Oakland Cemetery

Oakland Cemetery was founded about 1890. It is located south of Fair Park and north of the corner of Malcolm X Blvd. and Pine Street. Only a few years after its founding the cemetery was well on its way to becoming the final resting place for many Dallas leaders. A journalist who reported on the cemetery in 1893 said, "The drive (to the cemetery) was through one of the most beautiful residence sections of the city....through a pretty landscape, the attractive feature of which is a succession of groves and lawns. On reaching the cemetery the visitor is seized with the inspiration of the beautiful. Beginning with the lofty pillars, there is spread out a panorama of classical beauty."

Here's a view of that panorama of classical beauty more than a hundred years later.

This postcard is probably from about 1902 or later, when Geo. W. Loudermilk was superintendent of Oakland and Greenwood Cemeteries. His name is no longer on the gate, nor is he buried here.

Learn about Oakland preservation.

F. O. Stone Baking Co.

Opened in the summer of 1916 at the corner of Phelps, Thomas and McKinney Avenues. Owner F.O. Stone had previously opened bakeries in Cincinnati and in Atlanta, but this two-story brick manufacturing plant, built for $35,000, was his biggest endeavor.  The sole product of the plant was six varieties of soft cakes made with butter and wrapped in wax paper packages to sell at local grocery stores. The 60-ft wide white tile oven was considered something of a novelty, as it baked the cakes via radiation heat and not by direct flame. The plant could produce 3,000 cakes an hour, and the 8 oz. cakes originally sold for 10 cents apiece.

In 1919 the company acquired Southern Baking Company and announced that the Dallas plant would be enlarged at a cost of $150,000. It also changed its name to Campbell-Stone Baking Company. "Stone's Cakes" became "Campbell Capital Cakes" . Sometime around 1930 the company became The Continental Baking Company. Even in those days you couldn't count on your favorite brand being around for long.

Garry's Hair Stylists

Circa 1960.  21 Highland Park Village.

Elks Arch

In 1907 Dallas won the honor of hosting the 1908 Elks Convention. It was a great gig for the town, then numbering 90,000 residents. Elks' Lodges of Texas and the Southwest raised much of the $20,000 required to build this purple and white steel and plaster arch at Akard and Commerce. It was two stories tall and topped by a life-size elk. In July 1908 delegates from all over the United States converged in Dallas. Over 250,000 people turned out for the parades that passed by this arch. The convention was considered a great success and the arch remained in place until February1911, when it was moved to the old fair grounds.

Chicken Bar

The Chicken Bar opened about October 1942 on 1600 Commerce St. across the street from Neiman Marcus. It was the latest venture of a young Tyler oilman, J. Curtis Sanford, who was a kind of "Mark Cuban" of his time. He had been a boxing promoter, and he had initiated the first New Year's Day Cotton Bowl football game in 1937. He had also brought two top tennis players to play indoors at the Fair Park Livestock Arena, one of the most spectacular indoor sporting events to take place in Dallas (obviously pre-Mavs). Sanford switched gears after he was sold some chicks in 1941 and began raising them on the grounds of his colonial-style home near White Rock Lake . He decided the best way to make money was to fry those chickens fer eatin'. Sanford would eventually open six Chicken Bars before quitting the business about 1947.

Sanford's biggest endeavor in the chicken business was probably the $300,000 Chicken Bar #6 at Commerce & Industrial, which opened in 1946 and featured rooftop dancing and accommodations for 1100 customers. Sanford died in 1972.

Fair Park Auditorium

I knew that Pan Am Casino looked familiar. Now I know why. It's the Fair Park Music Hall in disguise. Originally called the Fair Park Auditorium, the music hall was built in 1925 at a cost of $500,000. It could seat 5000 people and was dedicated during the State Fair of 1925. The building is designed in the Spanish Baroque style with Moorish influences. The "Casino" sign was probably affixed for the duration of the 1937 State Fair.

See the Music Hall's site for more details on this great old building. I attended my first symphony and my first opera at this place.

Pan American Casino

Maybe the word "Casino" had a different meaning in the 1930. Maybe you couldn't use the phrase "dance hall".  At any rate, this building at Fair Park wasn't a gambler's mecca, but a venue for musical entertainments. Dance bands and orchestras were the order of the day, and at the beginning of the 1937 State Fair (in early August back then) the Rudy Vallee Orchestra played. For 50 cents you could buy a ticket to NOT dance.