Preserving Fort Worth

 

When I was a kid, we went to movies at the Piccadilly Theatre, some three blocks from the house. It was a grand, elaborate place with gilded columns and a heavy velvet curtain on the stage, chandeliers, and, if I remember correctly, gilt-edged panels painted into rich, red walls. The lobby, of course, was equally spectacular, and I can tell you from personal observation that even the ceiling was elaborate. I know because to this day I remember spending all of Captain from Castile staring at the ceiling to avoid the violence onscreen. I was a wimpy kid.

That’s what movie theaters were like in the forties—single screen and fancy. Fort Worth had its share, including the Parkway on Eighth (long gone), the Isis on North Main (still in use) and the Berry on Hemphill. But now the city has issued a demolition permit for the Berry, deteriorated (and trashed by vandals) until it would be prohibitive to restore it. The land will become a free clinic for uninsured in the neighborhood, which is all well and good—except we are losing another landmark.

I’m no preservation expert. Just someone who values the history represented by older buildings, but it seems to me Fort Worth finds the tear-down decision easier than restoration. Once a grand row of cattleman’s mansions lined what is now Summit Avenue and was once Hill Street. The only remaining is Thistle Hill, restored to its Georgian Revival glory and open for visitors and events by an intense public effort. For more on the now-gone mansions, read Fort Worth’s Quality Hill by Brenda McClurkin. You’ll mourn the history we’ve lost.

Another bit of architectural history is under consideration by the city: the Community Art Center, former home of the Museum of Modern Art, now housing gallery spaces, studios, nonprofit offices, and the Wm. Edrington Scott Theatre. Alternative uses for the building are being considered, but apparently the cost to renovate will be as great as the cost to demolish and rebuild. As far as I know, the city has not decided yet, though preservationists are working to save the building.

Not my picture; not Fort Worth.
But you get the look-alike idea.

All the history we have lost and continue to lose brings me to the topic of stealth houses. It’s not unrelated that I cannot have a stove in my cottage kitchen—I can have anything that plugs in, so I cook with a hot plate and a toaster oven. That zoning restriction if part of the TCU Overlay designed to control student rentals in the neighborhoods around the university. But it’s not renovated servants’ quarters like mine that are the big problem: it’s stealth dorms, houses with as many as ten bedrooms and one common kitchen. To combat this, the city has passed laws for single-family neighborhoods that no more than five unrelated people may occupy a single housekeeping unit. The trouble is the law is not heavily enforced. One friend attended a neighborhood meeting after a stealth dorm went in amidst their single-family homes. She found out you cannot even lodge a protest until the law is broken by too many unrelated students moving in. By then, the battle is lost, the single family home demolished, the stealth dorm a reality.

Neighbors around TCU object to the stealth dorms because they bring a raft of problems—parking, traffic, garbage, noisy parties, loss of green space, etc. My objection is as much to history lost as to the deterioration of neighborhoods that high-density buildings inevitably bring. To build these structures, developers, looking for a quick profit, tear down single-family homes, some dating back to the 1920s, many bungalows built post-WWII. In replacing those individual homes, developers replace houses of distinctive and interesting architecture with blocks of high-density, look-alike structures. We are losing the whole history of neighborhoods, as most of us knew them as children. A chunk of city life, from say the early fifties to the present, is being wiped out. In one neighborhood of 160 properties, only sixty-three single-family units are now owner occupied.

Granted, the city does not make these individual decisions—developers offer homeowners deals they simply can’t resist. But I remain convinced the city could do more to curtail the flood of stealth homes.

Like most cities, Fort Worth has an organization dedicated to preservation: Historic Fort Worth. I would never want to discount their efforts and their successes. I just wish for a more conservation minded—and less profit-oriented—attitude from the city. Once history is gone, it cannot be built again. And stealth dorms are generally ugly.