Gene's Music Bar

Looking North on Akard St. from Wood.   Adolphus Hotel in background.   Color by Leonard Raef

Gene's Music Bar opened about 1955 or 56 and was located at 307-09 S. Akard, just a few blocks up from the Adolphus Hotel. In the 1950s & early 60s this was considered the "fun" side of town. There were pool halls, drinking places, and strip joints; and nearby hotels like the Baker featured exotic dancers in the nightclub and live music. Gene's was known to be a longtime gay hangout was sometimes targeted by the vice squad. In 1958 it was also the proud owner of "the Southwest's first and only stereophonic music system."

Owner Walter Lawrence, who also ran The Lasso Bar, the Jungle Hut Lounge, and the Golden Steer #2, all on Akard, was questioned by the Warren Commission as part of the investigation of the Kennedy assassination.  Lawrence was acquainted with Jack Ruby, and because Ruby had been seen walking some dogs in the vicinity of the club, the Commission seemed to think he could verify for them that Ruby was an active homosexual. Good fodder for conspiracy theorists, I reckon.

After the Baker Hotel was demolished in 1980, the old "fun" part of Dallas eventually disappeared, and Akard became a narrow tree-lined driveway for ATT Plaza.

Zo-Mar Hotel

409 No. Harwood St.  -  Phone 2-0376

"Modern Rooms"

I like this image of the determined bellboy, but I haven't found much about this old hotel. I would have especially liked to find the origin of its unusual name.  What I did find was that it was in operation at least from 1933 to 1938, and in 1933 you could rent an "attractively furnished" room with private bath and ceiling fan from $4 to $7 a week. 409 North Harwood was about midway between Bryan and Live Oak Street.

Commerce Street Approach to Downtown

The last time Texas used a black-on-orange license plate was 1955, and the two-tone blue car looks a lot like 1955 model Ford Fairlane or Crown Victoria.

Clocks of Five Restaurant & Bar

Plaza Level  -  One Main Place  -  Field & Elm

Expressway Tower (name changed to Cowboy Bldg. in '74)  -  6116 N. Central Expressway

A theme restaurant which opened in October 1972 at One Main Place, back when One Main Place was new and underground dining was, too. The gimmick to this place was that the walls were covered with fully restored antique European clocks, with each one set to five o'clock. The idea was that the working day was over and it was time to relax. By mid 1973 the place had another "gimmick": an "Eastern concept" (whether East Coast or East Asia I don't know) wherein diners ordering steak dinners could have all the wine or draft beer they wanted. A second location that included live music & dancing opened in November 1973 at Central Expressway & Yale. The last listing I found for the restaurant was October 1974 and it only listed the Central Expressway location.

Martinique Bar

1809 Main St.

The mysterious Martinique. It might have been at 1809 Main. It might have been at 1816-A Main. Maybe it started out at 1809 when the matchbook was printed and ended up at 1816-A when it went out of business in 1954. I have a feeling it didn't last long.

Mayfair Hotel

or "Hotel Mayfair", depending on the year. Ross at St. Paul

The Mayfair Hotel opened in March 1927. It was a ten-story building with 132 and 18 apartments. Tucker & McQueen were the contractors, owners and builders, and Jack Tucker managed the joint. It was built of reinforced concrete, and the front was a red-patterned brick with stone trim. Too bad you can't see details of the front facade. The sky garden depicted on this old postcard looks interesting though.

The hotel was a quiet family-type place, the kind of place a woman traveling to Dallas alone in the "olden times" could be safe in. Many apartments had full kitchen facilities and some guests lived there full time. In the beginning the place got a lot of show business folks who would sing and perform for the rest of the guests in the lobby. Real friendly and homey.

As more larger hotels popped up, and as motels proliferated, people just wanted a room for the night and business fell off. The owner decided to imitate fancy hotels he'd seen in Las Vegas, and he changed the kitchens in the efficiency apartments into dressing rooms. It helped for awhile, but by the late 1960s the hotel was only about 40% occupied. The Mayfair was slated to close in April 1970, with all of its furnishings to be sold.

An undated video on YouTube shows the demolition of the old hotel.

Notice St. Paul at Ross has changed to Ross at St. Paul. Which street are You more familiar with?

Pageant Club Lounge

Formally opened October14, 1954, across from "New Titches". Hyped as "Dallas' Newest and Finest Lounge", one ad read "Our magnificent decor will enchant your every moment...serving your favorite beers and wines (no liquor, eh?) -- your evening is sure to be most pleasant at the the beautiful new Pageant Club - modern throughout..." .  I wonder how many of the clientele appreciated the connection between the RA phone prefix and the Ra Sun-God logo on the matchbook.

Just over a year later on Oct. 19, 1955 the news read, "A 1-alarm fire caused about $8,000 damage early Tuesday at the well-furnished Pageant Club..."  The 1:25 a.m. fire was confined to the back of the lounge and about one tenth of the business area was destroyed. I couldn't find anything else in the newspaper about "the rest of the story." The Pageant Club apparently vanished as the smoke cleared.

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.

Downtown Trolley

 

Postcard depicting trolley. The car looks a lot like the ones used for the Interurban system. I am still researching where this scene may have been located. Wild guess is Main or Elm street.

I know I have not been posting lately, but I still have a lot of stuff in my files waiting, and hope to get some more things up.

Mitchell's Coffee Shop

At 307 South Harwood "in the Gas Company Building". Here's an ad from 1936.