Titche-Goettinger Building

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Titche-Goettinger Building

Titche-Goettinger Building.jpg

Titche-Goettinger Building in 2010
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Location 1900 Elm Street / 1901 Main Street
Dallas, Texas
Coordinates 32°46′54.39″N96°47′43.38″W / 32.7817750°N 96.7953833°W / 32.7817750; -96.7953833 Coordinates: 32°46′54.39″N96°47′43.38″W / 32.7817750°N 96.7953833°W / 32.7817750; -96.7953833
Area less than one acre
Built 1929
Architect Dahl, Greene, LaRoche [1]
Architectural style Neo-Renaissance [2]
NRHP reference #

96000586 [3]

>
Added to NRHP May 24, 1996

The Titche-Goettinger Building is one of Dallas' original broad-front department stores located along St. Paul Street between Main and Elm Street in downtown Dallas, Texas (USA). The structure currently houses apartments, retail space, and the Universities Center at Dallas. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a contributing property in the Harwood Historic District and Main Street District. It is also located across the street from Main Street Garden Park.

Downtown Dallas Place in Texas, United States

Downtown Dallas is the Central Business District (CBD) of Dallas, Texas USA, located in the geographic center of the city. The area termed "Downtown" has traditionally been defined as bounded by the downtown freeway loop: bounded on the east by I-345 (although known and signed as the northern terminus of I-45 and the southern terminus of US 75, on the west by I-35E, on the south by I-30, and on the north by Spur 366. The square miles, population and density figures in the adjacent table represent the data for this traditional definition.

Texas State of the United States of America

Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U.S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast.

United States federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

Contents

History

In 1902, Edward Titche formed a partnership with Max Goettinger and the two established Titche-Goettinger, a department store, on the southeast corner of Elm and Murphy Streets in downtown Dallas. [2] By 1904, operations had outgrown the Elm/Murphy location and the store moved to the year-old Wilson Building. [2] [4] By 1928, the store had again outgrown itself and construction began on a new building two blocks east in an area known as "Uptown".

Titche-Goettinger was a department store chain based in Dallas, Texas (USA). It was established in 1902 and was a major player in the Dallas retail market until its merger with Joske's, which was later absorbed by Dillard's.

Located along St. Paul between Elm and Main, the new flagship building designed by architect George Dahl opened in November 1929 as one of the largest department stores in the Southwest. It consisted of seven floors plus basement and sub-basement. The exterior was clad in Indiana Limestone with Italian Florentine detail in Renaissance Revival style, while the inside featured Art Deco design elements.

George Dahl American architect

George Leighton Dahl was a prominent American architect based in Dallas, Texas during the 20th century. His most notable contributions include the Art Deco structures of Fair Park while he oversaw planning and construction of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. In 1970, in anticipation of imminent commercial growth brought on by the impending development of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, he designed the First National Bank of Grapevine building at 1400 South Main Street. This iconic cubist structure served as a harbinger of the area's upcoming economic development.

The interior of the building was set up like current department stores of its day. [5] The basement was used as a retail space featuring "popularly priced" merchandise. The first floor sold impulse goods such as gloves, hats, purses and hosiery. It featured a patterned terrazzo floor and eighteen foot ornamental ceiling. Columns had ornamental capitals with Texas-motifs. The second floor sold women's and misses' clothes as well as furs and featured differently themed "galleries". [6] Children's clothes and lingerie were located on the third floor, originally decorated with peach and apricot colors. House wares such as rugs, draperies, and furniture were on the fourth floor. The fifth floor featured glass ware and china, and the employee restrooms and hospital. The offices were on the sixth floor. On the seventh floor was a 600-seat auditorium that could also be converted into four small conference spaces. A basement and sub-basement held the mechanical equipment as well as a state-of-the-art refrigerated fur vault that could hold up to 3,000 fur coats. The cooling system cooled the basement and first floor. [7]

Expansion

In 1955 the building doubled in size with the opening of a "Texas-size" major addition along Main between St Paul and Harwood designed by Thomas, Jameson & Merrill. [2] This addition matched the original building in height, depth and building materials, although the façade was windowless and featured a large cartouche and prominent signage. The addition also boasted the first complete escalator service for a building of its size in the Southwest and the largest plate glass windows at street level. The expanded 500,000-square-foot (46,000 m2) department store boasted three restaurants, a bakery and a 1,600-seat public auditorium.

In the 1960s and '70s the chain was more well known as Titche's.

The store took on the Joske's name in 1979. In 1985 Allied Stores consolidated Joske's three Texas divisions, and the top three floors of the building were converted to corporate offices. The store connected its retail concourse to the expanding Dallas Pedestrian Network during a renovation of the basement, first and second floors in 1986. [8] When Dillard's bought the assets of Joske's in 1987, the historic downtown building was not included in the sale; the store was closed soon after. [9]

Joskes

Joske's, founded by German immigrant Julius Joske in 1867, was a department store chain originally based in San Antonio, Texas. In December 1928, Hahn Department Stores acquired the company along with the Titche-Goettinger department store of Dallas, and three years later Hahn became part of Allied Stores. Allied was taken over by Campeau in 1986, and Campeau in turn sold the Joske's chain in 1987 to Dillard's. All Joske's stores were then quickly converted into Dillard's locations.

