In 1936, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Irwin Payne hired architect, Ralph Bryan, to design their home at 4524 Rawlins Street in the style of a Louisiana plantation home. They toured several Louisiana plantation homes to collect what Mr. Payne wanted in his own home. The site was at the corner of Rawlins and Hawthorne, right across from Craddock Park and the Perry Estate, and completed in 1940. Robert I. Payne was a theater executive and ran many of the city’s movie theaters, such as the Esquire Theater on Oaklawn, which were wildly popular at the time. The couple lived in the home with their daughter, Mildred (Mimi) Payne. Mrs. Dorothy (Volk) Payne was the daughter of the famed George Volk, founder of the retail family who had shoe stores all over Dallas. The Volk department store on Elm street was one of the most successful shoe stores in the nation. The Volk store built a new store at Elm and St Paul in 1930 and became the first completely air-conditioned department store in the nation. They then opened several branches including one in Highland Park Village and one in Oak Cliff at Wynnewood. One of the eccentricities of the Volk store was a cage of woolly monkeys, a pond of turtles, and an aquarium. Harold Volk also developed the Statler hotel in 1950.
Mimi’s debutante ball was on December 9th, 1949 at Brook Hollow Country Club. 500 guests joined her candlelight debut dance listening to The Billy Mayo orchestra followed by a midnight supper. White flowers and hundreds of hurricane lamps illuminated the terrace. A pre-party cocktail soiree was held by the Puckhaber’s in their Maple Terrace residence, decked out in bird of paradise flowers, for a lucky 50 special guests. Several parties were held in her honor after her ball, including an elaborate Chinese breakfast where guests wore silk robes in a decorated home on Highland Drive and had a feast of Chinese delicacies.
Mimi later married Sawnie Aldredge, Jr. (son of a Dallas Mayor) years after Sawnie opened The Aldredge Book Store in 1947, which sat at 2800 McKinney Ave at Worthington in an old house built in the 1880s. Sawnie’s father was the youngest mayor of Dallas in the 1920s and, during his term, hired the first city planner and drove the KKK out of town.
After Sawnie’s death, Mimi married SMU law professor, Joe McKnight, in 1975 and remained married to him up to his death in 2015. Joe McKnight was the principal architect of the Matrimonial Property Act, which granted Texas women equal legal rights after marriage in the 1960s. Mimi had two children with Aldredge, Amy, and Trip. She also had several step-children after marrying McKnight. Mimi passed away in 2017.
I was very good friends with Mimi. I met her after Sawnie had died. She had a wonderful monthly madrigal group in her house on St. John’s Drive. Later, after her marriage to Joe, those madrigal groups were in their house on Rankin. I miss Mimi and Joe.
I love these stories about the past. Thank you for sharing these wonderful memories.