Ben Engleberg
Ben Engleberg was born in Dallas around 1906 or 1907, one of the children of Sam Engleberg, an immigrant from Europe. His father came to the United States through New York, later living in Chicago and Arkansas before settling in Dallas before the turn of the century. Only Ben and a younger sister were born in Dallas. The family brought many relatives from New York to Dallas over the years. His mother, he recalled, was born abroad, and the family had deep roots in the local Jewish community.
The Englebergs lived in North Dallas when it was the Jewish neighborhood, moving to Pearl Street as the area changed, and later to a large home on Erie. Ben attended Bryan High School at a time when Dallas had only a couple of schools, and his first Hebrew school, or cheder, was on Jackson Street between Pearl and Preston, connected with Shearith Israel. His father, Sam, first ran a meat market on McKinney Avenue and then moved the business to Elm Street, owning the building near Preston. Ben described his father as a strict businessman who ran the market while his mother ran the home.
The Elm Street market was a large wholesale and retail operation, selling all kinds of meat and making its own bologna, weenies, chili, and lunch meats supplied to grocery stores across the area. It sold live poultry and delivered by horse and wagon to places as far as SMU and Hockaday. Ben explained that Deep Ellum thrived because of the Union Depot, the saloons, the pawn shops, and the two theaters serving Black patrons, which drew crowds especially on weekends. He later worked in the meat trade for decades, including many years with the Samuels businesses, and spent time with A&P and with Morris Rubin, before retiring when his wife became ill.
Full Transcript
This is Monday, November the 4th, 1985. I'm Rose Biederman and I'm having a conversation with Mr. Ben Engelberg at his home. This is November the 4th, 1985. Mr. Engelberg, you're going to tell me why or your perceptions of the area that we refer to as D-Pellum. All right. To me, D-Pellum is something other than what people had in mind. When I first went to D-Pellum, it was back in 1915. In 1915, most all the big corners had saloons on them. But what made them have saloons there was the fact that the Union Depot was there. All the trains coming down Pacific Avenue, with the exception of those that come from California, and they come down Central Avenue, which we call HP&C.
Now, all the trains, even back to World War I, they had to come up, press up Pacific Avenue to that people to go north or east. All the trains come that way. Now, let me say what, at that time, Dallas consisted of. Dallas had, in my estimation, three streets, Commerce, Main, and Ellum. Pacific Avenue was a street that had railroad tracks run down it. It was not paved, and there were no businesses, with very few exceptions, on Pacific. Now you take Harwood in Pacific as an instance We had Wilson and Armour there because they had to use the tracks Their weeper shipped in here from Oklahoma City to Wilson Company We also had Swift and Company They were at Accurden Pacific and the same way for them they had to have their meat brought in by rail and truck because they had no killing of any animals at that location.
Now, Elm Street really runs, as far as people is concerned, from Lamar Street back toward as you call it, Deep Ellum. And on Elm Street, you had your theaters like the Majestic, the Bess, the Iphidrome, and other ones. And on Main Street, you had your stores like A. Harris, Patch and Ginter. Also, you had some hotels and the banks. We had the Mercantile and the First National in the Empire on Main Street. Commerce Street also was well from, say, Lamar Street back. toward Preston. It had the hotels like the Adolphus. Also, it had the Baker and other hotels. And they had a few stores down there.
The YWCA was situated on Commerce Street at that particular time. now let's get back to what you want to know why you said Deep Ellum now Deep Ellum mostly consisted of smaller stores from Harwood Street back past I'm going to say it this is the time I'm talking about this is the Union Depot there at Central. Of course they'd run a little farther out, but they were nothing big. We had a grocery store and a couple of markets and a few cafes on there But now get back to be felt them proper All the people that used the trains got in and got off They're at Central and Ellum.
Also, they had two colored picture shows. The only two colored picture shows in the city of Dallas at that time, they was the Palace and the Harlan Theater. So if any of the colored people wanted to go to a show, they had to come down Ellum Street there. So that drew quite a few people, especially on the weekends. Also, at that particular time, if a man run a grocery in Norgett, anywhere in the city of Dallas, and he wasn't large enough to be able to buy a whole beef, he could not buy from the Packers. They would not sell him. So then he had to come to a place like my father's or either like Lewin's, which also was a large meat market on Ellum, or Packinghouse Market, who was then on Harwood at the Coal Struggles.
