AA-2026-DB201C
On the image
Spectators climbed onto the roof of a low commercial building along the parade route — which is how you knew a crowd expected something worth seeing. Rolling down what reads as the Drag, the stretch of Guadalupe Street that ran beside the University of Texas campus, the float carries an enormous sculpted figure in a wide-brimmed hat and an elaborately flowered skirt, the whole thing decorated in UT orange and white, with a banner at the base that names the University of Texas and a year in the 1950s. Float-building in the postwar college tradition was a serious competitive enterprise: fraternities and dormitories pulled all-nighters constructing these things from chicken wire and chrysanthemums, judged on ambition and craft, and the ambition here is not modest.
The figure herself is built in a vaguely folkloric style — the broad hat and braided hair suggest a Spanish or Latin American theme, which was a popular float aesthetic of the era, chosen with the same breezy cultural confidence that saw every state fair in America decorated with foreign-inflected 'costumes' nobody had researched. The men walking alongside her in open collars and slacks give the whole scene the relaxed officiousness of people who are both important to the event and not entirely sure what they are supposed to do.
The parked cars along the curb and the University Market sign in the background anchor this firmly to early-to-mid-1950s Austin — a college town that believed deeply in the pageantry of fall football season, and expressed that belief by building a twelve-foot papier-mâché woman and rolling her slowly down the main street while people watched from the roof.
Visually related — by likeness
University of Texas Homecoming Parade Float, Austin, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-DB201C. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/university-of-texas-homecoming-parade-float-austin-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026DB201C,
title = {University of Texas Homecoming Parade Float, Austin, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-DB201C},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/university-of-texas-homecoming-parade-float-austin-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - University of Texas Homecoming Parade Float, Austin, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-DB201C UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/university-of-texas-homecoming-parade-float-austin-1950s ER -
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