Historic Dallas | Flashback : Dallas

March 17, 2017

Broken Links Are Driving Me to Drink

dallas-brewery_rusted-sign

by Paula Bosse

A couple of months ago I wrote about the arduous task of having to manually migrate files from one cloud to another cloud. Well, I haven’t quite finished, and there are now several links that when clicked will get you to one of those confoundingly cutesy “Oopsie! That file doesn’t seem to be here anymore!” 404 pages.

I’m slogging through the last 40 or so files — I hope to have everything moved by the coming week. If you get one of these error messages, hold tight and check back soon — equilibrium will be restored forthwith!

In the meantime, enjoy the photo of a rusted sign for Dallas Beer above. This is how I currently feel after having spent weeks moving hundreds and hundreds of digital files from here to there, one by one. When I started, I felt a bit fresher, like this:

dallas-brewery_sign

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I’ll be fresh as a cynical daisy in no time!

***

Dallas Beer signs are from somewhere on the internet. That’s the best I can do. I’m really tired….

1 Comment

March 15, 2017

Long and Woodrow From Above — 1965

So much open green space! (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

A few days ago, after having done too many recent posts on Dallas high schools, I decided to post this great 1965 photo of J. L. Long Jr. High School and Woodrow Wilson High School on Facebook and Twitter, rather than write another high school post. But then Facebook follower Chris Prestridge went out and took the same shot with his drone and sent it to me. And it’s cool! So now I kind of have to post both of these great then-and-now photos. (Thank you, Chris!)

In the photos we see Woodrow in the center foreground, Long behind it, the Lakewood Country Club at the upper left, and, in the background, White Rock Lake. Things haven’t changed hugely in the intervening 52 years — it’s still a pretty area, but things just seem more crowded. (How I long for the days of school campuses devoid of the clutter of what I used to call “temporary buildings” — but those buildings don’t seem to be “temporary,” because they never go away. And those displaced fields and playgrounds never come back.)

Here’s the same view today.

Below, the two photos, cheek by jowl. Click to see them bigger.

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo is from the 1965 Crusader, the yearbook of Woodrow Wilson High School; I found it on Flickr, here.

Many thanks to Chris Prestridge who “droned” the present-day photo yesterday, on March 14, 2017. Thank you, Chris! (And thank you, Chris’ drone!)

See another bird’s-eye view of both campuses — but one looking to the southwest rather than the northeast — in the Flashback Dallas post “J. L. Long, Woodrow Wilson — 1958,” here.

Click photos to see larger images.

5 Comments

March 14, 2017

The Whittle Music Building — ca. 1956

Southwest corner of Elm & Murphy…

by Paula Bosse

Above, the very attractive home of the Whittle Music Co., which sat at 1108 Elm Street on the southwest corner of Elm and Murphy. It was built as a two-story building in 1892 for the A. Harris Co., one of Dallas’ earliest department stores. A third floor was added in 1899. A. Harris Co. eventually outgrew the building, and, around 1914, it moved into several floors of the Kirby Building. In August, 1941, the Whittle Music Co. moved in from their previous nearby location. The company which sold “everything musical” (instruments, radios, phonographs, records, sheet music, etc.) was happy to move into the larger building, which included a basement, an auditorium for performances, meetings, and recitals, and several large display windows to better feature their large selection of pianos (the building was apparently the first store in Dallas designed to include large windows in which to prominently display merchandise to passersby).

D. L. Whittle (1879-1970) came to Dallas in 1912 and was involved in several businesses (including selling Wurlitzer pipe organs and co-owning the Crystal Theater). He became president of Western Automatic Music Co. (which sold electric player pianos) and eventually changed the name to the D. L. Whittle Music Co. A few years later he sold the business to Howard Beasley who decided to keep the Whittle name. (See the 1968 Sam Acheson interview with Whittle at the bottom of this post for more information about Mr. Whittle and his memories of Dallas in the ‘teens.)

Whittle’s became one of Dallas’ premier music companies, selling instruments and recorded music, offering lessons, hosting performances, etc. According to a Dallas Morning News article by Kent Biffle, customers included Van Cliburn and Arthur Rubinstein, and “Al Jolson once sold tickets to one of his own shows” at the store’s ticket window (DMN, May 31, 1964).

