Segregation was as entrenched in Ft. Worth as anywhere else in the South, but by the early 1960s it was in the process of dying a natural death. At least as far as overt practices were concerned. But it wasn’t always that way.
This was way before my time, but a little research on the internet will quickly reveal that the Klan was extremely active in the early 1920s, going so far as to have control (thru legal elections) of the Ft. Worth city government as well as several other major cities in Texas. I’ve also heard that the Klan had a hanging tree that was located on North Main near the Ellis Pecan Building.
When I came back here in 1961, there were still three extremely visible signs of segregation. Granted, there were many more, but these were so obvious that you had to be deaf, dumb and blind to miss them. Inside Monnig’s Department Store, on the block bounded by Fourth, Fifth, Houston and Throckmorton, on the south side of the elevators, was a pair of black enamel drinking fountains. If you wondered why two fountains, all you had to do was look above them. The signs identified one for ‘White’ and the other for ‘Colored’. By that time, no one paid any attention, but it was stark evidence of the segregated past. Not too much later, the signs were removed, but the fountains remained until the store was demolished.
Following the same pattern were the restrooms in the basement of Leonard’s Department Store. Located just past the sporting goods area (where a whetstone was available for everyone to sharpen their pocket knives) were two men’s restrooms. As with the water fountains at Monnig’s, one was for ‘Whites’ and the other for ‘Colored’. Eventually, I believe either one restroom was eliminated or the two were combined.
What’s interesting is that no one seemed to make any kind of fuss over either the fountains or restrooms. They just kind of faded into the background over a period of time.
The third thing took a legislative change and that was the Poll Tax. It still existed as late as 1964 because the Presidential Election in November 1964 was the first one I was elgible to vote in. To do so, I had to pay a 50 cent Poll Tax. For those who don’t know, the Poll Tax was basically created to prevent poor people (primarily blacks and hispanics) from voting. Considering that the original price was $1.75 per person per year, it did it’s job admirably. Of course, it had become a shadow of it’s former self by 1964 when the price had dropped to 50 cents. It was finally abolished in Federal Elections by the passage of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution in 1964 and two years later ruled unconstitutional in state and local elections by the Supreme Court.
Ft. Worth has a lot to be proud of...but also a lot that it’d probably just as soon forget. But the danger with forgetting is that a very famous phrase will jump up and bite you in the hinder part. That phrase? “He who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it.” Incidentally, the correct phrase is “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And the author is George Santayana.
Have we learned from our past? Sometime I wonder.
Showing posts with label Monnig's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monnig's. Show all posts
Monday, May 5, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Remember Window Shopping?
Back in olden times (the late 1940s thru the 1950s and even into the 1960s), a major form of entertainment was window shopping. In other words, you strolled thru downtown (shopping centers were just getting started in the early 1960s) looking at goods displayed in the storefront windows. Not only did it matter if the stores were open, it was actually more fun when they weren’t. Sundays were popular because everyone was closed.
What? Closed on Sunday? That’s right. Not only were Blue Laws in force, the general belief was that Sunday was the day you went to church. Also, most stores, even the big department stores, closed at 5:00 or 5:30 p.m. every day.
Window shopping was both an art and entertainment. You strolled slowly past the windows of various stores, lingering in front of those that caught your eye. While standing there, you imagined owning a particular outfit or jacket, shoes, toys, bicycles, etc. that you’d love to have but were way too expensive for you to afford. The flip side of the coin would be to find reasonably priced items that you either needed or wanted, then return when the store was open to purchase them.
Many’s the time you did neither. Instead, you just looked with no purpose in mind other than an outing with your family. Eventually you hopped a bus or took a cab and headed home.
Until stores started migrating to the suburbs and those new-fangled shopping centers, (Enclosed malls didn’t come along until quite a bit later. Sometime in the 1970s, I believe.), just about everything you wanted was in downtown Ft. Worth. All the big department stores, of course. Leonard’s, Everybody’s (An early version of a discount department store and owned by Leonard’s.), Monnig’s, Stripling’s (I worked in the toy department there in 1963), Cox’s and The Fair. Then there was Meacham’s, F.W. Woolworth, Cromer’s Ace (Bicycles were in their window.), Western Union, The Camera Shop, several greeting card stores, newsstands, banks (no branches), drug stores, restaurants, cafeterias, coffee shops, churches, jewelry stores, western shops and even a couple of automobile dealerships (Pontiac and Chevrolet, I believe.).
