Historic Dallas | Flashback : Dallas

January 1, 2024

Dr. Rosser’s Gaston Avenue Residence — 1912

The Rosser residence, Christmas 1912

by Paula Bosse

At the turn of the century, Dr. Charles M. Rosser (1861-1945), a surgeon and educator, was one of Dallas’ most prominent doctors. When he died in 1945, he was described in obituaries as “the father of Baylor University School of Medicine.” In 1900, he led a committee to work toward establishing a much-needed medical school in Dallas. When the University of Dallas Medical School opened the following year, Rosser became its dean. It later merged with another medical college and was eventually acquired by Baylor University in 1903.

Dr. Rosser, about 1910

So what about the photo of the house above? This was a “real photo postcard” (RPPC) sent by Dr. Rosser on New Year’s Day, 1913. The message on the back was: “Happy New Year for all, CMR.” The very recent photo had been taken on the occasion of a Christmas party at the Rosser residence in 1912.

The photo on the front showed the Rosser home at 4002 Gaston, at the southeast corner of Gaston and Hill (the corner looks like this now). (At the other end of the block was the Gaston Avenue Baptist Church.)

After Dr. Rosser’s death, the house was torn down. Here it is in 1946:

Dallas Public Library (PA83-41/1946-2-21.1)

Other than the fact that this house once stood at Gaston & Hill (hard to believe these days), the most notable thing about this New Year’s Day greeting is the person the card is addressed to: Miss Odessa Harnesberger of Beckville, Texas (Panola County).

On Oct. 24, 1910, a large crowd attending the State Fair of Texas had gathered at the Fair Park racetrack to watch an exhibition race of a Packard race car called the “Gray Wolf” and a motorcycle. Unfortunately, the car and the motorcycle collided and careened into the crowd, injuring 8 people (one man died from his injuries). Among those sent to the hospital were three members of the Harnesberger family: Dr. R. G. Harnesberger and two of his daughters, Odessa and Norma. Odessa was 13. Her face and left thigh were lacerated, and her left thigh was broken. A week after the accident, she was reported to be recovering well at Baylor but was expected to be there another 5-6 weeks before she could be moved home. The Harnesberger family appears to have made full recoveries. Odessa eventually became a teacher in Dallas and lived to the age of 87.

And when she was 15, she received wishes for a happy 1913 from the doctor who probably treated her after her terrible accident, and, in fact, had a prominent role in founding the hospital in which she recuperated.

harnesberger-odessa_north-tx-state-normal-college_1917 Odessa Harnesberger, North Texas State Normal College, 1917

McKinney Courier-Gazette, Oct. 24, 1910

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Sources & Notes

Real photo postcard from Dr. Rosser found on eBay in 2019.

More on the early history of Baylor Hospital (and Dallas hospitals in general) can be found at the National Institute of Health here.

And Happy New Year!

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5 Comments

December 31, 2023

Year-End List: Most Popular Posts of 2023

All hail the Highland Park Cafeteria…

by Paula Bosse

2023 is over! Years end, people put things in lists. Like this! These are the most popular posts of the past year, as determined by page views, clicks, likes, shares, and comments. There are a couple of surprises, and fully half of the top 10 are food/drink-related. As always, thank you for spending some of your time stopping by Flashback Dallas, and I wish everyone a Happy 2024!

These are the most-read (or at least most looked-at!) Flashback Dallas posts of 2023, starting with the most popular. To see each full post, click on the title; to see larger images of the thumbnails, click on the picture.

1. “HIGHLAND PARK CAFETERIA AND THE KNOX STREET BUSINESS DISTRICT” (August)

I know people loved the Highland Park Cafeteria, but I was pretty surprised by the sheer number of hits this post got and continues to get. There’s not much to it, really — a photo and a map. It’s hard to believe the HPC powers-that-be could just let a place as popular as this close down. Perhaps it will rise again one day.

2. “AUNT STELLE’S SNO CONE” (September)

I knew this would be a popular post, even though I had never heard of Aunt Stelle or her sno cones. I became aware of this Oak Cliff institution only after having seen several ads for it in Sunset High School yearbooks. I enjoyed reading people’s memories of the place on the Flashback Dallas Facebook page (where it received an unbelievable number of likes, comments, and shares). Oak Cliff people are pretty hardcore.

3. “EX-SLAVES IN DALLAS — 1937” (June)

This is perhaps the biggest surprise on this list. The photographs and oral histories of Dallas residents who had lived some of their lives as enslaved people (not necessarily in Texas) was part of a WPA project. When I grew up, it never entered my mind that there had been slaves in Dallas — either people living as slaves in Dallas during the time of slavery, or people who had been slaves living in Dallas up through the 1940s and 1950s. One of the most sobering posts I’ve ever written is a collection of ads about slaves in Dallas from the 1850s and 1860s — it’s linked at the bottom of this post.

4. “DR PEPPER BOTTLING PLANT, SECOND AVE. & HICKORY — ca. 1938” (August)

Before it relocated to its beautiful Art Deco headquarters on Mockingbird, Dr Pepper’s HQ was in a building that is still standing between Fair Park and Deep Ellum. See photos of what it looked like inside.

5. “GRITTY DALLAS — 1969” (July)

Thank you, SMU theology students for making this odd little documentary featuring footage of parts of the city not often captured on film. I hope SMU has a cleaner, sharper copy of this film somewhere. It’s worth a watch (but keep that finger at the ready on the fast-forward button during the slower bits!).

