The Year Was 1928: Still Standing—for a Limited Time Only

The year was 1928. Mickey and Minnie Mouse first appeared on film. Governor Al Smith of New York became the first Catholic nominated by a major political party for president (he would lose to Herbert Hoover, a Quaker). The first machine-sliced and machine-wrapped loaves of bread were sold. Fats Domino was born. English writer Thomas Hardy died.

In Fort Worth, William Bryce was mayor. The population was about 160,000. Twelve railroads served the city. The city had 492 miles of sanitary sewer; 650 miles of streets (185 miles of them paved). No freeways. There were 176 churches, 60 public schools, and 3 vaudeville theaters. Building permits for the year totaled $13 million ($177 million today).

Indeed, during the years of 1926-1934, despite the Great Depression, Fort Worth was transforming downtown, adding the Petroleum Building, Sanger Building, First United Methodist Church, Lone Star Gas Building, Sinclair Building, Star-Telegram Building, Public Market Building, Western Union Building, Central Fire Station, Blackstone Hotel, Fort Worth Club Building, Texas & Pacific passenger terminal and freight terminal, Masonic Temple, U.S. Courthouse, Central Post Office, Worth Hotel and Theater, Medical Arts Building, Electric Building/Hollywood Theater, and The Fair Building. Heck, Jesse Jones built the last four of those, and he lived in Houston!

Whew.

jones-1930By 1930 Jones’s Fort Worth Properties Corporation had built the Worth Hotel and Theater, Electric Building, and Medical Arts Building and was working on The Fair.

And yet despite the building boom, 1926-1934 was a time when several grand old buildings, some from the previous century, still stood. This 1928 aerial photo (larger image at bottom of post) shows the downtown of our parents or maybe our grandparents. The photo is a fascinating freeze-frame of history, showing dozens of buildings that now are gone, including these twenty-five:

t&p wiki1. Texas & Pacific passenger station (1899) on Main Street at Lancaster Avenue. Frank Kent’s Cadillac dealership later occupied the site.

federal PC2. Federal Building/Post Office (1896) on Jennings Avenue. Our current city hall (1971) is there now.

1929 city hall3. City Hall (1893) on Throckmorton Street. It was designed by L. B. Weinman. Our 1938 city hall building is there now. The 1938 building is now the A. D. Marshall Public Safety and Courts Building. (Photo from private collection of Joe E. Haynes, Dallas.)

bells station pc4. Central Fire Station (1899) on Throckmorton Street. Another Weinman design. The plaza of Fritz G. Lanham Federal Building is there now.

building carnegie library 19015. Carnegie Public Library (1901) on West 9th Street. The north half of Hyde Park is there now.

houdini majestic6. Majestic Theater (1911) on Commerce Street. In 1966 demolition to make way for the Tarrant County Convention Center razed the Majestic Theater along with fourteen blocks of the south end of downtown (the old Hell’s Half Acre). The convention center’s mechanical systems building is on the site of the Majestic now.

1929 t&p freight 19057. T&P freight depot (1908) was located on Lancaster Avenue just west of the Al Hayne Memorial. The 1908 depot replaced the 1902 depot, which burned in 1908. The 1908 depot was replaced by the behemoth T&P freight depot of 1931. In 1905 people sat on the roof of the 1902 depot to see President Roosevelt speak. A parking lot of Texas & Pacific Lofts is there today. (Charles Swartz photo from University of Texas at Arlington Library.)

1929 medical8. Medical Arts Building (1927) on West 10th Street.

YouTube video:

Medical Arts Building was imploded in 1973. Forty-story Burnett Plaza stands there today.

worth hotel smith9. Worth Hotel and Theater (1927) on West 7th Street. A parking garage for the Fort Worth Club is there now.

1929 first ME south church1929 first ME south church detail10. First Methodist Church South (1908) was in the southeast corner of 7th and Taylor streets. Note the streetcar tracks. The Oil and Gas Building stands on that location today. What Sunday Looked Like a Century Ago

mcdonald lodge11. Grand Temple Building (1907) on Jones Street in the African-American “downtown.” Home of an African-American Masonic lodge and Grand Mason William “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald’s Fraternal Bank and Trust and drugstore. The Intermodal Transportation Center is there now.

1929 roundhouse12. This is the Texas & Pacific turntable and roundhouse on South Main at Railroad Avenue (Vickery Boulevard), built to replace the roundhouse that burned in the South Side fire of 1909. In 1928, the year the aerial photo was taken, T&P opened its new Lancaster yard (now Union Pacific’s Davidson yard) southwest of downtown. The site of the roundhouse is now a parking lot for freight trailers.

