from the Thaddeus Fowler's 1891 Bird's-Eye View
#3 : Exposition Building, just west of College Boulevard
#4 : Denison Cotton Mill, just south of Coffin St.
#5 : Denison Canning Factory

"The Boulevards"

If the reader will go southwest on Scullin Avenue until he reaches Texas street and follow that street due west for several blocks, he will arrive at a section that was in the eighties the playground of Denison. It was known as the Boulevards. The street car, propelled by mule power, and the old dummy line that was operated by dinky engines, used to run out there and carry thousands of people who sought the beautiful woods for rest and pleasure. There was a dancing pavilion, baseball and gun club tournament grounds. There were beer halls with lunch counter attachments. The free, untrammeled life of the pioneer period was full away and people were not particular as to whom were their associated. The most respectable people of Denison could be seen on the Boulevard promenades. Society was mixed. We have seen strange men walk up to a girl they had never seen before and, with the formality of an introduction, invite them to the dance. Sunday was as gala day. Life was never dull out there. How the vivid memory of it all comes back to us, intensified rather than faded by the years. The pleasure grounds were covered with noble, majestic forest trees. In fact, Nature had been disturbed but little out there. It was a great resort for pleasure and picnic parties. When the first breath of pure spring pervaded the land, people's thoughts turned lovingly to the beautiful woodland retreats to the Boulevard.

Sunday Gazetteer
21 June 1891

Go out there in the spring months and there were entrancing visions of female loveliness flitting through the woods, and up through the green vista came the merry laughter of happy hearts. It was just as fashionable to go out to The Boulevard as it is to go to Woodlake at the present.

The greatest gun club tournaments in the state were held out there, and the crack base ball team met in hot combat. There never was in the past or present history of Texas such a peerless set of sportsmen as faced the traps out there. The logical result of this activity was the wild dreams of speculators, and The Boulevard land commanded gilt edge prices and did not go begging for purchasers.

Many beautiful home were erected at The Boulevard, surrounded with spacious and luxurious grounds. Dr. Haynes lived out there, and there his beautiful wife was murdered - a tragedy the most horrible in the history of Denison and which has never been cleared up. Davis, a traveling man, was killed out there while mistreating an adopted son.

Exposition Hall, a magnificent building, that cost thousands of dollars, in which was collected a splendid exhibit of the products of this section and the Indian Territory, was erected near the Boulevard. It was an imposing structure. Many public functions were held out there. Hundreds of distinguished men from all portions of the United States were entertained at Exposition Hall.

Denison Exposition Hall
Texas Birds-Eye Views
1891
Amon Carter Museum

Strangers who came here to look for investment were always taken out there to be impressed with our resources and advantages, which lay before their eyes. Grand balls were given out there, and the floodgates of oratory were turned loose in the vast amphitheater. There has never been gathered under a roof since such a vast and interesting collection. Men will look over money-making propositions from what they see, and visitors were so impressed with the Exposition Hall exhibits that many real estate deals were consummated. Exposition Hall was one of the inspirations of the great boom which was the most memorable page in the history of Denison; and when the boom collapsed it was then that the decadence of the Boulevard commenced. The building was burned. It made a magnificent conflagration. The street cars were taken off to The Boulevard and that hastened the catastrophe. Old Pat Tobin's hall went up in smoke, the fence to the baseball and gun club grounds were torn down, the dancing pavilion removed, and the Boulevard, the former gathering place of all Denison, was a thing of the past - deserted and silent, a melancholy spot; and there are many people in Denison at the present time who do not know that such a place existed.

(In another issue of the Gazetteer, Editor Murray described the opening of "Boulevard Park." In that article, he was not impressed with either the park itself, or the mull-drawn trolleys which served it. It can safely be assumed that the "Boulevard" was what would become Woodlawn Boulevard).


Source : The "Infant Wonder" : Stories of Early-Day Denison. [From the files of the Denison Daily News, Denison Weekly News and Sunday Gazetteer in the Grayson County Frontier Village Research Center, and the Denison Daily Herald].