That was the only three we had here at that time. Now that Lewin, is that Lewin and Rosenthal? No, Rosenthal wasn't down there. Just Lewin? Just Lewin and Engelberg's and Packinghouse Market. There was two of the Lewins. One of them come in there later and open a meat market down there. Now, the meat markets down there, like my father's, we not only sold all kind of meat, but we made our own bologna, weenies, chili, and lunch meats, and we sold that to all of these grocery stores. In fact, it was a very, very large business. Did you just sell wholesale? No, we sold wholesale and retail.
We did close to a million dollars business there a year and that was a whole lot of business at that time because money wasn't like it is now. Now you're talking about 1915, 1920? Yeah and so what I trying to get at now at that particular time those are three things that brought people to Ellyn Street Now, before they had any large groceries and markets in the city of Dallas, we had the Lone Star, Star Cash. They were small places. And, of course, the town was small at that time. So they could come down on Elm Street and they would get a better cut of meat because we had the big business then.
It isn't like now where you have the large chain store. And you could go down and you could get your poultry down there. At that time, you didn't have poultry like you have now. Everything was live. We used to have three, four big cages sitting down on the sidewalk with geese, turkey, chicken, and you'd be surprised if we didn't have people here at that time selling poultry that was already dressed. So you sold it live? Oh yes. So what I was trying to get at, that constituted what made Deep Island. Now, it's time that I'm talking about from these small towns on the weekends. These people would come in with a horse and buggy.
they had a great big the depot was a block and a half long although it only took up maybe one tenth of the spot all the rest of that was vacant and in the back side of that they could put that tie their horses and buggies and do their shopping and later on get in and go back they'd have people come in from these small towns like Ennis, Ferris and they They would buy for five and six families. And they were a big business at the time. Of course, they did always shopping. They couldn't come to town every day, so they all went to these places.
Now getting back to the pawn shops, we had some big jewelry stores here. We had Arthur E. Everett, Lins, and places of that size downtown. But, if you come down in what you call Dutellin, we had large pawn shops that handled all of the things that they could buy. And one of the largest ones was Clower and Winnaman. Also, we had Mr. Saltis and his son-in-law, Mr. Greenberg. We had Mr. Swartz. And we had City Pawn Shop, Mr. Levine. and numerous others. What Levine was that? I don't know his first name, but him and his brother-in-law run what they call the city of the font shop and that was right across the street.
Okay. Now I'm going to give you right on Ellum Street, close to that, what was there at that particular time? My father owned the building on Ellum Street. What was your father's name? Sam, Sam Engleberg. Right off of Preston on Ellum, on the left-hand side of the street. On the corner there was a candy store. And later, my father sold that building to Mr. Hart, and he put the home furniture there. across the street from there. There was a fellow there by the name of Rabinowitz that had to drag their store, but he finally moved off of there. I couldn't tell you no more about him.
I just remember his name. We had a little cafe there by Mr. Harris, Ed, and Mr. Cohen had the shoe shop. Do you know which car that was? I don't know his name. I'll tell you, he'll give you all that information if you go to Heine Koval. He'll give you the names of all them people. See, he knew those people better than I did. Now, on that same block, you have model tailors, and you also have, as I named, the pawn shops and far in Winnaman. Now when you got to the corner Kettle had a big saloon there on one side Who was that Kettle K And right across the street from him a fellow by the name of Otis had the drugstore for years there Right next to him, you had a cup of that little hamburger sandwich or nothing, but you had Mr.
Swartz at his pawn shop. Right next door to him, City pawn shop, Miss Levine at his. And they had a fellow there by the name of De Palma at the barbershop down there. And there's other little stores on there. On this other side of the street, we had a colored fellow at a cafe down there named Mane Macmillan and Mrs. Fair. She had lost her husband and she opened one of the first grocery stores there on the corner of Ellum Street there. I think her first name was Rose there. I'm not sure. And coming back from that way was Mr. Lewin, had his meat market.
