Historic Dallas | Flashback : Dallas

November 11, 2024

A Somber Armistice Day Observance — 1922

Veterans march in Dallas (Dallas Public Library)

by Paula Bosse

On November 11, 1922, Dallas observed the 4th anniversary of the end of World War I. The photo above, taken by Dallas photographer Frank Rogers, shows veterans of the devastating war marching north on Masten (N. St. Paul) from Main Street — they are headed to First Baptist Church for a special remembrance service.

The crowd is somber, with the war still fresh in their memories. From The Dallas Morning News:

Soberly and without show of emotion Dallas celebrated Saturday, the fourth anniversary of the stilling of the guns of the World War. Their faces mirroring no more than idle curiosity, tens of thousands of men, women and children flowed lazily along the Main Street waiting for the parade of men who had been part of the glorious adventure, but there was no evidence of that high-racing blood that filled the hearts of Americans on Nov. 11, 1918. (Dallas Morning News, Nov. 12, 1922)

More details of the scene can be seen when zooming in on the photo and on the faces of the participants and the spectators (images are larger when clicked).

by John Knott, DMN, Nov. 11, 1922

***

Notes and Sources

Photo of the Nov. 11, 1922 Armistice Day parade is from the Frank Rogers Collection, Dallas History and Archives, Dallas Public Library (photo accession number is PA78-2-1003).

The address of the Cecil V. Rogers drug store was 1814 Elm Street. The movie posters for the silent films “Rags To Riches” (playing at the Old Mill) and “To Have and To Hold” (playing at the Palace) are posted on the back of the old Majestic Theatre (its second “temporary” location, which, I believe, had once been the old opera house — see the 1921 Sanborn map here). The cartoon is by Dallas Morning News cartoonist John Knott.

See other Flashback Dallas posts on Dallas and World War I here.

November 4, 2024

Tooling Around Munger Place — ca. 1913

Snazzy motor car parked in front of 5109 Swiss Avenue

by Paula Bosse

This arresting photo shows a woman in the driver’s seat of what appears to be a “ladies'” electric car (possibly a Detroit Electric, although I can find no models that look like this one…), parked in front of an unusual-looking Swiss Avenue home, complete with a second-story sleeping porch and virtually no landscaping. The photo — taken by notable Dallas photographer Charles Erwin Arnold — is currently offered on eBay.

Here’s a view of the entrance to the house which, as noted on the reverse, is at 5109 Swiss Avenue.

The house was built in 1911/12 and was designed by Lang & Witchell (architects to the rich and richer), who were busy drawing up house plans for people up and down Swiss (they were so prolific that it seems like most of the buildings built in Dallas at the time came from their drafting tables!). This house was commissioned by James P. Griffin (president of the Texas Electric Railway Co.) and his new wife, May Burford Griffin (daughter of Dallas pioneer Judge Nat Burford).

Dallas Morning News, Sept. 13, 1911

The house is still standing but has been remodeled, as is mentioned in various real estate ads over the years. (At one point, there was a reference to a kitchen with marble floors, which… I’m not sure I’ve ever seen marble floors in a kitchen. I don’t know if they were original to the house — or are still there — but, whatever the case, that is très élégant.)

The house can be seen in recent years in an Ebby Halliday listing from 1982, in an undated photo on Douglas Newby’s Architecturally Significant Homes website, and on the Swiss Avenue Historic District website. The image below is a Google Street View from Feb. 2023.

I assume that the woman in the car is Mrs. Griffin, seen below in later years. In the photo, she would have been about 32.

I love that car. And I love that house, which looked very modern 112 years ago!

***

Sources & Notes

The circa-1913 photos are from a current listing on eBay. I posted the top photo on my Patreon page less than a week ago, and reader Tom R. identified the house. I think the second photo has been added in the past couple of days, because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there when I wrote that post! Someone might have contacted the seller to ask if it might be a house on Swiss Avenue, and they realized they had another photo of the house, which they added to the listing. …And increased the price significantly! These are such cool photos. If I were the current owners of this Swiss Ave. house, I would be all over this!

Thanks to Tom and William for their helpful comments on my original Patreon post (“Super-Cool Car, Super-Cool House”).