Business was flourishing and all was going well, until the early 1960s when it was announced that the block the building was on (as well as other adjacent blocks) was set to be bulldozed to make way for the construction of One Main Place. Interestingly, Whittle’s and the Dallas, Texas Corp. (developers of One Main Place) agreed to a land swap: the music company would get land in Oak Lawn and a fancy new building built on it in exchange for the Elm Street property. Only after Whittle’s had taken occupancy of their new home would the 63-year-old building be demolished. (Seems like a pretty sweet deal for the Whittle company — perhaps the fact that D. L. Whittle was a major stockholder of the Texas Bank & Trust Co. — which had ties to the One Main Place project — was a factor.)

Whittle’s moved into its new location at 2733 Oak Lawn in March, 1965. Not only was it a nice new building, it also finally had “ample parking.” Whittle’s ceased operations sometime in … the ’80s? … but the George Dahl-designed building still stands, here.

I’ve never been a huge fan of One Main Place, but it was a VERY BIG DEAL in the late ’60s. It was envisioned as an entire complex — One Main Place, Two Main Place, and Three Main Place — but only one building was ever built. Yeah, we got another tall building out of the deal (the symbol of “dynamic growth!”), but the view of the attractive three-story building in the photo at the top of this post is, let’s face it, far more aesthetically pleasing than the same view today. Sorry, little building. I wish you’d survived.

Most images and clippings are larger when clicked.

Nov. 20, 1892

1894

1899

1918

1919

1922

1927

1945

March, 1965

***

Sources & Notes

Original source of photo at top is unknown — I found it on Flickr, here. The Oliver Luggage Co. appears to have been a next-door neighbor for only a year or two, beginning in 1956.

I was one of thousands of school children who bought instruments and sheet music from Whittle’s on Oak Lawn. I always liked going into that cool building. I had no idea George Dahl designed it. It looks like the Dallas Historical Society has the Whittle Music Co. collection. You can see a ton of thumbnail images here. Here are a couple of those thumbnails blown up (apologies for the picture quality) — the Oak Lawn store:

10 Comments

March 12, 2017

Twelve Prominent Black Baptist Churches — 1967

Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Flipping through the pages of the 1967 Souvenir Program of the 74th Annual Session of the Missionary Baptist General Convention of Texas and Its Auxiliaries (…as one does), I kept coming across ads featuring photos of Dallas churches and wondered how many were still standing. Out of the twelve I’m posting here, all but three are still standing. That’s a healthy survival rate!

All photos are from the above-mentioned program for the Missionary Baptist General Convention of Texas, which convened in Dallas, October 17-20, 1967. All photos (which are larger when clicked) appeared in this 1967 booklet, but a few were older photos taken in previous years or decades.

At the top, Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church, 909 Morrell Avenue, East Oak Cliff (Rev. A. F. Thomas, Sr., Minister). The church is still standing and is still cool-looking — see it on Google Street View here. (According to a history of the church, the building was designed by J. C. Hibbard, the Assembly of God preacher who designed his own Oak Cliff church, the Gospel Lighthouse Church, which I wrote about here — the two eye-catching buildings are only a mile apart.)

People’s Missionary Baptist Church, 3119 Pine Street, South Dallas (Rev. S. M. Wright, Pastor). Still standing, here

Allen Chapel Baptist Church, 2146 Overton Road, Oak Cliff (Rev. J. R. Allen, Pastor). Still standing, here.

Morning Star Baptist Church (photo circa 1947, the year the brick church was built), 2662 Anderson Street, South Dallas (Rev. Howard Gill, Pastor). Still standing, here.

Good Street Baptist Church, 902 N. Good-Latimer (between Live Oak and Bryan) (Dr. Cesar Clark, Pastor). No longer standing.

Oak Hill Missionary Baptist Church, 4440 S. Oakland Avenue (now Malcolm X Blvd.), South Dallas (Rev. M. G. Solomon, Pastor). Drawing of their “future church building.” Still standing, here.

Bethany Baptist Church, 6710 Webster Street, Love Field area (A. L. Schley, Pastor). Still standing, here.

Munger Avenue Baptist Church, 3919 Munger Avenue (not to be confused with N. Munger Blvd.), near Haskell and Washington, in what used to be the thriving African-American neighborhood of North Dallas (Rev. B. E. Joshua, Pastor). Still standing, here.

Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church, 2525 Caddo Street, just a few blocks from Munger Avenue Baptist Church (Rev. G. B. Prince, Pastor). No longer standing. The property was sold to the Southland Corporation in 1983 — its location is now occupied by a Cityplace parking lot. According to the history of the church, Pilgrim Rest moved to 1819 N. Washington in 1985.

Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church, 3611 Latimer Street, South Dallas (Rev. B. F. Briggs, Pastor). Still standing, here.

St. John Baptist Church, 2019 Allen Street, State-Thomas area (Robert H. Wilson, Minister). No longer standing.

New Zion Baptist Church, 2214 Pine Street, South Dallas (Rev. A. V. Voice, Pastor). Now Greater New Zion Church, this is my favorite of these twelve buildings, and it still looks good, here.

***

Sources & Notes

All photos from the Souvenir Program of the 74th Annual Session of the Missionary Baptist General Convention of Texas and Its Auxiliaries, which was held in Dallas in October, 1967.

Many thanks to George Gimarc for passing this wonderful little booklet on to me. I hope to share more from its pages in the future.

All photos larger when clicked.

12 Comments

March 9, 2017

Dobbs House: Love Field’s Airport Restaurant

Dallasites’ favorite airport restaurant… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Dobbs House was a national restaurant and catering company, found chiefly in airports (although they did have non-airport restaurants, and at one point they had bought out the Toddle House chain). When the “new” Love Field terminal opened in 1940 (see the heart-stoppingly beautiful Art Deco front entrance at night, here), it had what was probably a very nice, perfectly serviceable, 24-hour restaurant. It was rather unimaginatively called “Airport Restaurant,” and it seated about 75 in the coffee shop and 100 in the dining room. And its “modern blue and yellow leatherette furniture” was probably delightful.

A lot of people probably enjoyed a hot cup of coffee while seated on that modern leatherette. But in 1944, the Hull-Dobbs company waltzed in and took over the restaurant and catering business and agreed to pay the city what seems like a miniscule $500 a month (about $7,000 in today’s money). The administration building, which housed the restaurant, was undergoing remodeling at the time, and I guess the city was giving the company something of a break. In 1945, though, Hull-Dobbs began to pay 5% of their gross revenue to the city, rather than a flat monthly fee. (I’m guessing that 5% was quite a bit more than $500.)

Business was good. REAL good. It was almost too good, because almost every newspaper article which mentioned the restaurant (called Dobbs House, part of a national chain) noted how busy it was and how it was almost impossible for a person to find an empty seat. It was known for its good food (see a 1955 menu here), and one of the main reasons it was always crowded was because local people dined at the restaurant, taking up precious seats intended for hungry travelers. Dallasites loved to drive out to the airport for a nice meal, followed by a leisurely couple of hours watching airplanes take off and land.

But, basically, Love Field had become a major metropolitan airport, and its success — and the resulting increase in traffic and the overall crush of humanity — meant that everyone was running out of space.

The airport had outgrown its beautiful 1940 Art Deco terminal, and a new, equally heart-stoppingly beautiful terminal opened in 1958. Dobbs House moved into its more spacious quarters with a freshly signed ten-year contract. …And by now they were paying a whole lot more than $500 a month. According to a January, 1957 Dallas Morning News article, the restaurant offered a high bid of just over $15,000 a month to retain the restaurant concession at the airport.

The restaurant and catering business were not all that the Dobbs company was running. Not only did they have a “swanky” restaurant at the new terminal, they also had a non-swanky restaurant and a basement cafeteria. They also had, at various times, control of the following concessions: cigar, shoeshine, gift shop (including apparel, candy, and camera shops), and … parking (!). This was on top of their land-office business catering and restauranting. James Dobbs knew a thing or two about business — he didn’t get fantastically wealthy just selling 15-cent cups of coffee and black-bottom pie….

via Dallas Love Field Facebook page

In 1958, Dobbs House opened the exotic Luau Room, which served Polynesia cuisine. This was another Dobbs eatery that was very popular with Dallasites, and it lasted many, many years.

via eBay

The Luau Room was a sort of early “theme” chain from the Dobbs people, and it was a feature at several Dobbs House-served airports. The photo below might be the Dallas location. Might be Charlotte, or Orlando, or Houston.

via Tiki Central — check out the comments

Dobbs House was a fixture of the Dallas airport/restaurant scene for a surprisingly long time. Dobbs House was still at Love Field in the 1980s — possibly into the ’90s. And when Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport opened, the Dobbs people slid right in. DFW was huge — and they had control of everything. (Alcohol sales alone must have been enormous!)

For D/FW’s first two decades, a single company operated all of the bars and restaurants that generate about $40 million in sales each year. Dobbs House had the food and beverage contract from 1974 until 1993, when Host Marriott Services took over the operations. (DMN, May 22, 1996)

Dobbs House was in business here for almost 50 years. That’s a pretty good run for a restaurant in Dallas. (And I hear their cornbread sticks were to die for.)