6. “EL CHICO FOODS / CUELLAR FOODS” (February)

Dallas loves its Tex-Mex. I had no idea the Cuellars had expanded so far into retail food manufacturing. My greatest discovery while researching this was that canned tortillas ever existed. They did. Think how much better we have things now, at least in matters tortilla-related.

7. “DALLAS FIRE STATIONS — 1951” (May)

I loved this. So many photos! And several of these buildings are still standing. If there’s one thing Dallas loves as much as Oak Cliff and Tex-Mex, it’s firehouses.

8. “ST. MARK’S FROM THE AIR” (April)

I love aerial photos of Dallas before choking sprawl clogged up everything. When these photos were taken in the early 1960s, there was still a lot of open land in areas that are now completely developed.

9. “OAK CLIFF SCHOOLS — 1916” (December)

Oak Cliff, back again. A lot of the schools seen in this post are still around. For a lot of places, it’s not a big deal when buildings cross the century mark. But it is for Dallas. Dallas likes new, new, new! I always appreciate buildings that have somehow survived and feel like I should give them a little pep talk to encourage them to keep on keeping on.

10. “TEX-MEX IN A CAN (WITH BONUS CHILI-BURGER RECIPE) — 1953/1954” (February)

You must read the excerpts from this recipe booklet which was prepared to teach customers not familiar with Tex-Mex what various dishes were. Mexican food was not as widely available in the 1950s as it is now. Adventurous people in non-Southwestern states buying a can of refried beans might have had no idea what to do with it (imagine seeing your first can of refried beans in, say, Minnesota). The recipe for the Chili Burger (tantalizingly, no beef patties are involved…) is worth the price of admission. I’m so glad this one squeaked into the year’s Top 10.

UNSTOPPABLE: The most popular Flashback Dallas post ever is “BONNIE PARKER: ‘BURIED IN AN ICE-BLUE NEGLIGEE’ — 1934” (from April 2016). It’s actually the most popular post of 2023, but the Year-End Top 10 is for new posts only. Otherwise, just assume this will be the most popular post of every year.

HONORABLE MENTION: A post I wrote back in 2018 had a sudden huge surge in hits this year: “‘DR. DANTE’ DODGES BULLETS IN DALLAS — 1970,” about a stage hypnotist who was also a conman and an ex-husband of Lana Turner. While in Dallas for a show, he claimed to have been shot at by Frank Sinatra’s “people.” This is one of my all-time favorite posts, but I couldn’t figure out why there was suddenly so much interest in it, seemingly out of nowhere. It wasn’t until a person commented and said she had found my post after listening to a new true-crime podcast, “Chameleon: Gallery of Lies, Dr. Dante.” There’s been a short documentary about Dante, but there really needs to be a full-length bio-pic. I’m sure someone’s working on it. (This post also ranked higher than any in the 2023 Top 10, but being almost 6 years old, it is out of the running for 2023 glory.)

And, with that, the final post of 2023 can be laid to rest (in an ice-blue negligee). Thanks to everyone who stops by! Let’s all have a happy 2024!

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2023 Year-End “best of” lists here.

See all Flashback Dallas Year-End lists — past and present — here.

If you would like to support me on Patreon, please check out my page here. I post exclusive short Dallas history posts there every day.

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December 30, 2023

Year-End List: My Favorite Posts of 2023

Volleyball in suits and fedoras…

by Paula Bosse

2023 is finally pulling to a close. Personally, I’m happy to see it fade into the distance. 2023 is kind of a blur, filled with “challenges” (those “challenges” seem to increase every year!). But we’ve made it through. One of the highlights of this past year is creating a Patreon page. I appreciate the patrons who support me there — it’s been 9 months now, and I’m amazed that I’ve gotten into the habit of posting something there every day. The financial help has been something of a lifesaver! Thank you, patrons!

And thank you to everyone who reads posts here. I love reading about, writing about, and researching Dallas history. It’s hard to believe, but I will have been doing this for TEN SOLID YEARS come February. When I last checked, there were something like 1,400 posts here. That might be too many! I’ve loved every minute of it, and I look forward to 2024 and embarking on Year Eleven.

Below are some of my personal favorite posts of 2023. The first one is probably my favorite, and the rest are in chronological order. Click titles to see the original post.

1. “DAD’S DAY AT HOCKADAY — 1947” (June)

Whenever I imagine living in another era, I seem to gravitate to the post-war 1940s. Always. And the photographs in this post really fan the flames of pure escapist, rose-colored-glasses nostalgia for a time I never lived in. The photos (by Cornell Capa) are from a LIFE magazine article about a day in which fathers spent time with their daughters at the Hockaday campus and escorted them to a fancy dinner that night at the Baker Hotel. I love all of the photos, including the wonderful ones above (on the Lower Greenville campus) and below (at the Baker Hotel).

2. “THE BULLEN STORE, EXPOSITION AVENUE — 1896-1936” (January)

I really enjoyed looking into the history of this little (still-standing) building in Exposition Park, a too-often overlooked part of town.

3. “EL CHICO FOODS/CUELLAR FOODS” and “TEX-MEX IN A CAN (WITH BONUS CHILI-BURGER RECIPE) — 1953/1954” (both posts from February)

I wrote these two posts at the same time. I knew about the El Chico frozen dinners of my childhood, but I never knew about the line of canned foods — and I certainly never knew about canned tortillas! This was a lot of fun to write. (And if you are an enterprising state-fair-food-developer, I highly encourage you to “borrow” the excellently weird “Chili Burger” (no burger patty involved!), the recipe of which is in the second post above.

