Kress Building (1937), view10, 100 E. Mills Ave, El Paso, TX, USA

El Paso, TX, est. 1873, pop. (2015) 679,000 • Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, est. 1659, pop. 1.4MM) • El Paso-Juárez Metropolitan Area, pop. 2.7 MM • Life on the Line, NY Times Magazine

• Art Deco/Spanish style five-and-dime w/Moorish & American Indian influences • designed by Edward F. Sibbert (1899-1982), head architect at S.H. Kress & Co. • Sibbert designed ~50 Kress stores during his 25-yr. career, this one said to have been among his favorites, along with the NYC 5th Ave. store

• built on the site of the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line station, aka Jackass Mail • company's first mail shipment left San Antonio 9 July, 1857, arrived at San Diego in 53 days • also occupying the site was a shop operated by private banker and a tong leader Sam Hing, a San Francisco transplant who supplied Chinese laborers primarily for the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad • a U.S. Federal Bldg. [photo] later occupied this site & was demolished to build the Kress store [vintage post card] • Deconstructing the Jackass Mail Route, The Western Mails • Chinese Immigrants Helped Build Railroad in El Paso, EPCC Library • Chinese Texans Texan Cultures

Proposed Marker Text
Samuel H. Kress (1863-1955) opened the El Paso Kress store in 1937 on the site of the former United States Federal Building. At the request of the Women’s Department of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce, Edward F. Sibbert (1899-1982) designed the store with regional architecture in mind. The design is described as Spanish style with Moorish influence and it became one of Sibbert’s favorites. Native American architecture of the Southwest is suggested in the stalks of desert plants decorating the doors leading to each balcony on Mills Street, Mayan motifs, sculptures resembling primitive masks, and the Indian motif ironwork on the balcony. Actual Mexican tiles are set in the door frames inside the Oregon Street entrance. Red-clay tiles mark the roofline along the street elevations adding to the allusion of Spanish architecture. The bell tower reflects the Anglo, Indian, Spanish, and Mexican cultures of El Paso. It functioned as a carillon and was wired for both chimes and lighting. A tower that played music was a one-time phenomenon in Kress’s building history. Additionally, the El Paso store was the only one having entrances and exits on three different streets. The Kress chain sold out to McCrory in 1980; this store was closed in 1997.

Taken on: June 28, 2010

Tags:

el paso

el paso county

united states

usa

southwest

north america

architecture

building

commercial

business

retail

store

variety store

5 & 10

5 and 10

five and dime

five and ten cent store

art deco

spanish

moorish

american indian

1930s

20th century

chinese « less

Sets appears in: • El Paso

Groups appears in: • I know where you are • in explore

Stats: 11,601 views / 6 comments

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder