Nuts About Southwest

From the day the current Dallas Love Field terminal opened on January 20, 1958, the facility has been under constant modification.  Upper levels to concourses were added, the terminal expanded then contracted, operations shifted, and now the next renovation is underway which will consolidate all the gates into a new, state of the art concourse, along with new lobby areas.  One time of great change for the building happened after the other airlines moved to the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional (now International) Airport on January 13, 1974.  This is the first of several Flashback Fridays that will look at that period.

Today, we take a look back at some old black and white photos.  From the destination sign at one of the gates in the picture below, which shows a flight departing to Midland/Odessa (MAF), the photos must have been taken sometime after May 20, 1977, because that was the date we began service to MAF.  After all the other airlines moved to DFW, we moved our gates to the former American Airlines concourse (also known as the West Concourse).  Prior to that, we had operated out of gates next to Delta’s operation on the North Concourse.  Even though the photo below was taken at least three years after that move, it retains the look of American’s gates.  From the limited view we have outside the window, this appears to be Gate 2 because of the light pole outside.  (As our Love Field operation grew, we opened more of the gates on this concourse.)

When the other carriers left the airport, we moved our Ticket Counter from the original ticketing wing over to its current location, the area where the old Dobbs House Coffee Shop was located.  From the same roll of film, we have these views of the counter as it looked during the late 1970s.  Note that the heart motif played a dominant role in the backdrop of the counter, and check out the rest of the graphics.  (Very 70’s, dude!)  One thing that puzzles me is that the high-traffic area in front of the counter was carpeted then, but the gate area in the photo above isn’t.

The next photo shows the original pathway from the main lobby to the North Concourse.  At this date, Southwest Customers accessed their flights on the West Concourse via the connection next to the baggage claim area (the one that most of our deplaning  Customers use to access the terminal and baggage claim).  If I remember my terminal geography/history correctly, the original main lobby and concourse entrances were closed off from travelers because the main lobby housed an ice rink.  (Yes, I have found pictures of that, stay tuned.)  As we will see later, several airport offices were located on this concourse.  The railings you see down both sides of the hallway were old moving sidewalks.  When the terminal opened in 1958, the moving sidewalks were the world's first installed at an airport.

Below, we see the lower level entrance to the North Concourse.  Unlike the West Concourse which has all the public areas on the upper level, Delta Customers used escalators from the North Concourse’s lower level to access the upper level gates.  This hallway retains its original look (and the smell that takes me back to my childhood) even today.  In this view, we see that Piper Aircraft has a sales office on the concourse, and the walls of the office extend out into the concourse.  The area immediately to the left of the picture is a small ground-level gate, and a similar gate is located out of the view to the right.  Update:  Longtime SWA Employee Mark Monse tells us that the Piper office later became the airport police station.  I think he is right, and that would mean this is a view from the West Concourse looking toward the East Concourse.  The North Concourse entrance is to the left.

This final photo below is still a bit of a mystery to me.  I do know that it is a view along the lower level of the North Concourse because the tile pillar at the very left of the frame was only found on the lower floor of concourses.  The doors appear to be leaning against the concourse wall.  To be honest, the track lighting is confusing me, though because the concourse hallway had no need for such lights.  I have two guesses about the subject of the photo:  The first is that this might be a remodeling of the old Piper office seen above and we are looking at the area behind the “false wall” that was erected out into the concourse.  The second is that this is a remodeling of former Delta operations offices to house our Dallas Marketing offices.  Can anyone help with details on this?