4. “BLACK WOMEN’S EQUESTRIAN COMPANY K (AMERICAN WOODMEN) — 1920s” (March)

A lot of what I write about is spurred by seeing a photo and wondering what it is I’m looking at. Like this one. Almost everything I wrote about in this post was new information to me. It was really interesting to write.

5. “MUHAMMAD ALI VISITS GRAHAM’S BARBER SHOP — ca. 1967” (April)

While browsing through a 1967 Lincoln High School yearbook, I was surprised to stumble across an ad featuring a photo of Muhammad Ali sitting in a barber chair (below). It was so unexpected. I loved it! I looked into why he might have been in town and found an interesting story about an appearance he made at a mosque near Booker T. Washington High School on Easter Sunday (I later — somewhat serendipitously — came across photos of that appearance and included them in the post). So, basically, what I’m saying here is: always take the time to flip through the advertising pages in old high school yearbooks — there’s a lot of good stuff hiding there.

6. “TABLETOP JUKEBOXES — 1940” (May)

I don’t even know how I came across these photos, but this was a topic I ended up learning about because I needed to pad out the post with more than just photos!

7. “LOVE FIELD AVIATION CAMP, WORLD WAR I” (May)

I’m a sucker for photos of World War I-era Love Field. There are some great ones in this post.

8. “GRITTY DALLAS — 1969” (July)

Who would expect to find cool footage of the “grittier” areas of Dallas in a film produced by students attending SMU’s Perkins School of Theology? I leave no stone unturned! I’m glad those theology students made this film, because it’s full of shots of Dallas you just don’t see on postcards.

9. “DR PEPPER BOTTLING PLANT, SECOND AVE. & HICKORY — ca. 1938” (August)

Lots of photos from inside the DP bottling plant before it moved to the better-known location on Mockingbird. My favorite photo was the “sugar storage” room.

10. “SOME-CONTEXT CHANNEL 8 SCREENSHOTS: 1971” (December)

I just wrote this a couple of days ago, but there are so many things in here that really make me laugh that I’m adding it to the “best of” list. 2023 (or even 1971) wasn’t a total loss! Below, Roger Staubach hard at work, training the low-tech way.

Those are my Top 10 personal favorite posts for 2023. Coming next… the most popular (clicked, linked, shared, etc.) posts of the year. Stay tuned….

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2023 Year-End “best of” lists (as they’re posted) here.

See all Flashback Dallas Year-End lists — past and present — here.

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2 Comments

December 29, 2023

Year-End List: My Favorite Images Posted in 2023

And the winner is…

by Paula Bosse

Another year is coming to an end. Time for a list! I’ve looked back through this year’s posts and have picked my favorite images — photos, postcards, artwork, etc. They’re in no order, except for the one at the top, which is my tip-top fave of ’23. To see the posts these images originally appeared in, click the titles; image sources will be at the end of each post, under “Sources & Notes.” (All images are larger when clicked.)

I love the postcard above. LOVE it. The night scene, which shows a “luminous fountain” in Fair Park, is from about 1912. It appeared in the post “Fair Park at Night — ca. 1912.”

Below, a close runner-up is this fantastic color photo of the Elm-Ervay-Live Oak intersection, made exponentially better because of the presence of the completely unexpected billboard for the Colony Club, featuring stripper Chris Colt, “the girl with the 45s.” I try to avoid posting photos with watermarks — and this one has a big one! — but this is just such a great period snapshot of staid-and-conservative, edgy-and-naughty Dallas. From the post “Colony Club Billboard in Beautiful Kodachrome — Early 1960s.” (Somebody bought this color slide on eBay right after I posted this — I hope it was a Flashback Dallas reader!)

One of the truly beautiful, instantly recognizable buildings in Dallas is the Mercantile. This Squire Haskins photo (which I’ve cropped) (sorry, Squire…) is pretty stunning. From the post “The Mercantile Bank Building — 1951.”

Another landmark, the Old Red Courthouse, is seen in this photo when it was still the “New” Red Courthouse. This is very dreamlike. From the post “Courthouse in the Mist/Smoke/Murk — 1901.”

Moving to Lower Greenville, this is the best aerial photo I’ve found showing the old Hockaday campus at Belmont and Greenville. Squire Haskins, the photographer, should be more well-known than he is. (There are more of his photos in this list than I realized! Thank you, UTA, for the incredible collection of his photos!) This was from the catch-all post “A Few Photo Additions to Past Posts — #21.”

While we’re on Squire Haskins’ aerials, I was pretty excited to stumble across this early-1960s view of North Dallas around the St. Mark’s campus (it shows the wide-open land west of Preston Road at Royal Lane). From the post “St. Mark’s From the Air.”

This early photo of Dallas Hall at SMU is great. From the post “Dallas Hall, The Early Days.”

I saw this photo in a WFAA/WBAP/KGKO booklet 10 or 15 years, and I’ve loved it ever since. Every time I see it, it makes me smile. I think I love it even more now than the first time I saw it. I finally used it in a post this year, in “Uncle Scooter Reads the Funnies: 1940-41.”

Okay. How did anyone think a stagecoach ride at Six Flags was a good idea? (Not that I wouldn’t have wanted to ride it myself….) From the post “The Stagecoach Ride at Six Flags: 1961-1967” (you can probably guess the reason it was discontinued).

Who doesn’t love a good carnival sideshow banner? Perhaps the apex of advertising. 73 years later, I kinda want to see what was inside that State Fair midway tent. From the post “The ‘Shadow’ Flashback.”

This one isn’t a great photograph, per se, but it shows something I’ve never seen: the Jefferson Theater (1517 Elm, between Akard & Stone) with this odd (temporary?) facade. From the post “A Few Photo Additions to Past Posts — #19.”

