Aerial photos taken in 1952 show how busy Fort Worth has been. Here are views from sixty-three years ago accompanied by corresponding contemporary views.
This aerial shows the Stockyards and packing plants from 28th Street south almost to Exchange Avenue where the bottom edge of the film is. North Main Street is along the left edge. The view includes most of the Armour packing plant but none of the Swift packing plant to the south.
The northwest edge of downtown. In the upper-right corner can be seen the smokestacks of the electric plant on North Main Street. The Ripley Arnold housing project stood where the Tarrant County College campus stands today. Where the Leonard’s Department Store parking lot would later be, Franklin Street ran east to west from the north end of Houston Street to the river.
The convention center (1968) and Water Gardens (1974) took much of the old Hell’s Half Acre real estate. The wedge-shaped central library (1939, Hedrick) can be seen in the upper left. On the left edge can be seen the dark roof of the 1896 federal building/post office.
Lower-left corner is the intersection of Riverside Drive and Lancaster Avenue. The turnpike had not yet been built; the Trinity River channel had not yet been straightened. Note on the left the racetrack oval where the Meadowbrook Drive-In Theater would be on Riverside Drive. Sycamore Creek now flows into the new channel, making an orphan of the arc of the old channel to the north.
A Frisco railroad roundhouse and turntable stood where the Fiesta supermarket stands on 8th Avenue between Robert and Cantey streets. The Berkley Luxury Apartment Homes (northwest of Fiesta) had not been built.
The Cultural District had a lot less culture in 1952. Count the museums that were not there yet. West Van Zandt School stood at the corner of Lancaster and University. Today’s Casa Manana had not yet been built, but on the site of the Frontier Centennial, the footprint of the original Casa Manana could still be seen in the lower-right corner.
South of the Cultural District, the north part of Botanic Garden was undeveloped. In the upper right was a curved swath of housing built after World War II and called “Parkside Village.” It provided housing for veterans from 1946 through 1954. The Public Health Center had not been built. In the south part, the Rose Ramp and Oval Rose Garden can be seen. Southwest of the Rose Ramp in 1956 a five-sided maze of one thousand six-foot-tall yaupon holly shrubs would be planted but not prove popular with the public.
