The red Pegasus is one of Dallas’ best known icons.
Though many recognize the flying red horse as a symbol of the city, lesser known is the history of the oil company that launched it into the skyline.
The Magnolia Petroleum Company, founded in April 1911, was a consolidation of several earlier companies, the first of which began operating a refinery in Corsicana on Christmas Day 1898, according to the Texas State Historical Association.
The company brought its booming business headquarters to Dallas in the 1920s, but it would be another decade later before the bright red logo set the city’s skyline aglow.
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A look through The Dallas Morning News’ archives gives a glimpse into how Dallasites embraced the Pegasus as a symbol for the city, even replicating it once and saving both versions from being rusted beyond repair — or blown away.
A Red Pegasus is perched atop of the Magnolia Hotel at 1401 Commerce St. in downtown Dallas on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
‘An enduring monument’
A headline in a special section of The News on Aug. 13, 1922, read “Magnolia Building, City’s Greatest Business Beehive, Teems With Life.”
Below the headline is a large photo of the 402-foot-6-inch skyscraper, the 16th tallest in the U.S. Standing at 29 stories (31 if you include the basements), the Magnolia Building towered over all others in Dallas. It cost an estimated $4 million.
“A masterpiece of architectural beauty and pyramid-like strength, the addition of the Magnolia Building to the Dallas skyline gives this city one of the finest office buildings in the world,” the story reads.
A clipping of the Aug. 13, 1922, edition of The Dallas Morning News with stories about the Magnolia Building opening.
The Dallas Morning News archives
The Magnolia Petroleum Company’s office in the city’s business district on the corner of Commerce and Akard streets was constructed in about 18 months, with tenants beginning to move in before completion.
“With the erection of its great skyscraper office building in Dallas, the Magnolia Petroleum Company has set up an enduring monument to the ideals and accomplishments of big business, the like of which in point of magnitude few other corporations of a life of twelve years can point to,” another story in the special edition read.
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The 6,000-pound flying horse
The red Pegasus was installed atop the Magnolia building in 1934, ahead of an American Petroleum Institute convention in the city.
The horse, designed, built and erected by Texlite, was composed of two profiles made of red porcelain enameled steel weighing 6,000 pounds. Both profiles are 42 feet in length from the Pegasus’ nigh front foot to the off-hind foot, and 32 feet wide from the topmost wing-tip to its lowest galloping hoof.
A three-horsepower motor rotated the horse about one revolution every 40 seconds; when wind speeds surpassed 30 miles an hour, a governing device caused the horse to turn its head to the wind and stop turning.
A photo published in Oct. 1, 1935, edition of The Dallas Morning News showing the Magnolia Petroleum Company red Pegasus logo perched atop its building on the corner of Commerce and Akard streets in downtown Dallas.
The Dallas Morning News archives
“The Magnolia Oil Company’s symbol has had folks craning their necks for twenty years,” a reporter wrote in a Aug. 16, 1954, story about the Texlite electrician who was the “one-horse groom” caring for the Pegasus for two decades. “And most people feel the same way about as Groom Guernsey, who says: ‘I just don’t seem to get tired of looking at the horse.’”
A ‘beacon’ in the new millennium
Time advanced and circumstances changed, like they tend to do in a fast-moving city like Dallas.
Magnolia Petroleum Company was folded into Mobil Oil and moved out of downtown, the building the Pegasus was perched upon changed hands multiple times, and the sign was eventually given by the oil company to the city of Dallas in 1976.
In 1999 — decades after the flying red horse was named an official Dallas landmark in 1973 — a group created the “Pegasus Project” to repair the horse to its former glory.
They kicked off a half-million-dollar campaign to restore the icon and have it back to its original condition in time for a New Year’s Eve celebration. The horse hadn’t rotated for nearly 25 years, and its neon hadn’t operated since 1997.
“This downtown landmark was a symbol of our city’s founding and its youthful years,” U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson said at a news conference, according to an April 27, 1999, article from The News.
“It served as a beacon to our citizens and visitors. It was that red neon sign on the distant horizon that welcomed us home.”
The neon sign was removed from the Magnolia Building with plans of using the original panels to serve as templates for new construction.
Dr. Gail Thomas, founder of the Dallas Institute of the Humanities and Culture and co-chairman of the Pegasus Project, also spoke at the news conference.
She shared the myth of the Pegasus: A horse that flew out of Medusa after the monster’s snake-covered head was cut off. When the flying horses’ hooves struck the earth, a spring of fresh water appeared.
The natural springs bubbling up from the earth makes sense as a symbol of an exploratory oil company. At the time the Pegasus found its perch in Dallas, that symbol also corresponded with a city that prides itself for making something out of nothing, like a bustling, rich city among the prairie land.
Thomas said a story of triumph over impossible situations is an apt symbol for Dallas.
“This is not just an icon, this is a story that keeps us going,” she said.
In 1999, workers used a helicopter to lower a crane next to Dallas’ historic icon, Pegasus, during the project to replace the Flying Red Horse atop the Magnolia Hotel in Dallas. A new Pegasus, costing $600,000, took its place and was fully illuminated at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2000.
Huy Nguyen / The Dallas Morning News
The team effort was successful, with the replica Pegasus being placed, aglow and rotating, atop its perch in time to ring in 2000. At the time, about 45,000 people crowded onto Main Street on New Year’s Eve to watch the horse light back up.
Custom sign-maker Warren Casteel who led the project told The News he was warned the $600,000 repair would be a “job from hell” but he got it done — and then some.
The revived Pegasus had a computerized turning mechanism so it would move easily and automatically turn into the direction of a heavy wind. A crane was also assembled atop the Magnolia to help erect the horse with the intent of leaving it there permanently for maintenance purposes, Casteel said in a Dec. 28, 1999, story.
“The thing that would upset me the most 10 or 15 years from now is to come back and see it not be maintained,” Casteel said. “That’s the key to keeping Pegasus for the city of Dallas.”
Now a two-horse city
Though there are many flying red horses spread throughout Dallas, the original and its replica remain most significant. But the two have only been simultaneously displayed in different parts of downtown for about a decade.
The Pegasus before its lighting ceremony at the Omni Dallas
Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer
The original Pegasus — which took a scavenger hunt of sorts to find — was kept in a storage shed until 2015, before it was renovated and placed in front of the Omni Dallas Hotel on Lamar Street.
David Fisher, interim director at the city’s office of cultural affairs at the time, told The News: “The Pegasus is one of Dallas’ most visible cultural artifacts and icons. It hearkens back to and honors the great history and story of Dallas. In this new location, the restored original Pegasus will be a popular destination for everyone who visits downtown Dallas.”
The street-level Pegasus is atop a makeshift oil derrick, a nod to its oil company roots, and spins just as it did when it was displayed hundreds of feet higher.
Rain turning to sleet falls late Thursday night, January 9, 2025 in front of neon red Pegasus turning outside the Omni Dallas Hotel in downtown Dallas. The Bank of America building is seen in the distance.
Tom Fox / Staff Photographer
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.