Feast your eyes on “Pig Stand No. 2, Oak Cliff” — 1301 N. Zang, taken about 1928. This might be the first people-in-a-rumble-seat photo I’ve ever posted!

I can’t tell you exactly why I love this photo of a cafe at McKinney & Lamar so much. But I do. From the post “Crescent Cafe: Warehouse District — 1944-1952.”

One of my favorite photos of a restaurant interior is this one: the Copper Cow, at 1519 Commerce, from about 1960. Wow. From the post “The ‘Other’ Flashback Dallas….”

This photo of the training camp at Love Field is great — and so are the others in the post “Love Field Aviation Camp, World War I.”

I could look at old photos of downtown Dallas all day long. And I have. This one, by Frank Rogers (another ace local photographer that every self-respecting student of Dallas history should know!) shows a lively street scene in the “1500 Block of Elm — 1920s” (click the link to see a second photo by Rogers which shows the next part of the block).

This photo of the Majestic Theatre under construction is wonderful. From the post “Flashback Dallas Side Hustle.”

I haven’t posted a lot of advertisements this year, which is a shame, because I love ads, especially those that feature historic photos you might not find anyplace else. Like this one. It is an ad for a paving material company, but it features a photo I’ve never seen showing St. Mary’s College in East Dallas at Garrett & Ross. From the ad-packed post “Ads, Ads, Ads, Ads, and a Few More Ads — 1916.”

I love finding a photo of a somewhat non-descript building and diving in to learn about its history. It’s even better when you find that the really-old-for-Dallas building is still standing. Like this one, which is made even more interesting because it’s in Exposition Park, an area I’m fascinated with, partly because it has been overshadowed by its sexier neighbors, Deep Ellum and Fair Park. So… great photo. Check the post “The Bullen Store, Exposition Avenue — 1896-1936” to see what this building looks like now (I haven’t been to Expo Park recently — I hope it’s still there!).

And, finally, last but not least, art! I have posted so little art this year. I need to rectify that in 2024. I suppose art is my real passion, and Dallas has produced some wonderful artists. One of the best-known Dallas artists is Jerry Bywaters. I found this undated Bywaters watercolor while I was looking for something unrelated. It shows the old Farmers Branch depot. I love this. From “Jerry Bywaters: A Quick Trip to Farmers Branch.”

And there they are, my top 20 favorite images of 2023!

Coming soon: my personal favorite posts and the most popular posts of the year. Check back!

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2023 Year-End “best of” lists (as they’re posted) here.

See all Flashback Dallas “Year-End” lists — past and present — here.

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2 Comments

December 28, 2023

Some-Context Channel 8 Screenshots: 1971

WFAA Collection/Jones Film Collection/SMU

by Paula Bosse

I have been working as part of a 3-person team (led by Jeremy Spracklen and Scott Martin) on the WFAA archive of news film, housed in the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection at the Hamon Arts Library at SMU. I have been working on 1970 and 1971, going through daily footage shot for Channel 8 News. I get a bit bogged down by all the sports and car crashes, but at this point, I am so all-consumed by these two specific years that I feel I would do well on Jeopardy if the categories were things like “Minor League DFW Hockey Teams of the Early ’70s,” “Internecine Squabbles of the Dallas City Council, the Dallas School Board, and the Dallas County Commissioners Court,” and “So What’s the Deal with the Sharpstown Scandal?” My 2023 has been spent immersed in 1971, where the chaos of the implementation of court-ordered school busing, the huge securities fraud scandal that involved some very powerful Texas politicians (Sharpstown), and the battle between Craig Morton and Roger Staubach to become the Cowboys’ #1 quarterback were some of the stories that dominated the headlines. And, lordy, there were some pretty exotic hairstyles, fashions, and interior design trends hammering away relentlessly throughout this post-hippie (it might really still have been current-hippie), pre-disco period.

Here are a few of my favorite moments from this 1971 DFW-centric news footage from the WFAA archives. Links to the pertinent clips on YouTube are included at the end of the descriptions. These clips are rarely the full reports that would have been seen on the nightly news — they are often just silent footage or B-roll, without any identification of people or clues as to where they were filmed or even why they were newsworthy. It’s (mostly) a lot of fun to dig through and watch the unfolding of history from more than 50 years in the future.

Above, from JUNE 1971

One of my favorite human-interest stories from the past year (meaning 1971!) was the profile of one of the few “lady mailmen” in Dallas at the time. She’s utterly, utterly charming, has a supportive and interesting husband and family, and loves her job. The Channel 8 cameraman shows her as she sorts her mail in the Beverly Hills Station post office in Oak Cliff and follows her as she walks along her route on West Davis. The only problem with this 7 minutes of interesting footage is that the woman is never identified. I dove in, really wanting to identify her. I thought I had cracked the mystery of her identity, only to find myself at a dead end again. If only her children could see this wonderful profile of their mother. If you know who this woman is, please let me know, and we’ll add her name to the YouTube description and try to track down any family members. I would LOVE her children to be able to see this.

The “lady mailman” is interviewed here (this first bit is in three short segments, totaling 4 minutes); a later clip shows her on her route, here (about 3 minutes). The old post office building still stands at 509 N. Barnett.

JANUARY 1971

So, yeah, fashion and interior design trends were pretty… in-your-face in 1971. In the three screenshots below, you’ll see some retina-abusing images of with-it decor. The first features the always beautiful Phyllis George, the Denton native who was in the midst of her Miss America reign. In this clip, she has come back home to DFW for an appearance at an event in which a room designed with her in mind is unveiled (by decorators C. John Megna and William Farrington). She is wearing a dress designed by Carlo Bitetto specifically for her to wear IN THAT ROOM (!). You don’t often see sparkles and plaid cheek-by-jowl.

