The adventures and various works of a photographer, road tripper, former patron of the local arts, aspiring app developer, and late night coffee drinker and conversationalist.
Dallas is home to a healthy community of photographers and photography studios in the digital era. While the widespread prevalence of easy, convenient cameras in everyone's mobile device makes everyday photography easier than ever, there is still a niche carved out for professional work when it comes to memorializing important events or, just as importantly, people. This was no less the case in the earlier days of photography, in the days before Kodak and the Brownie camera made picture taking easily accessible to the masses. The portrait studios that operated in the late nineteenth century captured images on plates of glass and produced printed vanity photos, or "cabinet cards," by the dozen for those seeking to memorialize their own likenesses, or those of their family members or families. But while these studios helped create a valuable record of many early communities, their own legacies have so often been erased by over a century of urban development, with little to no evidence left to recall their one-time locations near city centers. In this post, we're going to go on a sort of "walking tour" of several such locations in the city of Dallas, and take a look at the stories behind seven early Dallas photography studios.
The tour area
I purchased this vintage photo from an online auction. The expression on this young lady's face is a bit inscrutable. Is she sassily hamming it up for the camera? Or is she about to eat the photographer? Her scary disposition makes this vintage photo a fun pick for this year's Halloween.
This series of images presents a view of one portion of downtown Elm Street over a period of approximately 11 decades. The view is facing east in the general area of present-day Akard Street.
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.
I recently purchased this large collection of 2500 35mm slides, mostly Kodachromes but also with some Ektachromes and Agfa specimens included. What kind of content is on these? I don't know everything exactly, but the dates range from the 1950s to the 1990s and the subjects appear to be everything from scenes of everyday life to travel to various random images. One thing that my "Ghosts of DFW Music History" blog series has made crystal clear to me is my need to assemble a collection of stock images from which to draw whenever I need illustrative content for one of my projects. And I can't realistically expect to have examples of everything I might want to use someday in the (admittedly sizable) collection of photos I've taken myself. Dealing with ownership and copyright concerns is a royal pain in the rear when I want to use someone else's material, so the opportunity to acquire a large collection of previously unpublished and unencumbered images at a low cost is something I didn't want to pass up. While I expect that only a small percentage of these will ultimately be of interest to me, even two or three percent will justify the cost of the entire set.
