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.
Here is a collection of rare and mostly one-of-a-kind photos from the Dallas area, most of them from my personal collection. These recall a bygone era in Dallas public transportation, with a focus on showcasing still identifiable areas of the city that have changed significantly since the original images were taken. Vintage streetcar photos can be some of the best representations of what once existed downtown, offering unique glimpses of long-gone city blocks, buildings, and intersections.
View facing east on Elm Street near Stone Place, circa 1943
This medium format film negative captures a very different view from what is seen today. The Rhealee Milliner on the right side of the picture is now the City Tavern, and the shorter building on the left that housing Paul's Shoes is completely gone, its place now occupied by a parking lot. Today the Giant Eyeball resides in the space next to that parking lot, looking out toward Main Street one block south and marking the farther end of the lot where the old Praetorian building, Dallas' first skyscraper, stood before being demolished in 2013.
Elm Street at Stone, facing east, circa 1943 (Author's collection)Continue reading "Dallas’s interurban streetcars in vintage photographs"
June 12, or Loving Day, is an unofficial holiday set aside to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision. Loving finally affirmed the right of interracial couples to marry in all fifty states - and, not incidentally, legitimized the very existence of people like me into law - in the sixteen states where such unions were still illegal. In recognition of this anniversary, I have assembled a collection of thirty-two photos depicting both obvious and likely examples of such couples, most of them everyday people, from both before and after the Loving decision, as immortalized via the photographer's lens. Most are drawn from my vintage and antique photo collection.
Montana couple, circa late 1900s/early 1910s
Late nineteenth century Montana had its share of discriminatory practices, even if it was something of an outlier in the U.S. as a whole with its lack of enforced segregation in public schools, universal (male) suffrage, and (until 1909) lack of a law prohibiting interracial marriage between whites and non-whites. Discrimination and prejudice did of course exist, but this couple - if they were a couple, as they appear to be - apparently decided to weather those particular storms together. Photographer Victor Grigsby opened his first Livingston studio in early 1908, placing the time of this photo at around the end of the aughts or the 1910s.
Montana couple, circa early 1900s
Continue reading "Loving Day"
Vintage photos, like modern-day ones, are vignettes of the daily life of their time. Here is a selection of twenty-three such examples from my collection.
1920s dry goods store
I found this one a bit intriguing despite not really having a place for it in any future projects. Perhaps this is because I've always had a bit of a fancy for small neighborhood markets laid out in a late 19th/early 20th century style. It's what attracts me to Rudolph's Market & Sausage Factory in Deep Ellum, a fixture in the neighborhood since 1895, despite my being meat-free since 1999. There's no indication in the photo of this store's location.
1920s dry goods store
Bathing beauties
Bathing suits have changed a lot in the last century. I'm guessing this photo dates to the 1920s or 30s.
Two shapely women in bathing suits
Continue reading "Vintage scenes from life"
I like to collect vintage photos, particularly vintage photos of my hometown of Dallas and photos of places I've visited. Most of these date from the era of affordable personal photography and include mostly slides, real photo postcards, and everyday prints with the occasional vintage film negative thrown in. But a handful of items in my collection date to a period even earlier than that. These are not photo reproductions or reprints, period postcards, or facsimiles, but are actual period specimens that hail from the nineteenth or extreme early twentieth centuries. Here are examples of some of these.
Daguerreotype of young lady, 1/6 plate, circa 1840s
This portrait of a young lady is said to date to sometime during the 1840s, making it the oldest photo in my collection as of this writing. The ringlets in the woman's hair are a particular draw for me stylistically, and, unlike most photos from this period, you can see a bit of a smile playing upon her lips. Daguerreotypes consist of sheets of silver-plated copper, very highly polished and chemically treated to be light-sensitive. The image consists of the same silver as the surface upon which it sits, meaning that the appearance of the photo alternates between a positive and negative image depending on how the available light hits it. Daguerreotypes are very fragile objects and are usually presented behind glass-plated frames, which are stored inside latched, decorative cases. Mine came without a case, but I immediately placed it into one upon receipt.
Unfortunately, I have no information on the location, the photographer, or the identity of the woman in the photo. What I can say is that having one daguerreotype makes me want to have another. This was purchased from an online seller in mid-January 2025.