Next to him was the Harlem Theater, then my father's meat market, and then the Palace Theater. Now, let's go back up central. Outside on each side of the depot, you had quite a few stores. They had a colored cafe there by the name of Coke. It did an enormous big business there. And you had a shoeshine father there. And they had another place called Fats from a cafe there. And on the corner there, a fellow by the name of Tom Miller had a cafe. Now on the other side of the depot, his brother had a cafe there, Izzy Miller. Now when you get across Ellum Street we had a little cafe there run by Anton but see that actually comprised Steve Allen actually that time Now they got farther out on Allen Street They had a man who had a grocery store by the name of Kleckler Now he ran a funny thing He was the only man I've ever seen in my life do it.
But on Saturday, there'd be so many people up and if he wasn't getting his share of them, he'd take a punch of nickels in his pocket and throw it out in the middle of the street. And he'd call it people just crowd around there. Also, he started something new. He'd get these bacon skins from the Packard, Becker & Company. And as people bought through his place, as they'd come out, he'd give each one of them. One or two of those free. Of course, it didn't cost very much at that time. And he didn't have no fresh meats. He would just take hams and things and cut them in sections.
And he'd had different prices on them. And he did enormous business. And he was finally bought out by Mr. Ackerman, American Trading Company. Oh, my. and as you go farther out Ellen Street you finally come to Rudolph's Market who is still there this is the third people that own them and it's one of the largest and it's one of the finest it's always been there it's always handled quality merchandise so what I'm trying to say that that was Deep Ellen the fact that they had the colored picture shows The fact that they had the depot there, the fact that they brought so many people, brought all these pawn shops and things in there, they did enormous business.
At that time, there was no Second Avenue. And Deep Ellum did enormous business. We would get there sometimes in the morning on Saturday, open up at 4 o'clock and still be there at 12 o'clock that night. There'd be so many people in there that we just couldn't get rid of them. We still had horse and wagons We didn have automobiles to deliver We sold SMU and we sold Hockaday School and a couple of little places up north from there We had to get the wagons up in the morning We had to leave the place at 5 o And he would just make them huge dogs and come back by 10 o or so And at that time, he'd have to take the horse out of the wagon.
Where did you keep the horse and wagon? We had a place riding back to the store. And you had a man to do that? Oh, yes. We had regular drivers. In fact, my father used to like it very much. He'd buy a horse and be good for 10, 15 years and the same with the wagon. As long as they breathed it and washed it all the time. Same way with the leather equipment for the horses. They had to keep it clean. And often as they'd say we didn't take no insurance on them. And we made money on it. But we only had two deliveries a day on count of that.
Where after they got the automobile, I was faster. You could make more deliveries and make less money. So what I'm trying to say about B. Fellum, now going back from B. Fellum, you had Mr. Michelson, who started in at Preston Avenue, and you had other little stores. I don't know the name. I think Mr. Smiley was one fellow. I wanted to play something up there, a real nice place. In fact, my sister-in-law worked there at the time. But then you got down to Distaback, Sam Distaback. Well, that was the Boundary. Well, not exactly. He was on the corner of Pearl in Ellen. But he handled very good merchandise, and he had a lot of Union-made merchandise and he sold to the police department and uniforms and things like that.
They did a tremendous business. Left you past him, you went on straight up until you got to Harwood Street. Those people, I couldn't tell you their name. There was Ray, there was Mr. Kobold, Mr. Chomsky, Shreninsky, and those, like I say now, you go to Jaime Kobold, He could say the Amen name, he could say the Israel. Now his father was famous, Mr. Koval. Why was he famous? Well, every Jewish person that come into this town, my dear, that needed help, went to Mr. Koval. And he would take them over to the bank and stand good for them, even though he didn't know them. And good for him.
Lots of times Mr. Lawther would tell him, he said, you got on, you're on the note for a hundred of them now. But it made no difference because he was good for you. Now you said Mr. Lawther. Mr. Lawther. Lawther. Oh, I'm sorry. Now, let's get back to him. He opened his first bank on the corner of Preston and Ellen. And the people who opened that place up mostly was Sam Diff the Bank, Mr. Hart, my father, and a few other merchants opened that bank there. And they later moved to Liberty State Bank. And they later moved to Harwood in Ellum, and it still went under the name of Liberty State Bank, and they had what they called Liberty Reedy Company, that's who I bought my first home from.