The clip with the super-color-saturated room and its battling patterns is here.

FEBRUARY 25, 1971

Before Lion Country Safari, Mesquite had World of Animals, a drive-thru safari park. World of Animals had a wild-animal veterinarian who visited regularly from California: Dr. Martin Dinnes. Below, Dinnes is seen providing dental care to popular attraction Harold the Chimp. This is not really something I expected to see, but there you are. (Dinnes was later engaged to actress and wildlife preservation activist Tippi Hedren for several years.)

The clips of Dinnes being interviewed and preparing Harold for a tooth extraction (and I grimaced a bit, because the camera keeps rolling during the procedure, so be warned!) are here and here. (The last clip has a shot of Harold’s hand, which, understandably, appears to be gripping the chair.) That is one well-behaved, chill chimp!

MAY 18, 1971

In 1971, there was an ongoing battle between old quarterback Craig Morton and NKOTB Roger Staubach over who would be named the team’s official starting QB. Coach Tom Landry worked for months with a two-quarterback system, alternating them from game to game — he was fine with this, but everyone else hated it. Below are screenshots of Morton and Staubach at the Cowboys practice field. I know virtually nothing about sports training, but this, um, extremely low-tech gadget struck me as weird. And funny. I mean, okay, it was 1971, but surely there was something more technologically advanced than this? It’s a football on a string, tied to a post. And maybe there’s a spring or something in there. This must have been effective. Rog looks like he’s straining. I don’t know. But I love it.

See Craig in an interview with Verne Lundquist from May 18, 1971 about his elbow and shoulder injuries here, and then using the football-on-a-string thing (and then training with Staubach) here; and see Roger interviewed on the same day about really, really wanting to be the starting QB here, and then he hits the string thing here before working out with Morton in what must have been a fairly tense period of both of their careers.

JUNE 1971

Medical examiners used to be on the news a lot. One who popped up frequently was Tarrant County M.E. Dr. Feliks Gwozdz. I was amused more than I should have been when I saw the skull-and-crossbones coffee mug on his desk. I hope it said “World’s Greatest Coroner!” on the back.

The silent footage of Dr. Gwozdz at his desk is here.

JULY 14, 1971

Back in 1971 there was what seemed like the threat of a union strike every 10 minutes. I enjoyed the footage of a bunch of Southwestern Bell employees who look like they were probably a lot of fun to hang out with. Their t-shirts read “Ma Bell Is a Cheap Mother,” which is just great.

Strike footage is here (about 2½ minutes) and here.

JULY 1971

One of the top stories of 1971 was the endless furor set off by court-mandated school busing in attempts to desegregate schools. It was a mess. The man seen below is attorney Bill Brice, a leader of one of the many anti-busing groups. …Surely the cameraman noticed the monkey.

Man with monkey can be seen here.

AUGUST 29, 1971

When the Dallas School Board and Supt. Nolan Estes weren’t pulling their hair out over desegregation, they tackled other issues. One of which was so overshadowed by anti-busing demonstrations that it barely got any play, but I find it really interesting. It concerned Crozier Tech High School downtown. At the end of the 1970-71 school year, the landmark school was closed, and there was lots of discussion on what the DISD should do with the building/land, which they owned (2218 Bryan). This press conference was supposed to be about Estes’ vision of a 40-story school-office complex, which he suggested be built on the land — the first 10 floors would be for school use, and the top 30 floors would be leased to businesses as office space, with leases, theoretically, paying for construction and maintenance of the building. The building was never built (and thankfully, old Tech still stands). School board president John Plath Green and Supt. Estes sit in front of an architectural drawing of the envisioned DISD skyscraper. Too bad no one wanted to talk about it.

Footage from the press conference where reporters only want to ask about busing, is here.

SEPTEMBER 23, 1971

The Sharpstown Scandal was a bigger story than busing, but, even though political scandals are juicy, it just didn’t get everyday people mobilizing, marching in the streets, and shouting each other down in public forums the way busing did. But it was a massive story, and several political careers bit the dust because of it. The sprawling and confusing securities-fraud scandal mostly involved drab politicians and business executives. But one part of it involved, bizarrely, six celebrated — if not beloved — NASA astronauts and an insurance company pension fund.

In this Channel 8 footage, you can see something you don’t see every day: five NASA astronauts walking together down the street (a sixth one was nearby, on his own). James Lovell, Pete Conrad, Fred Haise, Ken Mattingly, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean were in Dallas on Sept. 23, 1971 to testify as witnesses before a federal grand jury that was investigating the activities surrounding the Sharpstown Scandal. These are screenshots of the five (minus Lovell), carrying briefcases through grubby downtown Dallas, and of Lovell on his own, exiting the Federal Court House. When I first watched this footage, it just seemed really odd: five internationally (galactically!) famous astronauts — heroes! — walking together down the street, without any kind of security or entourage. If you were a NASA freak (and there were a lot back then, at the height of the Apollo-Gemini programs) and you just happened to have walked past this group, your head would have exploded.

See Lovell exiting the sterile- and dystopian-looking courthouse on his own (that woman he holds the door open for has no idea who he is), and the others walking somewhat playfully down the street here (I love this footage!); a confusing wrap-up of the day’s events is here.

