poolside Patrons

Lounging at the Melrose…

by Paula Bosse

Life is making it difficult for me to get back to a regular posting routine. I never want my mentions of the Flashback Dallas Patreon page to be irritating, but here I am mentioning it again. Even though I’ve been unable to sit down and write anything substantial here for a while, I am posting short things daily on the Patreon page. Become a subscriber for as little as $5 a month and receive these morsels every day in your inbox. Here are the recent offerings:

JULY 2024

Lepary Cafe & Grocery, Fair Park Area – 1953
I’ll Be at the Library
Lone Star (Gas. Co.) Deco
Above Highland Park High School – 1962
Bird’s-Eye View to the Northeast
Happy Motoring at Six Flags!
Michel Lime Co., West Dallas
Scottish Rite Cathedral
“Home of the Mustangs” Seen from a Helicopter
Hoffarth Bros.’ Silver King Saloon – ca. 1902
First Baptist Church
Brick Paving
White Rock Airport: “The Most Convenient Airport in Dallas”
Aerial View of City Hall Under Construction (1970s)
Neiman-Marcus/Camel (Modeling with Exotic Animals)
The Swing Club: “Home of the Beef Trust Girls”
The 3,000,000th Ford V8 Visits the Centennial – 1936
Costumed Staff of the New Majestic – 1921
The Attic Fan
Frisco Lines Passenger Station – 1911
Rutherford’s Veterinary Hospital, Fair Park
Town & Country Restaurant, 2016 Commerce
Highland Park Methodist Church
Meletio Electric Co.
Triple Underpass Under Construction
Lochwood Center, Garland Rd. & Jupiter – 1955
Happy 4th of July!
SMU Campus and Beyond – 1945
Cowgirls Welcome the Rotarians – 1929
Morning Calisthenics at the Rusk School – 1913

JUNE 2024

Meet Me at Nickey’s – S. Lamar & Forest
“La Rambla” at the Pan American Exposition – 1937
Southwest Airmotive, Love Field
Buck’s TV & Record Shop (Pleasant Grove) – 1958
Lucas B & B, 3520 Oak Lawn
Lounging by the Melrose Pool
Keating Implement and Machine Co. – 1900
Midnight Melody Men – 1925
The Arnold House, Old East Dallas
Country Club Pharmacy, Inwood Village – 1950
“The Honey Hive Silhouette” at Titche’s – 1949
Moorland Branch, YMCA
Second Ave. Bakery Delivery Team – ca. 1904
Second Presbyterian Church – 1905
Kessler Park, From the Air – 1920s
Oak Lawn Methodist Church
Fair Park Midget Auto Races and Pronto Pups
The C. Weichsel Co., 1611 Main
Vanette Hosiery (Baker-Moise Co.) – 1930s
The Rocket
Star Lite Rollercade (Harry Hines)
Dallas Natatorium and Artesian Baths – 1891
Big Hats at the State Fair of Texas – 1908
Sewell Village Cars/KVIL – ca. 1960
N-M Trinkets for Men: “Oil Man’s Gold” – 1953
Baylor, From Above

Previous topics covered by me on Patreon can be found here.

***

Sources & Notes

Top image from a Melrose Hotel postcard, found on eBay.

Consider supporting me on Patreon here. You can cancel at any time!

3 Comments

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

Flashback : Dallas

Tag: Historic Dallas

October 13, 2024

Over on Patreon…

Sources & Notes

September 23, 2024

The Bright Lights of Big D — 1951

Sources & Notes

September 1, 2024

Labor Day Weekend, 1952 (Redux)

Sources & Notes

August 27, 2024

Poolside Patrons

Sources & Notes

August 13, 2024

Telesign: Flashing News to Downtown Dallas — 1951

Sources & Notes

July 30, 2024

Second Presbyterian Church — 1905

Sources & Notes

June 23, 2024

Zephyr, Meet Ox Cart — 1936

Sources & Notes

June 17, 2024

Ulterior Flashback

Sources & Notes

June 16, 2024

The Cloverleaf

Sources & Notes

June 4, 2024

KVIL: The “VIL” Stands for Village

Sources & Notes

Tag: Historic Dallas

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