Tag: Local history

bookmark_borderItems I’m looking for in 2025

Posted on by PAO Productions
With 2025 now underway, I am laying out my plans for the new year. Alongside the usual new year's resolutions and the incentives to myself to get healthier, I'm also putting some thought into what blog and other personal projects I'd like to see realized over the coming months. Toward this end, I've compiled the following list of "must have" and "would be nice" items that will help bring those plans and ideas to fruition. If you (or anyone you know) are aware of a source for any of the following items, or have some examples that you are willing to donate, potentially sell, or just allow the use of for various blog features and/or research projects, please reach out to me:
  • Original, non-commercial (i.e., amateur) photo prints, snapshots, negatives, and slides of the Dallas-Fort Worth area from the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly those showing buildings, streets, and important events (but not parades). This includes amateur real photo postcards, and especially includes amateur photos from local band performances taken prior to the advent of digital cameras.
  • Original flyers for local shows at area clubs and music venues from the 1990s and earlier, or originally made (i.e., not taken off the internet) high quality images of them
  • Original memorabilia of any kind related to businesses located on or along Poydras Street in Dallas, from any time period, especially photos, postcards, business cards, advertisements, and physical promotional items (advertising handouts, branded items and other such artifacts) (high priority)
  • Cabinet cards and CDVs produced in the Dallas-Fort Worth area from 1870 through 1900
  • Vintage, original photo prints, negatives, and slides of areas and attractions I've visited on prior road trips
  • Vintage, original 8mm films of sites in the DFW area (amateur films, not commercial, and not films of private events such as weddings and birthday parties unless they include notable individuals)
  • Photos of interracial couples predating Loving vs. Virginia (i.e., before 1967), including slides
  • Original music-related  'zines from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, from any time period
  • Route 66-related slides and photos, amateur only (not commercially produced)
  • Any "found footage" style audio and video recordings related to DFW happenings, on any format I can play (cassette, 1/4 inch reel-to-reel, home-recorded 8 track cartridges, microcassettes, VHS/VHS-C, Video8, Hi8, miniDV, DVD-R and other recordable DVD media)

When it comes to cabinet cards, photos of places outside the DFW metroplex, and the pre-Loving photos, I am looking to acquire originals, but in all the other instances, I only need permission to reproduce materials and don't need to actually acquire originals as long as a good quality copy can be provided. This is particularly the case for the various historical research projects that concern local history or the DFW music scene in particular.

Plans for 2025 include finishing up the Ghosts of DFW Music History blog series, some historical posts concerning Dallas history, completing my Road Trips and Live Performance Photography photo galleries, a few recipe and cooking-related posts, and possibly some photography-related experiments and/or videos. And of course, whatever else I may feel like doing at any given time.

All original material on this page is © 2025 Peter Orozco. All rights reserved.

bookmark_borderCapri Theatre ticket stubs

Posted on by PAO Productions
I picked up these ticket stubs inside a Fort Worth antique store a few months ago. The original theater operated from 1922 until sometime in the 1970s, eventually being demolished to make way for a 20-story office building. The theater opened in 1922 as the Hope Theatre and underwent multiple name changes until being christened The Capri in 1960. Continue reading "Capri Theatre ticket stubs"

bookmark_borderEarly photography studios in Dallas – a walking tour

Posted on by PAO Productions
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.
map of Downtown Dallas with walking tour area indicated
The tour area

Continue reading "Early photography studios in Dallas – a walking tour"

bookmark_borderA view down Elm Street, 1911-2024

Posted on by PAO Productions
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.

Elm Street circa 1911/1912, Dallas
Elm Street circa 1911/1912

Continue reading "A view down Elm Street, 1911-2024"

bookmark_borderIn search of the old Plano City Dam

Posted on by PAO Productions
While working to compile photographic images for my DFW in vintage photos post a few months ago, I managed to get my hands on an old postcard for the city of Plano. If you didn't know, finding and acquiring historic images of the city of Dallas proper is not especially difficult; all you really need is a bit of vigilance and a healthy dose of patience while keeping an eye out at antique stores, estate sales, and online auctions. Just give it some time, and the photos will turn up. Finding interesting period photos of the suburban areas, though, can be considerably more difficult. So it was with some delight that I acquired this particular real photo postcard. And, unlike other similarly aged RPPCs that I've found, this one came with a mystery attached: where was the Plano Dam?
Plano Waterworks, circa 1907

Continue reading "In search of the old Plano City Dam"