First Impressions: The George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection
Dates: January 30 – May 15, 2015
Times: Monday – Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Location: DeGolyer Library
About the exhibit
The George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection is an important addition to the DeGolyer Library and is a wonderful resource for research in Dallas and Texas history. A native Dallasite, George W. Cook (1949-2012) was a life-long collector, with a focus on Dallas and Texas primary sources. He had a special interest in photographs, postcards, advertising souvenirs, trade cards, badges, family collections, documents, art, postal history, and three-dimensional objects such as signs, regional porcelain and glass, and architectural ornaments. He was also fascinated by the State Fair of Texas, the 1936 Texas Centennial, and the history of aviation.
The strength of Cook’s collection lies in its visual images (over 2,200 photographs and 12,000 postcards), but there are also significant manuscripts, diaries, albums, banknotes, ephemera, books, pamphlets, broadsides and objects related to the city of Dallas and Texas. Chronologically, the collection ranges from a promissory note signed by Davy Crockett in Tennessee in 1829 to photographs of carhops at Sivil’s drive-in in mid-century Dallas. There are approximately 20,000 items altogether – a rich collection with a wide range of materials related to Dallas and Texas history!
Free and open to the public.
Selected items from the Cook Collection are being digitized. See more.
Examples from the Collection
