News from the DeGolyer Library November 2021

This December, DeGolyer Library will premiere a new exhibit, An Eye for Elegance. The exhibit explores the life and legacy of Carrie Marcus Neiman, who with her brother Herbert Marcus, Sr. and her husband Al Neiman, founded the iconic luxury department store Neiman Marcus. The trio opened the high end, ready-to-wear store in 1907. At the time, women who could afford luxury clothing had them custom made in New York and Paris, Dallas was still a mid-sized regional hub, and oil wealth hadn’t yet come to Texas. An Eye for Elegance will explore how Carrie, along with buyer Moira Cullen, fashion promotions director Kay Kerr, interior designer Eleanor LeMaire and food director Helen Corbitt shaped the fashions and tastes of their clients and society.

Fall means pumpkins and cooking, and if you’re looking for something new to whip up, look no further than Caroline Rose Hunt’s The Complete Pumpkin Eater. Samantha Dodd marks the end of of the season by exploring the cookbook and sharing some recipes in her latest blog post, which you can read by clicking here.

Cynthia Franco observed Veteran’s Day with a blog post examining at the Blackie Sherrod and William Grady Proctor collections. Proctor (1924-2003) served in the navy during World War II and the Korean War, and his papers include letters between him and his wife Jean, describing his experiences on the USS Hank. Sherrod (1919-2016, pictured left) served in the Navy during WWII and wrote for Our Navy. Issues of the magazine featuring his stories can be found in his papers. Click here to read more.

An image of Mathilde Moisant (right) from the Prints and Photographs collection will be featured in Maryla Boutineau’s upcoming book, Women in the Clouds, which will examine pre-WWI aviators. Moisant was a pioneering American pilot and the second woman in the United States to gain a pilot’s license.

In addition, an iconographic researcher in Mexico City will use DeGolyer images from the Prints and Photographs collection to illustrate the upcoming documentary ¿Por Qué La Vida Es Así? Una Película de todos los Mexicanos. Featured images include Zapatista on a train in Cuernavaca in 1911.

Many American cities have historic red-light districts, but only two are known to have been the subject of Blue Book guides: Storyville in New Orleans, and The Sporting District in San Antonio. Pictured here is The Blue Book for visitors, tourists, and those seeking a good time while in San Antonio, Texas, from 1912. The slim guidebook features advertisements and listings for bars and restaurants, roadhouses, cockpits and gambling houses, and a directory of ‘houses and women’ divided into three classes. Despite the subject matter, the guidebook doesn’t have a “wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more” tone–the presentation is dry and to-the-point, with only a few illustrations of taxi-hacks and drivers found inside.

Carts of 19th century juvenile literature are being cataloged this month, including educational and adventure serials for boys and girls including The Girl Crusoes, The Boy’s Handy Book of Manufactures and Industries of the World, and Girls of the True Blue. Many of the recently acquired books come with the distinctive jewel toned publisher’s binding covers that were popular in the 19th and early 2oth century, as well as eye-catching cover illustrations. We also know, thanks to notes found in a number of titles, something about the previous readers of some of these books. Girls of the True Blue was gifted to Hester Clark on May 27th, 1908, as a prize for general excellence by administrators at Gwynyholm School, while Kate Read was given The Girl Crusoes in 1911 by Head Teacher M. Witteridge at her school in Epsom, Surrey, England.

This month, nCDS digitized 82 photographs, taken between 1924 and 1929, from the Southern Methodist University Photographs collection. The photographs here were taken by Bremer Pond, a Boston landscape architect hired by SMU to develop a plan for the campus layout. Many people would say that SMU is most beautiful in the spring, when its renown landscaping is in full bloom. I’d argue that it’s stunning in November, when the full color of the fall foliage has finally made it to the southern states. Well, you won’t get either here, as these photos are all in black and white. But alas, you can see images of the hilltop that are instantly recognizable–like the photo of Dallas Hall featured here, along side images that are completely foreign to a student in 2021–like Bishop Boulevard when it was a dirt road running through an field.