OCTOBER 14, 1971

In footage from the State Fair of Texas, I was really taken by this building, which I swore I had never seen. It was the home of the “lost children” center during the fair, in the Dallas police HQ in Fair Park. It looks different to me now, but it’s still there, near the Aquarium. It looked better in 1971!

Lots of footage of crying children and harried parents, here and here.

OCTOBER 1971

This young dandy is named John Ott (I’m not 100% sure about the spelling). He was a real estate developer in Euless. He couldn’t have been more on top of the 1971 fashion wave. Represent, Euless!

It’s a story about replanting trees (with, admittedly, interesting footage of trees being uprooted and replanted). Here and here.

OCTOBER 31, 1971

In the screenshots below, Channel 8 reporter Judi Hanna (who had recently debuted an unfortunate hairdo) interviews Dallas City Councilman Garry Weber about City Council things. I don’t know where this was filmed, but I only hope it wasn’t his home. It’s hard to focus on what anyone is saying, because of the tidal wave of stuff coming at you. (Ironically, he was being interviewed about sponsoring a change to the city charter in order to crack down on the “visual pollution” of unenforced sign ordinances.) I was so overwhelmed by this vista, that I somehow assumed I was seeing cupid-studded wallpaper. But no. Check out the second screenshot, which also includes a peek at the room’s drapes. I can’t tell where the wallpaper ends and the drapes begin.

Appropriately shown on Halloween night, clips from this report are here (followed by footage of signs-galore along Lemmon Avenue) and here.

OCTOBER 1971

Lastly, a shot of Mingus, Texas, a small West Texas town near Thurber. I just love this image. I think I found the location — here’s what it looks like now.

Why was the tiny town of MIngus being featured on a Dallas news report? The Greater Mingus-Thurber Metropolitan Area was in the news because it was the location of a commune of the controversial Children of God (i.e. “cult”). Actually, the “Children” were in the process of being evicted by the landowner, who, interestingly, was a TV preacher in Los Angeles (I guess even TV evangelists have a breaking point). Members of this group splintered, and a few moved to Big D for a while, where they continued to be newsworthy until they moved elsewhere.

The shot of Mingus is from one of the many clips contained in this Oct. 7 package, here (it is specifically at the 1:08 mark). Below that is a shot from a week later, after some of the self-described “Jesus Freaks” had landed in Dallas — a group member is seen walking through Exposition Park to their new HQ, at 639½ Exposition — it and other CoG footage from Oct. 14, 1971 is here (this specific shot is seen at the 17:18 mark). (If you are considering a documentary on the Children of God, there’s lots of footage for you in the WFAA archives at SMU.)

AUGUST 1971

This is a bonus.

As I worked my way through 1971, there was one truly amazing story. It involved the kidnapping of a toddler in Fort Worth. On Aug. 25, 1971, 21-month-old Melissa Suzanne Highsmith disappeared. Her 22-year-old mother, Alta, had hired a new babysitter, who was supposed to watch her for the day while Alta was at work. The babysitter picked Melissa up in the morning as planned, but she never returned the child. The babysitter and Melissa disappeared without a trace. There were no leads in the case for years. …And YEARS.

In 2022, the Highsmith family learned of an online DNA match, which would indicate they had found Melissa. Eventually, it was determined that a 50-something-year-old woman named “Melanie” was actually the long-missing Melissa. The woman who kidnapped her raised her as her own daughter, and Melissa never suspected she wasn’t the woman’s child (although she says she never felt really “connected” to her).

Melissa (she now uses “Melissa” again) was reunited with her family at the end of 2022. One report I read said that she grew up only 10 minutes from the Fort Worth apartment her mother lived in. Despite the Highsmith family’s 51 years of loss, grief, worry, and suffering, there has ultimately been a happy ending!

In the screenshot below from an Aug. 26, 1971 Channel 8 story, Alta Highsmith shows a photo of her missing daughter to the camera. The report is here.

If you managed to get all the way through this, you deserve an award! This might be the longest thing I’ve written all year! I’m more than ready for my 1971 Jeopardy challenge (Dallas edition)!

***

Sources & Notes

All screenshots are from news film in the WFAA Collection, held by the G. William Jones Film & Video Collection, Hamon Arts Library, SMU. Clips are posted regularly from this Channel 8 collection on YouTube, here.

My previous collection of WFAA screenshots can be found in the post “No-Context Channel 8 Screenshots: 1970-1971.”

lady mailman june 1971 WFAA_sm

8 Comments

December 24, 2023

Season’s Greetings from Dallas’ Most Stylish Banks

by Paula Bosse

Wishing you the happiest of holiday wishes!

–Paula

***

Sources & Notes

Both ads are from Dallas magazine, a publication of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce; the Mercantile National Bank ad appeared in the December 1956 issue, and the Republic National Bank of Dallas ad appeared in the December 1955 issue.

Many, many more Christmas posts from Flashback Dallas can be found here.

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6 Comments

December 18, 2023

“This Month In Dallas” — Aug./Sept. 1962: The Clubs

Club Dallas, Browder Street

by Paula Bosse

Downtown Dallas was a cool place for entertainment and dining in the early 1960s, from high-class clubs and lounges to famous and infamous strip joints (some of which were higher-class than others). A few months ago on eBay, someone scanned a bunch of pages of a magazine called This Month in Dallas (“Where to Go, What to Do”), which seems to have been aimed at the conventioneer or out-of-town visitor. (I’ve never heard of this publication, but I would LOVE to see more!)

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As far as image quality, I’m at the mercy of the person doing the scanning, but here are several of the ads featured in the eBay listing. All appeared in the Aug./Sept. 1962 issue of This Month in Dallas. (At the top, a detail from an ad for Club Dallas — the full ad is below.)