Of course you had City Hall where you could pay your water bill, Lone Star Gas Co., Texas Electric and a healthy collection of office buildings. And let’s not forget the Worth, Hollywood and Palace Theaters, along with the late, lamented Ft. Worth Public Library building that sat on that pie shaped piece of land at the intersection of Ninth and Throckmorton and was eventually demolished despite the protestations of a substantial number of residents when the new library was built. Just up the street on the corner of Eighth and Throckmorton was Barber’s Bookstore. For those who couldn’t afford the price of a new book or didn’t want to part with that much cash, there was Thompson’s Bookstore. Located on Throckmorton only a block or so south of Leonard’s, it was hole-in-the-wall offering used books and magazines. I spent a lot of time in there...and a fair amount of money.
As I said, there was just about any kind of business you could want and quite a few you didn’t, such as high interest small loan companies (Yep, they’ve been around since the beginning of time.). From Ninth Street south to Lancaster, the area was known as Lower Main. It was, with the exception of the Telephone Company (AT&T) and the Catholic Church, basically a collection of more or less disreputable flop houses, walk up hotels, bar & grilles and liquor stores, with the occasional antique shop thrown in for good measure. The Cellar (where Secret Service agents went the night before JFK was assassinated) was below ground level at Tenth and Commerce, I think. Union Gospel Mission was located on Throckmorton, about two blocks north of Lancaster, until everything was razed for the current Convention Center and the Mission wound up out on E. Lancaster.
How do I know about that particular part of Ft. Worth, since you darn sure didn’t do any window shopping in the area? Mainly by riding buses home. Their route took them straight down Houston to Lancaster or over to Calhoun and then south to Lancaster before heading east. Believe me, you saw some very interesting things while looking out the bus windows. Beyond that, one of my uncles died in 1957 while sitting on a barstool in Richelieu Grill waiting for his breakfast. Massive coronary. He was 65 and had received his first Social Security check only a week or two before.
I went with a couple of cousins to obtain his belongings from his hotel room (A walk-up flophouse with screen doors on the rooms.). By the time we got there, someone had popped the screen and taken everything he had.
Yep, downtown Ft. Worth in that time period was a very interesting mix of the good, the bad and the ugly, but they were good times overall. I still miss it.
What? Closed on Sunday? That’s right. Not only were Blue Laws in force, the general belief was that Sunday was the day you went to church. Also, most stores, even the big department stores, closed at 5:00 or 5:30 p.m. every day.
Window shopping was both an art and entertainment. You strolled slowly past the windows of various stores, lingering in front of those that caught your eye. While standing there, you imagined owning a particular outfit or jacket, shoes, toys, bicycles, etc. that you’d love to have but were way too expensive for you to afford. The flip side of the coin would be to find reasonably priced items that you either needed or wanted, then return when the store was open to purchase them.
Many’s the time you did neither. Instead, you just looked with no purpose in mind other than an outing with your family. Eventually you hopped a bus or took a cab and headed home.
Until stores started migrating to the suburbs and those new-fangled shopping centers, (Enclosed malls didn’t come along until quite a bit later. Sometime in the 1970s, I believe.), just about everything you wanted was in downtown Ft. Worth. All the big department stores, of course. Leonard’s, Everybody’s (An early version of a discount department store and owned by Leonard’s.), Monnig’s, Stripling’s (I worked in the toy department there in 1963), Cox’s and The Fair. Then there was Meacham’s, F.W. Woolworth, Cromer’s Ace (Bicycles were in their window.), Western Union, The Camera Shop, several greeting card stores, newsstands, banks (no branches), drug stores, restaurants, cafeterias, coffee shops, churches, jewelry stores, western shops and even a couple of automobile dealerships (Pontiac and Chevrolet, I believe.).