6 Comments

October 31, 2024

Halloween Looked a Lot Different in Highland Park in 1924

Trick or treat!

by Paula Bosse

It’s Halloween! Let’s see how kids dressed up for the occasion 100 years ago.

The caption for the above photo:

A group of the little folks of John S. Armstrong School who will enjoy the Hallowe’en Celebration at Davis Park on Friday evening, October 31.

Yeah, some of those children are scary. I wouldn’t want to meet a couple of them in a dark alley.

But none of them can hold a candle to this kid, who, for some reason, is holding a hammer. Did the studio provide it as a prop? (If so, why?) Maybe he brought it with him, (Again… why?) It appears that this was taken in Dallas — just to keep things local. I’m not frivolously posting non-Dallas content here! So, rest assured, this is a scary local kid. …With a hammer. And he does not look happy. Avoid!

I’m just going to believe this photo was taken to memorialize a unique Halloween costume and is not simply a portrait of a future serial killer.

Happy Halloween!

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo appeared in the pages of an interesting little magazine called Highland Park, which was published by developers Flippen-Prather from about 1923 to at least 1928; this photo is from the October 1924 issue; from the Periodicals Collection, Dallas History and Archives, Dallas Public Library.

The photo of the boy with the hammer is a Real Photo Post Card (RPPC), found on eBay in 2021; details on the back of the card indicate it might have been taken in Dallas.

I came across a couple of other creepy photos of children, which I posted on another (non-Dallas) blog (these contain frivolous non-local content):

See previous Flashback Dallas posts with a spooky Halloween theme here.

3 Comments

October 28, 2024

Dome, No Dome, Dome

Gaston Ave. Baptist Church, ca. 1961, domeless

by Paula Bosse

Gaston Avenue Baptist Church, at Gaston and Haskell, opened to its congregation in 1904. (The photo above is from about 1961.) The church was designed by architect C. W. Bulger, whose most important Dallas building was almost certainly the Praetorian Building downtown. Bulger was a prominent architect and a prominent Baptist — he designed several Baptist churches, and, conveniently, he lived on Junius Street, not far from the Gaston Avenue church.

This building is imposing and impressive, but every time I drive past it, something just feels “off.” (See it on Google Street View here.) It’s that canary-yellow “gold” dome. Otherwise, it’s a beautiful building.

Here’s what it looked like in its earliest days:

This postcard was postmarked June 2, 1906 — the message reads:

June 2, 06. This is the first building that I worked on in Texas and cost about 45,000. Is built of brick and cemented outside. Is one of the finest churches here. Best wishes, H.E.S.

And another:

When you compare the early photos with the one from 1961, there are a few differences. Namely… the dome (…or lack thereof). It was built with a dome. But by 1961, the dome was gone. Why?

Here is what the building looks like these days (it is now the home of Criswell College):

Google Street View, June 2024

Dome.

What’s the deal here? I hate to be a negative Nellie, but every time I drive past that dome (which is often), I wince. It looks like sun-faded matte gold paint. It’s a beautiful building. It deserves a better dome!

After searching a bit, here’s what I found. In response to a reader’s question in 1991 asking what the “golden dome” was made of, The News responded:

MFG Molded Fiberglass in Union City, Pa. fabricated it of 1/2-inch molded fiberglass impregnated with gold-flecked paint… Both the dome and the bay section — the white collar that protrudes from the roof line — are composed of 12 separate pieces… The dome’s cap is composed of four pieces… and the spire that tops the structure is a single unit… [T]he structure stands approximately 35 feet above the roof of the library and weighs about 6,000 lbs. (Dallas Morning News, June 6, 1991)

Fiberglass, impregnated with gold-flecked paint. I don’t know when this happened, but more than 33 years ago. The gold-flecked paint has seen better days, beaten into submission by the relentless Texas sun. I’m sure it would probably cost a small fortune to spruce it up, but it would be nice to see it gold and shiny.

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo by Squire Haskins, from the Squire Haskins Photography, Inc. Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections; more info on this photo is here (see interior photos taken by Haskins at the same time here and here).

Postcard was found on eBay.

The photo captioned “A Mighty Fortress” is from a TSHA Annual Meeting 1977 publication, via the Portal to Texas History.

8 Comments

October 13, 2024

Over on Patreon…

Calgon, take me away…

by Paula Bosse

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

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