1929 elks13. Where the Bank of America building is today at West 7th and Lamar streets, in 1910 lodge 124 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks built its home. In 1928 the Elks would build a new home at West 4th and Burnett streets. That building still stands as the YWCA.

ward 2 Peter Smith School14. In 1910 a new Second Ward school was built on West 2nd Street at Florence Street on the homestead of John Peter Smith, who had died in 1901. John Peter Smith School was torn down in 1970. Today the property is a parking lot. (Photo from FWISD Billy W. Sills Center for Archives.)

metropolitan hotel uta lib15. Winfield Scott built the Metropolitan Hotel on Main Street in 1898 as a haven for visiting cattlemen. The lobby featured carved mahogany, cut glass, fluted columns, marble stairway, hand-carved oak chairs. There was an artesian well in the courtyard, tuxedoed waiters in the dining room, gas heaters in the guest rooms, a French chef in the kitchen. Fort Worth society gathered in the ballroom. The Metropolitan was just south of the Hotel Texas, which originally was called the “Winfield Hotel” after Scott. (Photo from University of Texas at Arlington Library.)met-photo-detail

Look at the architectural detail of a corner of the building in about 1911. (Photo from University of Texas at Arlington Library Special Collections.)

Star-Telegram ad of 1920.

metropolitan-as-milnerIn 1936 the Metropolitan became the Milner. The building was demolished in 1960, a parking lot sprouting from its rubble. Today the property is part of General Worth Square and features a statue of Fort Worth’s best-remembered hotel guest: John F. Kennedy.

metropolitan-auctionLike many a once-proud Fort Worth building, in the end the Metropolitan Hotel was reduced to a classified ad and “parted out” like an old car.

van zandt westbrook16. Westbook Hotel (1910) at 408 Main Street. Imploded in 1978. Reincarnated as a parking lot. But today Sundance Square Plaza occupies that space.

brown 1886 wellge17. This grand building (1886), with its corner clipped to conform to the nonperpendicular intersection of Main and Lancaster streets, housed first wholesale grocer Joseph H. Brown and later McCord-Collins Company and Well Machinery Supply Company. Torn down in 1958 to make way for the I-30 overhead. (Image from 1886 Wellge map.)

building natatorium 1907 greater fw18. The Natatorium (1890), our indoor “swimmin’ hole,” at 112 East 3rd Street. The Commerce Building (2013) stands there now.

holmes castle photo LOC19. On the southwest corner of East 2nd and Commerce streets was “Holmes Castle,” a hotel built by serial killer Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. The Natatorium can be seen behind the “castle” in the upper right. (Photo from Library of Congress.)

H._H._HolmesHolmes built the hotel in 1894, but an appointment with a noose in 1896 kept him from dispensing his brand of “check in, never check out” hospitality in Cowtown. (Photo from Wikipedia.)

st elmo 6-25-05Despite its sinister genesis, the Holmes Castle building later housed the nonlethal LaClede and St. Elmo hotels. By 1928 the building housed mostly automobile-related businesses and smaller hotels. By 1947 the space was a parking lot. Today the space is occupied by an outdoor dining area. Bon appetit!

burnett park smith20. Okay, technically Burnett Park still “stands.” But it’s not the park—designed by George Kessler and opened in 1919 on land donated by Burk Burnett—that many of us remember. Best fish pond ever. The park was redesigned in 1984 and 2010. (1940 photo by W. D. Smith.)

21. In 1890 wholesale merchants Sidney Martin and Joseph H. Brown built a new home for their dry goods partnership on Main Street at 8th. At six stories it was among Fort Worth’s first “skyscrapers.”

In 1901 Joseph G. Wheat bought the building, renamed it for himself, and added a rooftop garden restaurant. Because the building was among the tallest in town, the view must have been impressive.

The rooftop restaurant offered live entertainment. The restaurant was later converted into a seventh story for office space. The Wheat Building was demolished in 1940.

22. In 1905 Thomas B. Ellison, who in 1888 had partnered with former sheriff Walter Maddox to found Maddox, Ellison & Company furniture store, built a five-story building at West 7th and Throckmorton streets for Ellison Furniture & Carpet Company store.

This photo is undated, but I suspect it was taken in 1920. The tall building to the right of the Ellison building is the Waggoner Building, finished in 1920, and the two-story building to the right of the Ellison building was the home of the Star-Telegram until December 1920.