Of course you had City Hall where you could pay your water bill, Lone Star Gas Co., Texas Electric and a healthy collection of office buildings. And let’s not forget the Worth, Hollywood and Palace Theaters, along with the late, lamented Ft. Worth Public Library building that sat on that pie shaped piece of land at the intersection of Ninth and Throckmorton and was eventually demolished despite the protestations of a substantial number of residents when the new library was built. Just up the street on the corner of Eighth and Throckmorton was Barber’s Bookstore. For those who couldn’t afford the price of a new book or didn’t want to part with that much cash, there was Thompson’s Bookstore. Located on Throckmorton only a block or so south of Leonard’s, it was hole-in-the-wall offering used books and magazines. I spent a lot of time in there...and a fair amount of money.
As I said, there was just about any kind of business you could want and quite a few you didn’t, such as high interest small loan companies (Yep, they’ve been around since the beginning of time.). From Ninth Street south to Lancaster, the area was known as Lower Main. It was, with the exception of the Telephone Company (AT&T) and the Catholic Church, basically a collection of more or less disreputable flop houses, walk up hotels, bar & grilles and liquor stores, with the occasional antique shop thrown in for good measure. The Cellar (where Secret Service agents went the night before JFK was assassinated) was below ground level at Tenth and Commerce, I think. Union Gospel Mission was located on Throckmorton, about two blocks north of Lancaster, until everything was razed for the current Convention Center and the Mission wound up out on E. Lancaster.
How do I know about that particular part of Ft. Worth, since you darn sure didn’t do any window shopping in the area? Mainly by riding buses home. Their route took them straight down Houston to Lancaster or over to Calhoun and then south to Lancaster before heading east. Believe me, you saw some very interesting things while looking out the bus windows. Beyond that, one of my uncles died in 1957 while sitting on a barstool in Richelieu Grill waiting for his breakfast. Massive coronary. He was 65 and had received his first Social Security check only a week or two before.
I went with a couple of cousins to obtain his belongings from his hotel room (A walk-up flophouse with screen doors on the rooms.). By the time we got there, someone had popped the screen and taken everything he had.
Yep, downtown Ft. Worth in that time period was a very interesting mix of the good, the bad and the ugly, but they were good times overall. I still miss it.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
The Times They Are A’Changin’
My parents and I returned from El Paso on May 3, 1961, running headlong into major changes to Ft. Worth in general and particularly to the East Side.
Downtown was still basically the same, though it had acquired a futuristic 30-story skyscraper in the interim…the aluminum-skinned Continental National Bank building at Houston and W. 7th. It was easily identifiable from any point in Ft. Worth that offered a view of downtown as a result of the giant rotating clock mounted on it's roof. Two opposing sides displayed the time, while the letters CNB adorned the other two sides. Ft. Worth National Bank was directly across Houston Street from Continental (Remember the TV commercial with the girl singing "Ft. Worth National, that's my bank!" ?). Also, the corner diagonally opposite from CNB was Texas Electric, complete with a time/temperature display jutting out from the building and an image of their mascot, Reddy Kilowatt (Anyone remember him?).
Seminary South shopping center had been built at the intersection of I-35W & W. Berry Street. They drained a small lake to do it, so the shopping center actually sat below street level on the lake bed. This was the first modern shopping mall in Ft. Worth and it was accompanied with all kinds of gloom and doom predictions that it would ruin downtown. Turned out the predictions were correct for a long time, though now the tide has turned.
On the East Side, things had changed in spades, though most of the changes were good and simply made the East Side a more desirable place to be. The Monnig’s East Shopping Center had been built and there were plenty of small businesses, antique shops, two bowling alleys and the like. You could walk the neighborhoods or up and down E. Lancaster with no concern for your safety. Believe it or not, it even extended to women. Yep, things were good....but they would be changing in ways that no one suspected. If we had only known!
One harbinger of what was to come (though very few people would have believed it at the time) was the fact that when my father came on ahead to a job at Ranch Style Beans (he made the sauce for the beans) and look for a house, his boss told him to not look at anything south of E. Lancaster. What'd my father do? Looked at houses that were south of E. Lancaster. We eventually wound up at 416 Chicago (seven houses south of E. Lancaster), which is where I've been for the last 46 years and I suppose is where I'll be for the rest of my life.