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo showing Dobbs House Restaurant at Love Field found on eBay several months ago.

Airport Restaurant menu (ca. 1940-1944) found on eBay, here.

The Dobbs House cornsticks recipe is contained in the 1960 book How America Eats by Clementine Paddleford — used copies are out there, but they are surprisingly expensive. But from what I hear, if you want that recipe, it’s probably worth it!

An interesting side note about James K. Dobbs, head of the company that bore his name: even though he was a resident of Memphis, he actually died in a Dallas hospital in September, 1960, having been sent here for asthma treatment, and having recently suffered his second heart attack. He was 66. His company had grown to include about 125 restaurants at the time of his death. He had also made huge sums of money in automobile dealerships.

Photos and clippings are larger when clicked.

13 Comments

March 8, 2017

From the Vault: The First Woman Decorated for Heroism in a Combat Zone — 1944

by Paula Bosse

Today is International Women’s Day. What better time to look back at a Dallas woman who, as a member of the Army Nurse Corps, served in field hospitals during World War II and became the first woman to receive the Silver Star for valor in combat. Read about her story of keeping her cool as she and her team worked in hospital tents on the Anzio beachhead as they were attacked by German long-range artillery in the Flashback Dallas post from last year, “Lt. Mary L. Roberts, The ‘Angel of Anzio’ — The First Woman Awarded the Silver Star,” here.

March 7, 2017

From the Vault: Motorcycles and the Dallas Police Department

by Paula Bosse

For those interested in police motorcycles, here are a few Flashback Dallas posts from yesteryear:

“Dallas Motor Cycle Cops — 1910” (featuring the photo above) can be found here
“The Dallas Police Department & Their Fleet of Harleys — 1951” is here
“Merry Christmas From the Dallas Police Department’s Parking Enforcement Squad” is here

(One suggestion: motorcycle-riding and bowler-hat-wearing may not be the best crime-fighting combination.)

March 6, 2017

Dallas’ Twin High Schools: Thomas Jefferson and Bryan Adams

It’s one or the other… (click to see a larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Perhaps everyone knows this, but this is news to me. While compiling recent posts about Bryan Adams High School (named, by the way, after the business manager for the Dallas school system), I discovered that the plans used for the building were the exact same plans originally drawn up for Thomas Jefferson High School. That’s weird, right? TJ opened its brand-spanking-new building on Walnut Hill in North Dallas in January, 1956; BA opened its brand-spanking-new building on Millmar in the Casa View area of East Dallas in 1957. And they looked just alike. Here are aerial photos of the two campuses from the schools’ respective 1961 yearbooks (Thomas Jefferson can be seen is the top photo — click to see a larger image):

Here they are, as seen from street level: a 1957 photo of TJ on top, a 1961 photo of BA below it.

So why did this happen? By the mid-1950s, demand for new schools — which were needed to keep up with the population growth and sprawl — was intense. Two sites were chosen in the early ’50s: in North Dallas and in the White Rock Lake area of East Dallas. The two high schools were planned to be about the same size and were meant to serve about the same number of students (2,500). Plans for Thomas Jefferson High School in North Dallas were completed first. But then … the architects wondered, “If these two school are to be the same size and built one right after the other … why not just use the same architectural plans for both?”

Even though duplicating architectural plans for schools had never been done before (in Dallas, anyway), and even though local architects were very unhappy about this, the architects on both projects — Robert Goodwin and L. C. Cavitt, Jr. of Goodwin & Cavitt, Architects — argued that this duplication would be both practical and economical: using the same plans would save money as well as more than six months in planning time.

I don’t know if this sort of thing happened again in DISD, but the cross-town twin high schools opened in Dallas in 1956 and 1957.

And I still think it’s kind of strange.

1957-58 Bryan Adams yearbook

***

Sources & Notes

Drawing at the top appeared in the 1961 Bryan Adams yearbook, but it might well have been the architectural rendering prepared for the Thomas Jefferson project. Either way, it’s pretty damn cool-looking.

The schools have undergone changes over the years, but they still look alike. See current aerial views of both campuses, via Google: Thomas Jefferson is here; Bryan Adams is here.

