The TownSite Co. acquired this building not long ago when it bought what is usually known as the former Motheral Printing site in the Near Southside. TownSite is making plans at the 11-acre assemblage of buildings and vacant lots centered around the intersection of South Main & Pennsylvania for a mixed-use development on the site.

One of the buildings on the property is shown here – though most of you probably won’t recognize it. Until very recently, the building wore the results of a terrible renovation from the ’60s or ’70s – covered in rough concrete panels and gold metal grates. There was little to suggest what lay underneath.

Well, TownSite’s been removing the concrete and metal, and has revealed the building’s original form – a classic red brick loft-style building that was once a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

TownSite’s Phillip Poole shared with me that the company is stripping the modernized facade off as they study the block’s potential for various uses through redevelopment. Phillip was also kind enough to send me these two photos he acquired showing the building during its previous life as the Coca-Cola plant.

Great to see this building getting a chance to be reborn after so much neglect. The potential is here on the Motheral site for a really great mixed-use development and I look forward to seeing more of TownSite’s plans. A big thank you to Phillip Poole for providing the historic photos and information on the project.

(Also a thank you to Eddie Vanston for letting me know that work had begun at the site!)

I’ve been noticing a new building rising on Rogers Road between Collinsworth and Riverfront (near University Park Village), and from the method of construction I figured it was a new apartment development. There hasn’t been any sort of information at the construction site as to what was going on, and I haven’t heard anything about it in the various development circles either.

Well, finally, I’ve got the scoop. The new development is called Gallery 1701, and it’s a new apartment development by none other than Lincoln Apartments. While the building’s not quite finished yet, the leasing office is open, so if you’re curious you can stop by 1701 Rogers Road and check it out. I’ll grab a construction shot soon.

The fine folks at the Fort Worth Business Press have been busy on the streetcar front lately – there are two new articles, one from Leslie Wimmer and one from John-Laurent Tronche. Leslie’s article reports on the latest news to come out of the city’s streetcar study committee. The group has settled on the modern Skoda cars like the ones used in Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle (an example of which can be seen in the above photo from Portland), and has been discussing routes. Townsite Co.’s Phillip Poole was one of the people who spoke to Leslie.

“We’ve isolated basically five or six routes that would start in the Downtown hub,” Poole said. At the meeting “we went over criteria such as how much density there is, where the development opportunities were, what routes would be the most economically viable in terms of both fares and which ones would create the most energy.

“One would go into the Medical District, one would go into the Cultural District, another route would come off of the one in Fort Worth South and go to Polytechnic either on Rosedale or on Lancaster, and one that would come, after the completion of the Trinity River Vision, to the North Side to the Stockyards,” Poole said. “The routes would come from the hub with radial arms that go out into where our urban villages are, where our big districts are: the Cultural District, Hospital District, Stockyards, and then one to Texas Wesleyan or the Lancaster Corridor.”

The group is also talking about color-coding the paint schemes of the streetcars to help identify their destinations.

One idea for the color aesthetic of the streetcars would be to create a color-coded system that goes along with signs in the city directing traffic to cultural areas, such as the green Cultural District signs, Poole said.

“My company designed a sign system in the districts, the Cultural District has green signs and Downtown has blue, and one thing we discussed would be for each of those lines to have a distinct color so the green line might go to the Cultural District,” Poole said. “The thing is that some of those cars would start in one loop and wind up in another, so you have to be careful if you color code not to cause confusion.”

The other article, by John-Laurent Tronche, takes a historical perspective on things. One of the people interviewed was North Texas Historic Transportation’s Andy Nold.

Streetcar proponents argue the transportation’s reintroduction could bring residents back to the central city and spur business growth around potential stops. Depressed areas once served by the streetcar but now cut off, such as Como, East Side and, to some extent, the Near Southside, also could accelerate redevelopment efforts.

“We once were a leader and now we’re playing catch-up,” Nold said.

View Larger Map

A tip of the hat to The Recyclican, who noticed this Star-Telegram article by John Austin. XTO Energy is making plans for a new building at 7th & Calhoun, across the street from the historic Binyon O’Keefe warehouse they’re restoring.

The $38 million building would occupy the block bounded by Seventh, Jones, Calhoun and Eighth streets. In 2007, XTO bought the site, once considered for a 60-story tower, as a parking lot for employees who work in the former Binyon-O’Keefe warehouse.

Plans call for a subterranean floor for IT personnel, ground-floor offices topped with six levels of parking, then another floor of offices at what Brennan called the penthouse level.

Bob Ayers, a Hahnfeld Hoffer Stanford principal, said the building would duplicate some of the architectural details of the nearby warehouse, using brick and cast-stone detailing.

In other words, it sounds like a structure very similar to 500 Commerce in Sundance Square. I look forward to hearing more about the building and seeing a rendering.

With the Weekly’s Best of 2008 issue now out and about, I must confess – this one puzzles me. Of all the new architecture in Fort Worth, Cantey Hangar Plaza is the best?

I get that the Weekly will never get David M. Schwarz, because they do tend to skew pretty modernist in their architecture critique. Which is fine – I’m more than happy to take up the slack in promoting traditional architecture. Though Schwarz’s new Carnegie Building in Sundance Square is turning out to be quite beautiful and is a great urban fabric building, and I’d be tempted to give the award to it. Anyway, putting aside that, I just can’t get behind Cantey Hangar as the recipient of any award.