In the intervening eight years, the toll road (I-30) had been built to speed access to Dallas, as well as to bypass all the lights and traffic on the old Dallas Pike. Oh, you never heard of the Dallas Pike? Believe it or not, you drive on it every day. It's nothing more than E. Lancaster…or Highway 80….or I-80…or I-180….or Division Street…or the Dallas Turnpike…or the Dallas Pike…or….you get the idea. Depending on the time period or where you live in relation to it, every one of those names describes the same road. Is it any wonder we get confused when someone mentions a certain street name?
In any event, the construction of I-30 has been considered by many to be the primary reason that the East Side has changed (or deteriorated) the way that it has, with a singular inability to attract and keep major destination businesses. When you could hit I-30 near downtown and be on a straight shot to Dallas with very few interchanges or exits to deal with, you're simply not going to have any reason to divert to a local highway. What's the result? Businesses begin to die. Of course, they don’t die right away. In fact, the East Side was still quite vibrant well into the 70s. Matter of fact, let's take a look at what the area was like in 1961.
Starting at Henderson and E. Lancaster, the Main Post Office was exactly that, the Main post office where all mail was sorted. It was a busy place with mail arriving and departing by both truck and train. If you wanted a letter to get someplace in a hurry, you sent it via air mail, with those letters and packages being delivered to the airport for that special treatment. UPS and FedEx were still nearly 20 years in the future.
Moving east, you had the T&P Depot that was still in full operation with passenger trains coming and going on a regular schedule. The downtown overhead was in full bloom, the result of an extremely short-sighted city council that voted against building I-30 below grade…and y'all know what kind of battle resulted from that decision before the overhead was torn down and I-30 moved south of the railroad tracks.
Oh, by the way, remember a couple of posts back when I said I'd tell you about the cold storage plant? During the 1940s, Swift & Co. had an ice cream manufacturing operation in the long freight building that sits just across Henderson Street west of the main post office. If you still don't know what building I'm talking about, it's easy to identify. It has about 30 or so loading docks with rust-red roll-up doors facing the south side of Lancaster. That's the building that had an artesian well inside, which is why my parents, grandmother and I didn't need to boil water during the '49 flood.
Anyway, continueing east on E. Lancaster, the area between I-35 and the T is now pretty much known as Mission Row (Union Gospel Mission and so on) was small businesses and gas stations. What we now call The T was the Ft. Worth Transit Company and just to the west of their main office on the south side of E. Lancaster was an electronics company (similar to a Radio Shack outlet) where I bought my first component stereo. Nobody bothered to lock their cars when they went into a business place and it was a generally safe location. And speaking of Radio Shack, they built a two-story headquarters building in the early 60s on W. 7th Street, just a little ways down from Montgomery Ward and across the street. Only it wasn't called Radio Shack. Instead, it was Tandycrafts and it contained everything from Leathercraft to Radio Shack. When they had their grand opening, my father and I rode the bus over there to explore the place. The atmosphere was very much like a bazaar and Radio Shack even had a radio controlled robot running around the building to give you a taste of what the near future would be like for all of us. Somehow, I don't think what we've wound up with is quite what they envisioned.
Downtown was still basically the same, though it had acquired a futuristic 30-story skyscraper in the interim…the aluminum-skinned Continental National Bank building at Houston and W. 7th. It was easily identifiable from any point in Ft. Worth that offered a view of downtown as a result of the giant rotating clock mounted on it's roof. Two opposing sides displayed the time, while the letters CNB adorned the other two sides. Ft. Worth National Bank was directly across Houston Street from Continental (Remember the TV commercial with the girl singing "Ft. Worth National, that's my bank!" ?). Also, the corner diagonally opposite from CNB was Texas Electric, complete with a time/temperature display jutting out from the building and an image of their mascot, Reddy Kilowatt (Anyone remember him?).
Seminary South shopping center had been built at the intersection of I-35W & W. Berry Street. They drained a small lake to do it, so the shopping center actually sat below street level on the lake bed. This was the first modern shopping mall in Ft. Worth and it was accompanied with all kinds of gloom and doom predictions that it would ruin downtown. Turned out the predictions were correct for a long time, though now the tide has turned.
