This first postcard, published by S.H. Kress & Co. around the early 1910s, shows Elm Street as it would have appeared circa 1911/1912. Kress was a five and dime chain of stores that once dotted the country, known for its distinctive architectural designs and, later, for its segregationist company policies. According to contemporary newspaper articles, the Kress store shown in the postcard was commissioned and built in 1911 for a cost of $38,000 (around $1.2 million in 2024 dollars). The Wilson Building, seen behind the W.A. Green & Company building, housed the Titche-Goettinger Department Store until the end of the 1920s. The vantage point of the artist is Scollard Court, or present-day Exchange Place, renamed to the latter following the 1916 construction of the Exchange National Bank. Today Exchange Place is little more than a narrow, alley-like walkway sandwiched between the one-time Exchange bank building and that of its rival Republic National Bank, long since christened "Money Alley" and designated as a historical landmark. Note the streetcar lines running down the center of Elm Street.
This second postcard, published by C.T. American Art in 1931, presents essentially the same view some twenty years later. The vantage point is slightly farther to the east, about a half block based on today's street layout. By this time the W.A. Green Company had taken over the former home of Titche-Goettinger. At the extreme right can be seen A. Harris & Co., predecessor to the later Sanger-Harris department store chain formed as the result of a 1961 merger. The streetcar system is still in place, and the automobiles have been upgraded in design compared to their embryonic counterparts in the earlier image. Elm Street is still a two-way thoroughfare at this point.
The next two photos depict this section of Elm Street as of the 1940s. The medium format photo at the top is one of a collection of interurban trolley images I've acquired and shows an actual example of one of the streetcars that once traversed the streets of Dallas, and which have wholly disappeared save for the M-Line Trolley running through Uptown. The Singer Sewing Machine Co. had its offices just behind the streetcar, and the next door Rhealee Milliner shown at the right of the photo is now part of the City Tavern. The shorter buildings housing Paul's Shoes, Grant's department store, and Franklin's clothing store are likewise gone today, having been demolished in 2014 to make way for an upscale hotel's retail expansion. Today their former historic locations are taken up by a valet parking lot. While the traffic on Elm is only seen to be moving westbound, the street is in actuality still bidirectional.
Here is the scene at Elm and Akard as it looks in more contemporary times, those being early October 2024. Traffic is of course now westbound only, with the switch to one-way having been made in September 1956. Allegedly, the city's lack of alleyways, and thus lack of suitable delivery zones for commercial goods, made this change necessary. The scar remaining from the demolished nineteenth century buildings which once adjoined the Wilson Building is still visible. As is characteristic of Downtown as a whole, the properties along this stretch of roadway are an uncertain mix of the historic and contemporary as far as age, architecture, and protected status. The former Titche-Goettinger/W.A. Green Co. building is on the National Register of Historic Places, so here's hoping it fares much better long-term than did many of its contemporaries.
