It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. In architecture, perhaps the windows are the eyes to the soul of a building. Here’s a look into some eyes seen around town.
Plenty of soul to see here. Trifoil window of St. John’s Episcopal Church on College Avenue.
Half-moon window with egg-and-dart border is on the Mitchell-Schoonover house (1907) on 8th Avenue on Quality Hill. Mitchell was a jeweler. Schoonover was a physician. Designed by Sanguinet and Staats, the uberarchitects of early Fort Worth.
Oculus with four keystones is on the Mitchell-Schoonover house.
St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church on Missouri Avenue.
In Swastika Place on South Adams Street in Fairmount.
Sanger Building (Hedrick, 1929) on Houston Street, home of Sanger Brothers Department Store.
James W. Swayne house (1899) on Ballinger Street in Quality Hill.
Oculus with fleur-de-lis keystones on the Laneri house (1904) on Jennings Avenue. In 1899 Giovanni Battista Laneri co-founded Fort Worth Macaroni Company, which was renamed “O.B. [Our Best] Macaroni.”
Another oculus with a fleur-de-lis and four keystones on the Pollock-Capps house (1899) on Penn Street in Quality Hill. Joseph Pollock was a homeopathic physician. William Capps was a lawyer. The law firm he co-founded in the 1880s is still practicing in Fort Worth.
The hooded eyes of the Durham house (1900) on 9th Avenue.
Broadway Baptist Church (1952, Hedrick and Stanley).
Knights of Pythias lodge hall (1901, Sanguinet and Staats) on Main Street. The F, B, and C stand for friendship, benevolence, and charity.
Arlington Heights Masonic lodge (1922, Jack C. Davies) on Camp Bowie Boulevard.
Quatrefoil window of the James F. Moore house on Pennsylvania Avenue in Quality Hill.
Land Title Block Building on East 4th Street. Sandstone bas-relief includes an owl and another bird.
House on Ryan Place Drive designed for himself by architect Wiley Clarkson. (Note the yeoman warder in lower right.)
And what do we see when we look into the eyes to the soul of this building? These windows with their broken panes are on the south side of the Ellis Pecan Building on North Main Street, originally the home of Fort Worth’s Ku Klux Klan lodge 101.