The Weekly themselves describes the building as “confounding,” and as so confusing that “you’ll wonder where in hell the entrance is.” Both would seem to be points against the building in my point of view. Cantey Hangar’s not an especially bad building, but it’s not much of a contributor to the streetscape, either. It strikes me as dull as dishwater and completely unremarkable, though I do like the black bricks ringing its base. Its street interaction is basically the equivalent of the building going “meh.” There’s no real detail for the eye to enjoy as you pass by, and it’s not especially pleasant with its expanses of glass broken by plain concrete bands. I suppose it fits in between the just-short-of-cool 500 West 7th and the absolutely unredeemably terrible Burnett Plaza on either side of it, but I ask – why must new development around Burnett Park take the form of more concrete slabs? Inspiration ought to come instead from the gorgeous Electric Building, Neil P. Anderson Building, and U. S. Courthouse on the other side of the park. The area’s already overwhelmed with the deadening hand of modernism. Back in the ’60s, when 500 West 7th was the only modernist structure at the park and the Medical Arts Building was still standing, SOM’s office building would have been an interesting contrast. Now, Burnett Plaza smothers the place and traditional styles ought to be fighting back to retake the area from the concrete & glass boys.

But I digress. Another oddity – the Weekly remarks that Cantey Hangar has space for ground-level retail. I’m not sure that’s actually true – it was a subject of curiosity during the building’s construction and I never got a straight answer. If true, though, I find the next comment from the Weekly a little off-putting: “for what reason, we’ll never know.” I know the Weekly and I never see eye-to-eye on architecture, but I also know there are people there who know why urban buildings ought to have ground-level retail. There are plenty of reasons it should have ground-level retail from an urbanity standpoint.

So, yeah, Cantey Hangar seems an odd choice to me. Much better in my opinion is the Caceria Building, also a product of Gideon Toal (who designed Cantey Hangar), a beautiful little traditional-style structure nearly finished at 5th & Commerce. It faces the same problem as Schwarz’s buildings, though, in that the Weekly most likely wouldn’t go for its traditional design. If we’re limited to more modernist buildings, I’d have preferred to see the award go to One Museum Place at 7th & Bailey. One Museum Place is a lot more interesting to look at than Cantey Hangar, with its varied facades of glass, brick, and granite. It occupies a similarly odd-shaped lot but does so with more elegance and grace. And it’s got much better street interaction, with several friendly storefronts and a plaza out front.

Anthony? I know you’re reading this. Thoughts?

To be perfectly frank, I’m floored. Fort Worthology has won the Readers’ Choice award for Best Blog in Fort Worth in the new Fort Worth Weekly Best of 2008 issue.

We’re coming up on the second anniversary of Fort Worthology – the first post is from October 23rd, 2006. I’m really quite honored and grateful that in that time, this humble little architecture & urbanism nerdery revue I put on has become as big as it is. I am incredibly honored that you, the people who read this site, have spoken and given Fort Worthology the honor of this award. It means an awful lot to me, and I am truly, truly grateful.

Thank you.

Phase one of SoSeven’s Shops & Lofts is progressing steadily. With construction having neared completion on the first two buildings, which will be office space over retail, most work is concentrated on the third and fourth buildings, which will be condos over retail. Here, the condo/retail building fronting 7th rises alongside the first office/retail building.

Looking down through the path between the two condos buildings towards the offices.

The other condo/retail building of phase one. These buildings sit over an underground parking structure.

We took a look at Museum Place yesterday, and now it’s time for the West 7th development by Cypress Equities down the street. Framing should be getting underway shortly for the apartments above the retail here in these two buildings on either side of Crockett Street. The buildings should top out at 5 stories (one story of concrete + four stories of wood framing).

On the project’s northeast block, the office building at 7th & Foch is getting some facade work done. Around it, another parking garage is rising, and the buildings that will house the fitness club, Lucky Strike Lanes, and Movie Tavern are being framed as well.

Across the street, the Sovereign Bank is making progress as well, with some facade and glass being installed.

Finally took the time away from remodeling to get some construction photos. Here’s an update on the progress at Museum Place in the Cultural District. One Museum Place, the big retail/office/condo building, is very nearly complete, as seen in the photo above. The last bits of glass and such are going up now, and there’s also now an alcohol license notice in the corner retail space for Eddie V.’s Edgewater Grill.

Across the street, the Flatiron-style retail/office building is progressing nicely as well. Almost the entire slanted south side of the building is complete, and work on that side’s ground floor is going now as well. The building’s other two sides, which looked like some sort of black paneling in earlier renderings, are actually dark brick, as seen below in the photo of the building’s north side:

As more of Museum Place moves ahead, I still think it’s my favorite of the big three 7th Street developments. There are a lot of oddly-shaped blocks here and the project is filling them in interesting ways, and thus far I like the architecture of the project better than the other two. I look forward to seeing more progress on the project – roadwork and site prep continue on the rest of the project’s blocks.

Web site: museumplace.com
Condo sales web site: museumplaceliving.com

In celebration of the firm’s 30 year history, the portfolio of David M. Schwarz is now the subject of an online exhibition created by Dean Sakamoto Architects and sponsored by the National Building Museum, the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America, and the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. For People and Places: The Work of David M. Schwarz Architects is an examination of 30 Schwarz projects that have positively affected the built environment. Through videos, photos, and renderings, projects such as Bass Performance Hall, the Yale Environmental Sciences Center, the Chase Building, and more are explored, showing the ways in which Schwarz’s “liberal traditionalism” creates spaces and architecture which enhance the public realm.

For the further curious, there are a couple of books on Schwarz. Due for reprinting on October 25 is David M. Schwarz/Architectural Services which chronicles the firm’s built projects. The book was written by Bradford McKee with a preface by Vincent Scully and an introduction by Robert A. M. Stern. A new book, David M. Schwarz Architects: 2002–2008, by Robert L. Miller, is also out.