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Ghosts of Dallas: SMU’s Dallas Hall

Can you tell when this photo was shot?

By Jason Heid Published in FrontBurner March 12, 2015 8:00 am

“Two women students walk up the steps to Dallas Hall on the campus of Southern Methodist University,” date unknown. Anyone have a good guess?

Share your own Ghosts of Dallas.

Original photo: From the collections of the Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library

Photo: Leah Clausen

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SMU

Bushwood Smithie

Using the buildings visible downtown, between 1959 (Southland Life Building) and 1964 (Republic Tower II).
AJZ

You can narrow that date range down a bit more, if necessary. Perusal of “campus life” and graduation ceremony photos from SMU yearbooks (and not including the aerial shots, which tend to get reused year after year) reveals that those gumdrop bushes up and down the center of the quad and surrounding the fountain (that appeared sometime in the 1940s) remain still present until a heavy snowfall in the winter of 1960-61. Presumably the weather killed them. Spring of 1961 and thereafter, the gumdrop bushes never return.