Let’s just do them alphabetically.

ARAGON BALLROOM, 1011 S. Industrial Blvd. (now S. Riverfront). Featuring the Aragon Red Jackets Western Swing Band, the “Over 30” Club Dance, and Chuck Arlington and His Orchestra.

CAROUSEL CLUB (or “New” Carousel Club), 1312½ Commerce, at Field. Jack Ruby, proprietor. “Dallas’ Newest and Most Intimate Burlesque Nite Club.” This ad (the first of several) features stripper Peggy Steele, “America’s Suzie Wong.”

More CAROUSEL. “Dallas’ only burlesque nite club with a continuous girl and comedy show. No stopping, 9:00 PM ’til 2:00 AM.” “America’s Suzie Wong” is back, now spelled Peggy Steel. MC’d by comic Wally Weston.

More CAROUSEL. Here’s Mili Perele, “the Little French Miss.”

More CAROUSEL. Heck, let’s throw in another Peggy Steel/e mention.

More CAROUSEL (Jack’s advertising budget was impressive). Tammi True, then in the midst of a pinching brouhaha.

Pat Morgan’s CLUB DALLAS, 206½ Browder (just south of Commerce). I love this ad, but I’m not familiar with the establishment or Mr. Morgan. Looks like it opened in the summer of 1962 (“Owner Pat Morgan has eliminated the semi-nude waitresses and aims for the family trade” — Dallas Morning News, July 27, 1962), changed its name in September 1962 to simply “Pat Morgan’s,” and finally closed in February 1963. I bet he rued the day he dumped those semi-nude waitresses….

CLUB VEGAS, 3505 Oak Lawn. Yes, there was swinging nightlife beyond downtown. Club Vegas was famously owned by Jack Ruby’s sister, Eva Rubenstein. This club booked a lot of Black and Hispanic bands (for mixed audiences), including Joe Johnson and Trini Lopez. (I’ve been meaning to write about this place for the past 10 years!)

CLUB VILLAGE / ITALIAN VILLAGE RESTAURANT, 3211 Oak Lawn. Another happening place in Oak Lawn. I wrote and wrote and wrote about Sam Ventura’s Italian Village here.

COLONY CLUB, 1322½ Commerce. Abe Weinstein, proprietor. The “high-class” strip joint. Also featured acts like Deacon & Co., King and Queen of the Limbo.

More COLONY CLUB. An unnamed exotic.

GUTHREY’S CLUB, 214 Corinth, at Industrial (now Riverfront). Very popular back in the day. “Girls! Girls! Girls! Set-ups, beer, wine.” This ad features Dave Martin’s Tom Toms (James McCleeng, Glenn Keener, Gene Summers — vocalist, Charlie Mendian, Melvin Robinson, and Dave Martin).

THE SPOT, 4906 Military Parkway. This ad features Joe Wilson & The Sabers.

THE SPOT, the “other” location, 10635 Harry Hines. House band The Spotters.

THEATER LOUNGE, 1326 Jackson, at Akard. Barney Weinstein, proprietor. “Glamour Girls Galore.”

TOWN PUMP, 5021 Lovers Lane. “Dallas’ Original and Largest ‘Sing Along’ Piano Bar.” That is one scary sentence.

***

Sources & Notes

All ads from the Aug./Sept. 1962 issue of This Month in Dallas.

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4 Comments

December 4, 2023

Oak Cliff Schools — 1916

Oak Cliff High School

by Paula Bosse

Here are a few photos and drawings of Oak Cliff schools from the 1916 inaugural yearbook of OAK CLIFF HIGH SCHOOL, seen above, which opened in 1915 at 9th & Beckley (it was later renamed Adamson High School). The previous school — the Oak Cliff Central School/Central High School (10th & St. George) — is seen below, obscured by trees. Most of the students in the new school would have also attended the old school.

JOHN H. REAGAN SCHOOL, 9th & Llewellyn — built in 1905. The caption to this photo is: “Nine temporary rooms nestled behind this mother building.” (I wrote about this school previously in the post “John H. Reagan Elementary, Oak Cliff’s ‘West End School’ — 1905.”)

JAMES BOWIE SCHOOL, Lancaster & 7th — built in 1907.

The photo of Bowie below appeared in The Dallas Morning News in November 1915.

JAMES STEPHEN HOGG SCHOOL, 1135 Ballard — built in 1911.

Below, a photo of the new school, as it appeared in The Dallas Morning News in September 1911.

(NEW) WINNETKA SCHOOL, S. Edgefield & Ruxton (later Page) — built in 1916 (under construction when the 1916 OCHS yearbook was published).

Back to Oak Cliff High School. When the school opened in 1915, its first principal was William Hardin Adamson. He was principal for 19 years. Soon after his death in 1935, the school was renamed in his honor. He had been an educator in the state of Texas for 50 years and was apparently very popular with students.

UPDATED: Thanks to the person who commented below to identify the old Oak Cliff High School. Here are a few “candid” photos from this 1916 yearbook which show the old school as well as the new one under construction.

Goodbye, old school — hello, new school.

***

Sources & Notes

All images (except the two Dallas Morning News photos) are from the 1915-1916 edition of The Oak, the yearbook of Oak Cliff High School. (Incidentally, if you are an Ancestry subscriber and are unable to find this yearbook, it’s because it is listed there as being “South Oak Cliff High School.” A lot of the OCHS yearbooks are mislabeled as SOC.)

More info on the history of this school can be found on p. 43 of Education in Dallas: Ninety-Two Years of History, 1874-1966 by Walter J. E. Schiebel.