On the East Side, things had changed in spades, though most of the changes were good and simply made the East Side a more desirable place to be. The Monnig’s East Shopping Center had been built and there were plenty of small businesses, antique shops, two bowling alleys and the like. You could walk the neighborhoods or up and down E. Lancaster with no concern for your safety. Believe it or not, it even extended to women. Yep, things were good....but they would be changing in ways that no one suspected. If we had only known!
One harbinger of what was to come (though very few people would have believed it at the time) was the fact that when my father came on ahead to a job at Ranch Style Beans (he made the sauce for the beans) and look for a house, his boss told him to not look at anything south of E. Lancaster. What'd my father do? Looked at houses that were south of E. Lancaster. We eventually wound up at 416 Chicago (seven houses south of E. Lancaster), which is where I've been for the last 46 years and I suppose is where I'll be for the rest of my life.
In the intervening eight years, the toll road (I-30) had been built to speed access to Dallas, as well as to bypass all the lights and traffic on the old Dallas Pike. Oh, you never heard of the Dallas Pike? Believe it or not, you drive on it every day. It's nothing more than E. Lancaster…or Highway 80….or I-80…or I-180….or Division Street…or the Dallas Turnpike…or the Dallas Pike…or….you get the idea. Depending on the time period or where you live in relation to it, every one of those names describes the same road. Is it any wonder we get confused when someone mentions a certain street name?
In any event, the construction of I-30 has been considered by many to be the primary reason that the East Side has changed (or deteriorated) the way that it has, with a singular inability to attract and keep major destination businesses. When you could hit I-30 near downtown and be on a straight shot to Dallas with very few interchanges or exits to deal with, you're simply not going to have any reason to divert to a local highway. What's the result? Businesses begin to die. Of course, they don’t die right away. In fact, the East Side was still quite vibrant well into the 70s. Matter of fact, let's take a look at what the area was like in 1961.
Starting at Henderson and E. Lancaster, the Main Post Office was exactly that, the Main post office where all mail was sorted. It was a busy place with mail arriving and departing by both truck and train. If you wanted a letter to get someplace in a hurry, you sent it via air mail, with those letters and packages being delivered to the airport for that special treatment. UPS and FedEx were still nearly 20 years in the future.
Moving east, you had the T&P Depot that was still in full operation with passenger trains coming and going on a regular schedule. The downtown overhead was in full bloom, the result of an extremely short-sighted city council that voted against building I-30 below grade…and y'all know what kind of battle resulted from that decision before the overhead was torn down and I-30 moved south of the railroad tracks.
Oh, by the way, remember a couple of posts back when I said I'd tell you about the cold storage plant? During the 1940s, Swift & Co. had an ice cream manufacturing operation in the long freight building that sits just across Henderson Street west of the main post office. If you still don't know what building I'm talking about, it's easy to identify. It has about 30 or so loading docks with rust-red roll-up doors facing the south side of Lancaster. That's the building that had an artesian well inside, which is why my parents, grandmother and I didn't need to boil water during the '49 flood.
Anyway, continueing east on E. Lancaster, the area between I-35 and the T is now pretty much known as Mission Row (Union Gospel Mission and so on) was small businesses and gas stations. What we now call The T was the Ft. Worth Transit Company and just to the west of their main office on the south side of E. Lancaster was an electronics company (similar to a Radio Shack outlet) where I bought my first component stereo. Nobody bothered to lock their cars when they went into a business place and it was a generally safe location. And speaking of Radio Shack, they built a two-story headquarters building in the early 60s on W. 7th Street, just a little ways down from Montgomery Ward and across the street. Only it wasn't called Radio Shack. Instead, it was Tandycrafts and it contained everything from Leathercraft to Radio Shack. When they had their grand opening, my father and I rode the bus over there to explore the place. The atmosphere was very much like a bazaar and Radio Shack even had a radio controlled robot running around the building to give you a taste of what the near future would be like for all of us. Somehow, I don't think what we've wound up with is quite what they envisioned.
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