More can be found in the archives of the Dallas Morning News:

“Super High School Planned” (Thomas Jefferson) by Francis Raffetto (DMN, Dec. 9, 1953)
“Schoolmen OK Duplicate Plan” by Lester Bell (DMN, June 23, 1955) — the architectural plans for the new high school (Bryan Adams) would duplicate the Thomas Jefferson design — the AIA was not amused
“Doors Open at Newest High School” (Thomas Jefferson) (DMN, Jan. 31, 1956)

All images and clippings are larger when clicked.

6 Comments

March 5, 2017

Bryan Adams High School: Yearbook Photos from 1961 and 1962

Greetings, from BAHS… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Yesterday I posted a bunch of ads (seen here) from the 1961 and 1962 yearbooks of Bryan Adams High School, and today I’m posting a bunch of photos of random school life from those same yearbooks. (All photos are larger when clicked.)

Above, band, drill team, and cheerleaders. (1961)

Below, the rigors of the art student. (1961)

Boys. (1961)

The Corals. The caption: “The Corals play an important role in the life of El Conquistador.” (El Conquistador is the name of the yearbook, and The Corals were a popular combo that played around Dallas in the late ’50s and early ’60s. I assume they were BA students.) (1961)

The Senior Ball, held downtown at the Sheraton. (1961)

Gymnasium drama. (1961)

BA drill team in the stands at a football game. “Beautiful Belles.” (1961)

The Up Beats. (1962)

The guy in the glasses is Sverker Olson, “our exchange student from Sweden.” He looks very happy. (1961)

I saw many, many photos of that guy on the right in the white shirt. He was either very popular or was slipping the photographer a buck every time he saw him in order to get as many photos of himself as possible into the yearbook. (1961)

I was in band in high school. We never got to play at the State Fair of Texas at the feet of Big Tex.

$bryan-adams_1962-yrbk_big-tex$

Grainy photo that’s interesting mostly because of how tiny downtown looked from the eastern shore of White Rock Lake back in 1962.

***

All photos from the Bryan Adams High School yearbook, El Conquistador — all are larger when clicked.

8 Comments

March 4, 2017

Bryan Adams High School: Yearbook Ads from 1961 and 1962

by Paula Bosse

I love ads from high school yearbooks — especially when they feature students. Here are several from the Bryan Adams 1961 and 1962 yearbooks. (Click the ads to see larger images.)

Above, the J. C. Penney store in Casa View at 2596 Gus Thomasson. Great ad! (1962)

Below, Jackson’s Sporting Goods in Casa Linda. (1962)

Gingham Girl Dance Studio on Northwest Highway (“We Also Feature Baton Lessons”). (1961)

Lake Highlands Music Co. — guitar lessons by Ken Wheeler. (1961)

Casa Linda Barber Shop. (1962)

Ethel Shipp — female attire, from tots to teens and beyond; Casa Linda and Casa View. (1961)

Dallas Ice Arena — ice skating at Fair Park. (1962)

Cooter’s Village Camera Shop — Highland Park Village. (First ad 1961, second 1962)

Pop’s Spaghetti House (Frank Da Mommio and Pop Da Mommio), on Gaston, near Baylor. (1962)

Colbert’s in Casa Linda. (1962)

Stone’s Shoes, Northlake Shopping Center. (1962)

Love’s Fashions, on Oates. (Those striped pants are cool!) (1962)

Smitty’s Party Room, Bakery, and Coffee Bar, also on Oates Drive. (1961)

KBOX and their happenin’ djs: Jerry Clemmons, Johnny Borders, Pat Hughes, Chuck Benson, Bill Holley, and Gary Mack. (1961)

And my favorite ad because of its association to greatness: Belvick Electric Company, Garland Road. Greatness? Here’s a hint: the proprietors are Jerry Dauterive and Buck Dauterive. Maybe it’s just because I watch a lot of television, but any fan of the classic animated show “King of the Hill” (created by Mike Judge, who lived in Garland for several years) will recognize the name “Dauterive” — as in Bill Dauterive, Hank Hill’s sad-sack friend. It’s such an unusual name and there are so many Dallas jokes in the show that I figured the men in this ad must have some sort of connection to the TV show. It turns out that the character is named for series writer-producer Jim Dauterive, a native Dallasite and … a Bryan Adams alum! And Buck was his father. According to an interview in White Rock Lake Weekly, Jim Dauterive liked to slip neighborhood references into the show: he named a character in the show “Gus Thomasson,” had Hank Hill direct someone to a liquor store near White Rock Lake, and even snuck in a mention of Louanns on Greenville. So there you have it! (Ad from 1961.)

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