Downtown El Paso.
Downtown Fort Worth.
Amarillo.
Downtown Houston.
Cornudas Cafe in Salt Flat.
Observation Restaurant Tower, Buchanan Dam.
Downtown El Paso.
Vintage Postcards: Texas In The 1950s
– Posted on August 10, 2024
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Curbside Classics Archives
Interesting. Almost all the women in the pics are wearing dresses. Today, pretty much none do.
First thing that struck me too. What’s with all the blue dresses outside the Amarillo diamond shop?
I find the inclusion of this solitary pickup, in the photo of Amarillo, contributes to lending a small-town feel.
Individual brick paving making a large comeback in many cities. Humanizing many streets, and sidewalks.
Around here it seems that most of the “brick” paving we see is really stamped asphalt that’s painted in a brick-like color. The benefit is that it’s cheaper than brick, and requires less maintenance (i.e., bricks coming loose and creating a tripping hazard). Unfortunately, after a short time the paint wears off, and vehicle traffic wears down the stamped pattern, so it begins to look lousy pretty quickly.
But brick paving does create a much more welcoming atmosphere.
If you visit Canada again sometime, Montreal is perhaps the best Canadian urban example, of a city beautifully adapting brick paving. Both in the restoration of their hundreds of year old streets, and in new suburban neighbourhoods. Many creative examples to be found.
With brick paving, streets and sidewalks can become wavy in time. Due to the nature of frost, pushing some areas upward. But it can be corrected, by releveling the base, and relaying the stone.
Here’s the same location in Amarillo today:
Google StreetView link:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/y1XoaQ5wRRiiF3rCA
A touch more life, back then.
Surprised at how much survived, especially the vertical sign in the front corner; those went out of fashion by the ’80s if not earlier. Curious about the Montgomery Ward building which looks too small for a department store.
The poor tall building in the background fell victim to the “throw white paint or stucco over old buildings to make them look newer for cheap” craze of the ’90.
I wonder what percentage of these cars might have had air conditioning…??? I notice many of these cars have lighter – colored tops so as to reflect that hot Texas sun…
Don’t know the %, but probably pretty low.
the photos really show the prevalence of 2-tone color autos in the 1950’s
I like how it really highlighted the differences in the “two Chevy, generations” @ “Buchannan Dam”.
They’re nearly the same “tutone, combo”.
Instead of being parked head on, the cars in front of Cornudas Cafe appear to be poised for a quick getaway. Seems like it would get a little complicated if a few more customers arrived.
I love all the vertical signage.
Quite a bit a things going on @ “Cornuda’s”.
It looks to me like about 90% of the cars in Texas are GM makes.
`64, Texas is also home to GM’s Arlington assembly plant. Back in the 50s, they produced Chevys & Pontiacs I think. Today, they make Chevy trucks unless GM shut that plant down too, leaving hundreds unemployed.
Nice, things like this are why I originally visited TEXAS, I like it there, not enough to live but anyone who doesn’t go is making a mistake .
-Nate
My Mother lives in Austin going on 43 years, she gets power from Pedernales Electric (I also live in Austin but get power from the city)….Buchanan Dam isn’t far from where she lives and was part of the then rural electrification of the area promoted by LBJ in the 1940’s.
Fast forward to the present, the area isn’t so rural anymore (my Mom’s home was considered a bit far out when it was built in 1974, nowdays most would probably consider it pretty close in though it is pretty far from downtown. Back when we moved here, the top of the Dam doubled as the “bridge” over Lake Travis on FM 620 (FM stands for Farm to Market, in Texas other state roads number prefixes are RR (Ranch Road) but of course due to security concerns they’ve since built a parallel section of FM 620 that has a separate bridge that goes across that section of the river parallel to the dam. I think this has become pretty universal, we used to visit a section of Kentucky Dam some 25 years ago the top of the Dam also doubled as the bridge over the lake but at some point they likewise built a separate bridge structure to divert the road away from the dam.
We didn’t live in Texas till the 80’s but my father drove his ’56 Plymouth through Amarillo driving from the northeast to El Monte in 1959 on his way to his new job at Hoffman Electronics where he did the process for solar cells that went up on Explorer 6 satellite that took first pictures of Earth from outer space in 1959. They convinced him to bring some dangerous chemical with him in the car packed in dry ice…why they didn’t have it in Los Angeles (and what it was) I don’t know…he ran out of dry ice and had to stop at a military base where they got him some (Dad had been in the Army in the 50’s and was comfortable with the military)…my Dad became a chemist on the GI bill who started working on semiconductors in 1956 and never had another profession till he retired in 1990 (in Austin). We drove back east after he left Hoffman to work for Westinghouse in 1961 (imagine moving from LA to Pittsburgh in 1961..talk about going against trends) but we all drove with him (we were too young in ’59 to go by car) in his ’61 Rambler Classic wagon he bought in Compton.
Pretty sure that mid-50s Caddy in the El Paso pix DIDNT have AC, cuz I don’t see the telltale air intake vents atop the rear fenders (much of the AC system was in the trunk back then). Btw, looks like either a Saab or Volvo, & possibly a Simca (Aronde? Montlhery?) parked in th the background above it.