Later they moved into the athletic field in New England. So to me, actually, that was D-Fellas, that's why there was a D-Fellas. And the town was so small, as I remember, now I went to Bryan High School. They only had two in Dallas. They had Bryan School and OCS. Forest Avenue come in I think after 1916 or something like that. Yeah, I think 1918. 1918, something like that. So what I'm trying to say is, all the town was built right along there. Now you've got to figure the time that I'm talking about. This was a very small town. I remember when it used to rain these boat arcs.
They could come up out of the ground and get them off the peak and pick them out and then press them back in. But of course like I say the town stopped as far as I ever went out. Usually it was Grand Avenue. and the father's yearly running time then was to the state fair. It was strictly out in the country. Old Calderum Company was out there and you had to go a long way to get to his place. My father bought a Kissel car then. I never won't forget it. And we used to spend all day Sunday washing that thing and polishing the france on it And as far as we could drive out with Maple Avenue would be Lucas Street After that, if it rained, we couldn't go.
It would just be Chug-O-O-N-A-Y-E Street. That's wonderful. I want to ask you a few questions. All right, go ahead. You said that the time period you were talking about was 1915 to about 19... you said you left that area in 1930. Yeah, but there was a lot of places coming in after that. Right, but I want to ask you, when did your father open the store? Well, my dad had run the store here when I was born. I'm 78, going on 79 now. You were born in Dallas? Oh yes. My father was on the meat market. But was it in the Elm Street? No, he was on McKinney Avenue at a particular time.
Then he moved up on Elm. Why did he move? Well, you see all the Jewish people at that time lived in North Dallas. Then when the Mexicans come in, they all moved, all the Jewish people moved out. We moved over on Pearl Street, our first home, and all the Jews then lived on Atford Street, the rich ones, and on Irby, on Browder, and the first hater I went to was on Jackson Street between Pearl and Preston. That was the hater. At Sheriff Israel. Huh? At Sheriff Israel? Yeah, and then they moved down to... City Park. But you know, I guess I moved around, I thought as much as anybody, it's Dr.
Newshulst, come and go. But I tell you, I don't see D. Pelham like anybody else. I could name the names that broke the problem, but you see, after later on, American Trading Company, he opened the American Trading Company, and then he got into an argument with some of the kinfolk that he is, the Rubens, and they split up. And one had the American Trainee and the other had the American I think they call it food stores And then Morris Rubin went out on Steve Springs and he come back and I went with him to the store worked with him He took over Hackerman's number one store there on the corner of Preston and Helen.
And I run the meat market there for him for a while. that he lived two doors to me on. We lived on the Park Road. And his wife and Mr. Atherman, his brothers and sisters, he made all that argument and said, still, it's less sicker than water. When they went broke, why, he took them back in. Of course. The others didn't now. Some of their best friends I got, Johnny Rubin, You know, he run the American food stores. He worked for us when I was with Dennis Groden. Oh really? Him and his wife both. Even his brother worked out there. They all worked at the Samuels.
See, I've been with Ben for 38 years. I was with him when we opened 8th Street, the meat market. I was with him when we sold it to Packinghouse. And I was with him when they opened Samuel Packing Company. Well, why did you leave your own store and go? Well, we closed it up. My father was sick and his deep passion had come on and I didn't want to work there no more and I was considered a good meat man at that time and I went to Mr. Huber with A&P and I just drove over at Peter Springs and the drug market, that is the meat market.
But I didn't care much for running my own place. Even so then I quit. I retired when my wife got sick. I still didn't care for a place. I've asked people to call me all the time, one more time, go in and get a silent or anything else. I don't want no murder. But I still say, if you go to Hyman, give me some names of those people. Well I have quite a number of names I want to ask you you were born in Dallas Was your father born here No my father was from Europe Okay you know when he came Well And did he come to New York or did he come Come to New York and then he went to Chicago then he went to Arkansas then he come here to Dallas Why?
Well, all the kids were born different. Only me and my young sister was born in Dallas. Do you know why he came to Dallas rather than somewhere else? No, he must come down here. You didn't have relatives? Oh, no, no, no. We brought a bunch of the kinfolks from New York here in Southern Montana, like the Leafs. You remember the Leafs? You remember the Marsha B. Drafts? Oh, yes. Well, now you see, that's the Leafs. We brought him here at Allen, and we brought his mother and father. That was my daddy's sister. We brought them all down here. Jack. We brought Jack down here and his brother is the one that changed his name, Sam Stone.