Dallas Pedestrian Network

The Dallas Pedestrian Network or Dallas Pedway is a system of grade-separated walkways covering thirty-six city blocks of downtown Dallas, Texas, United States. The system connects buildings, garages and parks through underground tunnels and above-ground skybridges. The network contains an underground city of shops, restaurants and offices during weekday business hours.

Dillards company

Dillard's Inc. is an American department store chain with approximately 292 stores in 29 states headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. Currently, the largest number of stores are located in Florida with 42 and Texas with 57, but the company also has stores in 27 more states although it is absent from the Northeast, most of the Upper Midwest, the Northwest, and most of California, aside from three stores in smaller cities.

Adaptive Reuse

The St. Paul Street store front of the original 1929 building Titche facade.jpg
The St. Paul Street store front of the original 1929 building

In 1994, developer Graham Greene and architect Meckfessel Associates renovated the 1955 addition as the Dallas Education Center (now known as the Universities Center at Dallas). [2] The UCD was the first multi-institutional teaching center (MITC) for higher education in Texas and was established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to provide access to public higher education at the upper division and graduate levels to citizens who live and work in downtown Dallas. Four of the seven floors have been converted to classroom space and are used by Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Woman's University (TWU), University of North Texas (UNT), University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) and 9th-12th grade of the Pegasus School of Liberal Arts & Sciences. The facility also contains Fashion on Main, the exhibition facility of UNT's Texas Fashion Collection. Future plans include expansion of the fashion gallery. The current address for this portion of the building is 1901 Main.

The building was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

As one of the first residential renovations in downtown Dallas, Oglesby-Green adapted the original 1929 building into 129 loft-style apartments and retail space in 1997. [2] To provide adequate light to interior apartments a section of the building on floors 2-8 was cut away, but the façade was left intact (this is evident when viewing the rows of open windows along Main). The eighth floor of apartments is the old "attic" space facing the interior courtyard and is only accessible via stairs from the seventh floor. Resident parking is accommodated in the basement and sub-basement levels. Many of the original finishes were incorporated into the renovation where practical, making each unit unique in design (units feature original windows and decorative columns, and one unit incorporates the old ballroom's stage). The lobby features many historical photographs and artifacts of the building's past. For several years in the late 1990s a portion of the lobby contained the Gold Bar and restaurant Champagne; [10] vestiges still remain of old bar and department store features throughout the building. The current address for this portion of the building is 1900 Elm.

UNT purchased the Universities Center at 1901 Main with plans to expand program offerings. Because the building shares parking and other critical services with 1900 Elm, UNT also purchased the apartment building and offers a reduced rate to full-time students, thus reunifying the historic building under one ownership.

On May 14, 2009 the Texas Legislature approved UNT's request for a public law school in the neighboring Dallas Municipal Building. The Universities Center will be home of the new law school until the renovated building is ready for occupancy.

Design Details

The 96,000 pound cartouche is a prominent feature of the 1955 addition. TitcheGoettinger Logo.jpg
The 96,000 pound cartouche is a prominent feature of the 1955 addition.

Zoned schools

Residents are zoned to schools in the Dallas Independent School District. Zoned schools include City Park Elementary School, [11] Billy Earl Dade Middle School, [12] and James Madison High School. [13]

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References

  1. ↑ Greene, Herbert Miller from the Handbook of Texas Online. By Christopher Long. Retrieved on 25 April 2007.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Dallas Public Library - listing for the Titche-Goettinger Building. Retrieved on 25 April 2007.
  3. ↑ National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service.
  4. ↑ Dallas Public Library - listing for the Wilson Building. Retrieved on 25 April 2007.
  5. ↑ Ferry, John William. A History of the Department Store, p.14
  6. ↑ Dallas Times Herald, Nov. 24, 1929
  7. ↑ http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/common/view_narrative.asp?narrative=96000586.htm&title=Titche--Goettinger%20Department%20Store&filepath=E:\atlas_text\nr_listed\html%5Bpermanent+dead+link%5D
  8. ↑ Donna Steph Hansard. (1986, August 21). JOSKE'S PLANNING RENOVATION. The Dallas Morning News HOME FINAL ed., 2D. Retrieved December 16, 2009 from NewsBank on-line database (America's Newspapers)
  9. ↑ Donna Steph Hansard. (1987, April 14). DILLARD TO BUY OUT JOSKE'S - 2nd chain included in $255 million sale. The Dallas Morning News HOME FINAL ed., 1a. Retrieved December 16, 2009 from NewsBank on-line database (America's Newspapers)
  10. ↑ Dallas Morning News, October 31, 1997
  11. ↑ "Fall 2009 City Park Elementary School Attendance Zone [ permanent dead link ]." Dallas Independent School District. Retrieved on May 23, 2010.
  12. ↑ "Fall 2009 Dade Middle School Attendance Zone [ permanent dead link ]." Dallas Independent School District. Retrieved on May 23, 2010.
  13. ↑ "Fall 2009 James Madison High School Attendance Zone [ permanent dead link ]." Dallas Independent School District. Retrieved on May 23, 2010.
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