The sign on top of the Ellison building reads “This is Ellison’s where your credit is good.”
Note another sign reading “Ellison Furniture” arching over West 7th Street. (Photo from University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.)

The company sold wholesale and retail and also manufactured mattresses and custom furniture.

The Ellison building was demolished in 1976 as the store relocated to the West Side. The company ceased to exist in 1992.

23. This 1893 building on Jones Street was the home office of Waples-Platter wholesale grocery company. The building was demolished in 1957 to make way for the elevated section of I-30.

In 1887 Edward B. Waples, sons Paul and John Graves Waples, and son-in-law Andrew Fox Platter founded Waples-Platter & Company.

24. The wedge-shaped building on Lancaster at Calhoun was built about 1910 to house the Gamer Company, which sold brass products.

By 1927 the building housed a Binyon-O’Keefe fireproof storage warehouse and Morrison Supply Company. (Front Street was later renamed “Lancaster” in honor of the president of the Texas & Pacific railroad.)

In 1935 the Carpenter Paper Company moved into the building.

Like many major employers, Carpenter competed in a muny (municipal) softball league. In 1942 Carpenter had the worst team in town (at least on paper).

In 1957 the building had been vacant for two years when it was destroyed by fire just before it was to be demolished to make way for the elevated section of I-30. Five people were injured.


25. The main building of the electric power plant is still standing, but its smokestacks are gone. This photo shows the power plant in 1921.

On May 15, 1911 ground was broken—with a plow pulled by mules—for the new plant.

The plant opened in 1913 with a single smokestack 265 feet tall and 23 feet wide at the bottom. It was easily the tallest structure in town. Within months a second smokestack was added. In 1911 the Board of Trade (chamber of commerce) had adopted the slogan “We’re for smoke” to reflect the city’s campaign to develop heavy industry and more railroads. Coal-fired locomotives and businesses gave Cowtown plenty of smoke.

By 1952 there were four stacks casting long shadows. Two stacks came down in the late 1980s. By 2004 all were down.

1928 aerial largeHere is a larger version of the 1928 aerial photo without my numbers.

This entry was posted in Architecture, Downtown, Downtown, All Around, Life in the Past Lane, Rails 'n' Roundhouses. Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to The Year Was 1928: Still Standing—for a Limited Time Only

  1. Jackie says:

    Thanks. What directories you getting all this? Do you have the names Henry Boswell or ira h Roberts ?

    • hometown says:

      The Fort Worth city directories for 1896, 1898, 1902, 1905, and 1907 are online at
      https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth41344/?q=fort%20worth%20city%20directory
      and can be searched by keyword.
      There is no Henry Boswell in, for example, the 1907 directory. The 1907 directory shows an Ira G. Roberts.
      Ancestry.com has online the Fort Worth city directories for 1877-78, 1885, 1888, 1892, 1894-96, 1899, 1901-02, 1904-05, 1907, 1909, 1911-12, 1914, 1916, 1918, 1920, 1922, 1924-33, 1935-38, 1940-43, 1945-47, 1949-53, 1955-60, 1963, 1970-71 and 1977. These are searchable only by page number, not by name or address.
      I own only a 1968 city directory.
      Without having a time frame for the names “Henry Boswell” and “ira h Roberts” a search will take several hours.

  2. jackie says:

    great pics…… do you have anything on the Bluff Street Hotel….109 E Bluff St right on the banks of the levy and viaduct.

    • hometown says:

      Thanks, Jackie. I know nothing about the Bluff Street Hotel. Like so many other small, anonymous hotels of a century ago, it was in the news only when a resident died or was the victim of a crime or accident. The city directories show this history:
      1920 livery stable at 109 East Bluff; boarding house at 111, Mrs. Minnie Cook
      1922 Bluff Street Hotel at 109-111
      1923 Bluff Street Hotel, Mrs. Minnie Baker
      1925 Bluff Street Hotel, George Rice
      1929 Bluff Street Hotel, Mrs. Minnie (Cook/Baker?) Luckett proprietor, residence same. Also there, Embry and Charles Luckett, railroad employees
      1930 Bluff Street Hotel, Mrs. Minnie I. Luckett, widow of Theo, residence 2200 Ederville Road
      1935 Bluff Street Hotel, Mrs. Luckett
      1939 Mrs. Luckett died, buried in Kentucky
      1940 no 100 block of East Bluff Street listed

  3. This was so enjoyable. Thank you so much for compiling and sharing it with us.

Leave a Reply to Jackie Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *