Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 2, Number 2, Fall, 1990 Page: 32
This periodical is part of the collection entitled: Legacies: a History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Dallas Historical Society.
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Pacific Avenue, looking east toward the intersection with Akard Street, about 1920, the year before the track
removal and reconstruction began. Pacific, which ten years before had been predominantly residential, was by
then principally a commercial street.Stronger indications of the future came in
1924, when private automobiles and their operators
garnered even more addresses. There were
six garages, eight repair shops or service stations,
and two car rental companies. Furniture companies,
piano companies, paint and wallpaper stores,
and other firms opened public access rear entrances
on Pacific to their businesses fronting on
Elm and other streets. The Sanitary Lunch near
Field Street and the Avenue Cafe between Ervay
and St. Paul were new types of businesses along
the reborn Pacific. The Worsham Buick Company
at the northwest corner of the intersection
with Olive Street forecast the years ahead, when
Pacific would become a northerly extension of the
car dealers then clustered on the east edge of
downtown.29
Six years later, in 1930, Pacific Avenue
boasted the types of businesses it would hold until
the late 1940s and early 1950s, when rampant
suburbanization began pulling commercial concerns
away from the crowded core. The storage,
selling, and servicing of cars had become andwould remain its principal activity. There were
eight parking garages, five service stations, three
new car show rooms, including those for Studebaker
and Packard, and two used car lots. Six
finance and loan companies, dealing partly or
almost entirely in auto loans, were located on
Pacific, as were three car rental firms. There were
five lunchrooms or cafes, a tea room, and the
Dallas Times-Herald newspaper, first listed in
1927. Four furniture, five wallpaper and paint
stores, and a miscellany of small retail and service
shops made up much of the balance of the 126
listings.30
In 1937 the automobile claimed, proportionately,
a still larger area. Of 107 listings, there were
sixteen auto parks, an auto rental firm, and three
service stations or garages. Just one loan company
survived, but there were four new car dealers and
one for used cars. The Guardian Life Building at
Field Street became the second significant office
building, though its four stories hardly compared
with the twenty stories of the Medical Arts.
Warehousing, wholesaling, and light industry32
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Dallas County Heritage Society. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 2, Number 2, Fall, 1990, periodical, 1990; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35121/m1/34/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.