We brought a lot of his kinzums down here. Do you know how old your father was when he came to Dallas? Or do you know what year he came here? No, my father come here before the century. Okay. And my father had a packin' out here. Oh, did he? Oh yeah, he was here. My dad's been here a long time. We're, we're, we've been here a long time. Was he, was he married when he came here? Oh yeah. Yeah, my mother, my mother was born in, in Lockheed. I think my father comes from I know I spent money there until they said in fact that they couldn't buy them people from my mother.
I don't know. You see, people have got a wrong conception about D-Vellum. You see, when I knew D-Vellum, they didn't have no cheap merchandise. The only reason they get big in it is because they weren't no second avenues. and they had some people had to come down and keep on them because they wanted to go to the show. You see later on they opened one on Metropolitan, they opened one on State. You see, now you take down Central Tracks, they had this colored, uh, well, I was going to go to the show. More like the Chester Boyd had live entertainment. And there was a lot going on at that particular time down there.
But you see, the distance was so sharp because you take Main Street didn't have nothing. Commerce Street didn't have. In fact, Commerce Street had a great big outfit where the parties go up and drink. Yeah. And you take the vegetable market at that time, it was down Earl Street and Preston Street and a little bit on Orwood Street, and you take the big Venice. Where was the market? Just south of Cummer? You know, just running north and south, and it was on Preston, Earl, and a little bit on Orwood. But it was south of Elm Street. Was it south of Elm Street? Yes. South of Colorado?
Yeah, and you see, they didn't have no sheds at that same time. Well, you take where Goodman is now, where the roundhouse, that's where they repaired locomotive. Oh really? Oh yes. I never forget, I used to live on Pearl Street, and I would go down Preston, and there was a jukewarm by the name of Miss Treatment had a place there on the corner of Paris and and and we stopped getting my shakes and something And we couldn get to Pearl Street we got down to 8 and then we turned up a half of rock and then we were on Pearl Street And our neighbors was the Glaser in the UK.
And you know, like down there. And we finally sold our house to the Swartz. My brother finally married us, Sarah Clark. And then we brought out Mr. Richmond home. On Erie and Vermont, which we still don't have no house all the way over the property. But it was some kind of house at that time. That was a very large house. It was a large house. It had a big house on the side too, back there. See, my father was funny. You've never seen her this, and I'm going to tell you this. My father treats all the kids in the store like strangers. We had to call him Nick Greenberg.
We didn't call him Topper. And he's working the same time. I don't know if he works with strangers. He takes the same amount of dollars for hours. I going to run the house and he run the meat market He just wouldn stand for no interference He wasn going to tell mama something about the story because there wouldn be no good Yeah But like I say, a D-fellar, most people, most D-fellars, but they don't know why there was a D-fellar. The fact that there was no other colored stick shows and they had to come down to free entertainment, the fact that people had to come in, if I told you some of the things you'd laugh about it, Mr.
Lewin's brother come in, I'll never forget. We called him Little Lewin. And he had two, three boys. You might remember some of them. You remember this hammer? He killed himself over one of the boys. and one of them committed suicide, worked for Abe Harris or something like that. But what I didn't know, he got off the train at the depot, and his business was just around the corner, on Elph, because I mentioned my father's. And they got him in one of those, uh, taxes, I call them, you know, harts and wagons. and then took him half way downtown and brought him back and charged his friend and I thought it was an enormous lot of money and then let him off there in the store and after he got out he brought him by my dad and they went to get a cup of coffee when he sees the people He likes to throw the fish He right out of the corner but he always has Is there any of that family left in that one?
They moved to California. No, there might be one. I don't know. They were nice people. I liked them all. Some of the things, you know, the woman, she killed herself for some reason. And, you know, I'd let the person put herself for a killing devil or something like that. The other one committed suicide, I don't know why. What, another sister? Another sister committed suicide? Was it a sister? No, a brother. It wasn't a boy. Was that very unusual in those days? Yes it was. Well, those days people were different. Those people are different than they are now. I was always curious. That wasn't something like my father.
I just don't know if you have to say. We had a stand-up for the first thing. He was always set. He was kind of degrading the name. And I think that you can pay this. So, you can pay this. I have to pay for today or not. I think it's better than this part of the day.