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?

Green Elephant Bar & Grill

  

love life - dig yourself - experience

"The Elephant" was located somewhere on Yale Blvd, back before they changed the name so out-of towners could find the George Bush Library at SMU. Its lifespan coincided somewhat with that of the "Friends" TV show, from 1990 to Dec 2004. It was named after a logo on the side of a trailer and catered primarily to the partying collegiate crowd. It lost its lease for the Yale site, and apparently found no suitable location to continue.

From an article in the Dallas Observer by Eric Celeste: Like most college bars, The Elephant, as it was know, made its reputation on cheap-drink happy hours--$1 screwdrivers on Thursdays were particularly fun--and late-night drunk fests. But the pub had other characteristics that endeared it to patrons long after they graduated. The food was always great--one of its former chefs, a binker, opened a fine-dining restaurant on Knox Street. The vibe was trippy; the decor was hippy. It had a '60s theme, including a "Pita, Paul & Mary" on the menu.

The Observer mentioned a few folks they felt would be particularly missed: Brad, Peter, Shannon, JoAnn, Adam, Bones, Cason, Fish, Misty, Stephanie K1 and K2, and the Hot Fat Girl. Salud!

Olympia Laundry and Dry Cleaning Co.

 

Corner Hill and East Side

Olympia Towel Supply Company was incorporated in 1921 by George Elson, a 26-year Greek immigrant, and his partners R.A. Drake, and Albert Walker. Elson seems to have flirted with the retail laundry business during the 1930s, but by 1949 returned to towel supply. After he died in 1950 his son, Charles Elson ran the business.

In 1960 the Laundry was still going strong as Olympia Laundry and Towel Supply Company. They supplied clean linens for many of the finer restaurants in Dallas, averaging 14,000 table cloths and 40,000 large dinner napkins per week. The last year I found a listing for Olympia was 1968.

There's an old brick building at the corner of Hill Ave. and East Side with a front door set diagonally to the corner, which looks as if it could have housed a laundry at one time.

George Elson, founder of Olympia Laundry

Barney Oldfield's Restaurant and Gasoline Alley

This theme restaurant/coffeeshop/lounge opened October 1973 as an adjunct to the Sheraton Inn-Mockingbird West at 1893 West Mockingbird just west of Harry Hines. Its proponents declared it was "unique in the hotel business" because it was a freestanding building which allowed the public entry without having to go through a hotel lobby, yet allowed paying guests easy entry from a hotel-side covered walkway.

You could be sure you were at the right place when you saw the giant gas pump at the door and the flashing signal lights in the lobby. The restaurant's decor was somewhat dedicated to the memory of race car driver Barney Oldfield. The floors were made of the same material as tires, and the interior's bright red walls were of highway reflector material. The waitstaff dressed in pit stop crew costumes. Barney Oldfield's served "all-American food", including Texas-style chicken-fried steak, and live music, mostly little known and long-forgotten pop acts from Reno or Las Vegas.

Barney's was still in operation as late as 1986, but is no more. Ditto the Sheraton Inn Mockingbird.

 The real Barney Oldfield

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.

Earl Hayes Chevrolet

Earl Hayes had already worked for Chevrolet from 1925 in a variety of managerial positions in Dallas, Detroit, and Oklahoma, when he returned to Dallas in 1945 and partnered with Roy Hill to purchase the John E. Morris Chevrolet Co. at Ninth & Lancaster (also listed as 132 Lancaster). In 1949 Hayes bought the dealership outright from Hill and built one of the largest showrooms in Dallas at the 9th & Lancaster location.  He also operated a used car and truck dealership at Commerce & Industrial.

The slogan "Come out our way, trade your way" appeared in ads in 1949, and Hayes apparently stuck with the saying for the duration of his dealership.

About 1974 Earl brought his son, Robert T. (Bob) Hayes on board, and in June 1975 the result of their partnership, Bob Hayes Chevrolet Co., began operating at its new location at Marvin D. Love Freeway and Wheatland Road. Sometime in the 1990's the dealership became Powell Chevy. In 2011 Robert T. Hayes was Chairman of the Board of Hayes Truck Inc. in Dallas.

See also the Phorum discussion at Dallas Historical Society about the Hayes dealership.
Also a 1986 article from D Magazine on Dallas family dealerships.

Casa Linda State Bank

Casa Linda State Bank's application for a charter was okayed by the State Banking Board in October 1953. The bank's directors were all Dallasites: B. H. Bishop, Carl M. Brown, John A. Maxwell, Carl A. Reed, W. E. Stone, J. M Tuttle Jr. and Edward L. Vint. The bank officially opened on March 6, 1954 at 234 Casa Linda Plaza. My best guess is that it was located in the quadrant that housed the Casa Linda Theatre, and probably occupied the site that was home to Soup'R'Salad in the 1990s.

The bank officially changed its name to First Citizens Bank in January 1960, and in 1961 it moved to a new building in the Lochwood Village Shopping Center at Garland Road and Jupiter.