8 Comments

December 1, 2023

Flashback Dallas Side Hustle

Majestic Theatre construction, 1920

by Paula Bosse

Another quick commercial for my Flashback Dallas Patreon page, where I upload exclusive short Dallas history posts daily. If you would like to support what I do for as little as $5 a month (subscription is cancellable at any time — no long-term commitment!) check things out here. (There are occasional “free” posts, which are visible to non-subscribers, but the vast majority are accessible only by paid subscribers.)

Patreon posts from October and November are listed below.

NOVEMBER 2023

Texas Instruments, From the Air
Police Property Room Wall o’ Guns – 1940
Art Club, Oak Cliff High School (Adamson High School) – 1916
“I’m Going Back To Dallas,” A Fox Trot
Hotel Rodessia, Elm Street
Camp Dick Cadet, WWI
Dal-Kliff Roller Rink – “Just For Fun”
Zoo Bar: Commerce Street in Mourning – Nov. 22, 1963
Record Street Streetcars – 1946
Pre-Peg Mag (Pre-Pegasus Magnolia Bldg.)
Trinity Heights Fire Department
Aerial View of Downtown Dallas, Texas
Texas Stadium’s “Let ’em Eat Cake” Box
Ultra-Modern Love Field
The Texas Bank at One Main Place – 1973
Phil’s Delicatessen, 3531 Oak Lawn
Excel-Sure, 4310-12 Elm – 1916
Turn-of-the-Century Ostrich Farm
Alma & Cockrell (2008) [“Little Baghdad”]
On the Line at Coca-Cola – 1964
Mystery Bryan Adams High School Celebrity Alum
Fair Park’s Police HQ/Lost Children’s Shelter – 1971
State-Thomas Homes
Caruth Homeplace – Bazillion-Dollar Real Estate
Neely’s Brown Pig Barbecue – Arcadia Park
Jerry Bywaters: Farmers Branch
Majestic, Under Construction – 1920

OCTOBER 2023

A Movie So Horrifying You Will Need a “Stomach Distress Bag” – 1972
19th-Century Fairgrounds Race Track
A Pegasus-Dominated Skyline
Logo: Dallas Transit Company – 1959
The Pierian Club (and One Interloper) – 1899
City Messenger Service, Cramped Quarters – 1930s
Dallas’ Drive-In for African American Patrons – 1953
Dallas Ice Kings, Big D’s First Hockey Team – 1927-32
Kidd Springs Lake – 1908
Three Film Exchanges, Cheek by Jowl – 1925
Walter B. Jones Walked from Dallas to Alaska and Back Again – 1909-10
A Gaggle of Astronauts in Downtown Dallas – 1971
H. L. Green’s Basement Record Dept. — 1950
WFAA “Superpower” Transmitter – 1930
Maid of Cotton – 1964
Elm Street – Summer of ’49
Harry Bertoia: “Textured Screen” – 1955
A Mansion on Turtle Creek
White Rock Pump Station – 1910/1911
Land All Over Texas and Mexico – 1912
State Fair Parking Lot (Roller Coaster Cameo) – 1951
Texas-OU, Y’all
MKT – SMU (1940s)
Central Research Library – 1982
Get In the Groove at the Grove (Cocoanut Grove) – 1946
N-M Fashion Show

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo shows the Majestic Theatre on Elm Street, under construction in 1920; photo from the book Street of Dreams: A History of Dallas’ Theatre Row by Jeanette Howeth Crumpler.

If you’d like to peruse other topics I’ve covered on Patreon since April, titles are listed in these previous posts:

Wrapping the commercial up, if you’d like to check out my Patreon page, please do! Thank you!

1 Comment

November 26, 2023

Jerry Bywaters: A Quick Trip to Farmers Branch

Bywaters Special Collections, Hamon Arts Library, SMU

by Paula Bosse

One of the joys of being a fan of an artist is discovering works you’ve never seen before. And here are two, both by a favorite of mine, Dallas artist Jerry Bywaters — and both are watercolors of the very nearby Farmers Branch. Bywaters must have been quite taken with the picturesque little depot there, because it snuck into at least two of his paintings. The one above is untitled, and the one below is “Farmers Branch In the Early Days.”

I can’t find dates for either of these, but the top work appears to have debuted at an exhibition at the Lawrence Art Galleries in November 1937 (it is mentioned in a review of the show by Frances Folsom in The Dallas Morning News — “Exhibition of Art Works by Jerry Bywaters Opening,” DMN, Oct. 31, 1937).

The depot is still standing — it was restored and relocated to the Farmers Branch Historical Park in 1985. Read a great history of the depot here.

The photo below is from the City of Farmers Branch site. Who wouldn’t want to spend a day with those girls?

I think I need to explore Farmers Branch.

***

Sources & Notes

Top painting (“Untitled [Farmers Branch Train Depot]”) is an undated watercolor by Jerry Bywaters, from the Bywaters Special Collections, Hamon Arts Library, SMU Libraries — more info on this can be found at the SMU site here.

The second painting, “Farmers Branch In the Early Days,” is an undated watercolor by Jerry Bywaters; it was sold by Heritage Auctions in 2010. (A notation on the back of this framed piece indicates that it once belonged to the legendary Judge Sarah T. Hughes, or it was purchased by her to give to a very lucky friend.)

The photo of bobbed flappers loitering around the depot is from the City of Farmers Branch website, here.

Other Flashback Dallas posts with (very different) examples of Jerry Bywaters’ art:

A version of this post originally appeared on my Patreon page.

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3 Comments

Tag: Historic Dallas

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