Fort Worth has a lot of fantastic architecture. From the Art Deco beauty of the Sinclair Building and T&P, to the monumental grace of the Tarrant County Courthouse, to the drama of Phillip Johnson’s Water Gardens, to the restrained masterpieces that are the Kimbell and the Modern, we’ve definitely earned a spot as an architecture lover’s destination.

Nobody’s perfect, though, and not all of Fort Worth’s buildings are carved from gilded baby lions and doves. We’ve got enough bad architecture to make finding the worst a worthwhile endeavor – so that’s what I did. This being Fort Worthology, I immediately wrote off the suburbs, most of the architecture of which is, frankly, rubbish. Too easy, and beyond the interests of this blog besides. No, I’d stick to urban Fort Worth.

I had a list in mind already. The most noticeable, by far, is 1983′s Burnett Plaza (though the building’s rather obviously a late ’70s design), the city’s tallest building. A crushing concrete slab at the west end of Burnett Park, Burnett Plaza exists as two buildings in one. Its west face features zigzagging elevator cores that recall only the finest in Soviet Brutalist sculpture, while its east facade is a perfect architectural example of “phoning it in” – a series of rectangular concrete grid lines framing black tinted windows, which simultaneously rips off SOM’s 500 West 7th across the street while failing to improve on it at all. Strike Two comes when you realize that all of Burnett Plaza’s retail is in its basement. Nothing is more friendly to passers by than hidden retail sealed off from natural light. Another black mark is the building’s elevator overrun – have you ever noticed that the top half of that little pillbox atop the tower is a different color than the bottom half? Apparently, the lighter half was added when one of the Bass towers threatened to take Burnett Plaza’s height crown in the early ’80s. This little extra bit of concrete pushed it to #1, but has never matched quite right. To round out the list of reasons to loathe Burnett Plaza, a gorgeous early Fort Worth landmark tower, the Medical Arts Building, was demolished needlessly to build it.

Still, though, Burnett Plaza’s not quite bad enough. I mean, it’s still better than most things of that era in downtown Dallas, so we must keep looking. My second choice would be Fort Worth’s City Hall, a depressing concrete bunker from the ’70s. Ever been to a college campus that was really obviously from the ’70s? Well, Fort Worth City Hall was built with the plans for the student center. It is without any redeeming features, save one: it’s difficult to get a good look at, because of all the trees around it.

I almost settled on the AT&T Building as our ugliest. Here’s a structure that started out as an attractive late 1800s building, but is now (thanks to a series of ever-worsening additions, the latest of which dates from – drumroll please – the ’70s) a bizarre, half-windowless hodgepodge of wrongness. Bonus points go to it for its new, completely mistmatched cheerful & colorful Web 2.0 AT&T logo, which only adds to the comedy. However, the AT&T Building’s about to get blocked by the Omni Hotel, so fortunately it won’t be so prominent.

Then, it hit me. It was obvious! Fort Worth, meet your ugliest building – I give you the Texas Workforce Commission Building!

Just look at that! Thrill to its interesting facade! Swoon over its elegant fenestration! Behold its masterful shaping and massing!

Let’s admire the details, shall we?

This is truly brilliant urban design, here. Nothing is more friendly to a pedestrian than a building whose mere appearance forces you to get a tetanus shot. Not to mention this very elegantly disguised parking structure. Let’s zoom in a bit.

So warm and welcoming!

My, that’s friendly street interaction.

If you love blank, featureless concrete, have I got a building for you!

Those are the windows, believe it or not. Natural light is overrated anyway!

Here’s a question: are tiny, ridiculous slit windows better than no windows?

A building this monumental needs a truly grand entrance, and here it is. Water stains and weeds included!

The front view is perhaps the building’s best. Blank brick and concrete are great tools to make pedestrians feel welcome.

So there you have it, Fort Worth. I’m declaring the Texas Workforce Commission Building to be the ugliest building in the city. Interestingly, everything on my list has one thing in common – they’re all products of the ’70s. What happened to architecture then? I suppose that, since everybody was convinced that they’d spend the future on communes in California growing hemp and watching Hee-Haw while the rest of the planet was consumed by a new Ice Age and zombies roamed the cities and Charleton Heston went around eating food made from people, they didn’t need to worry about such trivial things as “good architecture.”