Jan 27, 2009
Restoring Civitas – David M. Schwarz Architects & Downtown Fort Worth
By: Kevin Buchanan
Thought I’d share this video, which is a part of the excellent online exhibit For People and Places: The Work of David M. Schwarz Architects, created by the National Building Museum and the Institute for Classical Architecture and Classical America. This video, “Restoring Civitas,” talks about the revitalization of Downtown Fort Worth over the years, starting with the infamous “Gruen Plan” of the ’50s, and transitioning to the contextual, traditional urbanism renewal that Schwarz and his firm have been guiding since the ’80s. Included are archive footage of the Gruen Plan, interviews with Schwarz and his partners along with Ed Bass, discussions of revitalization techniques, and a bit about building Sundance West, built in 1988 as the first housing in Downtown since World War II and a real unknown in terms of success before its construction. For the curious, especially for those who aren’t from Fort Worth that might be joining us from Streetsblog and the Streetsblog Network, some of the other Schwarz projects shown in the video include the Fort Worth Central Library, the Maddox Muse Center, the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall, the Sid Richardson Museum, the Tarrant County Family Law Center, the Sundance East block, the Chase Bank Building, and the redevelopment of the former Sanger Brothers department store into the Sanger Lofts. The web site for Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. is dfwi.org, and the site for the Sundance Square district is sundancesquare.com.
There are many more videos, and lots of photos and text descriptions, online at the exhibit’s site, forpeopleandplaces.org. Any fan of traditional architecture and traditional urbanism ought to check out this exhibit of Schwarz’s work, which also has features on projects from Washington, D. C., the Yale campus, and others in addition to Downtown Fort Worth.
Very nice clip. Fort Worth is very fortunate to have folks with such vision (and cash) who care about the city and its inhabitants. I think downtown Fort Worth is the most interesting and thoughtful urban district in Texas and one of the best in the country. It took a lot of patience, time, money, and people who care about the long term viability of their hometown to bring it to this point. Thanks FortWorthology for posting this…
I absolutely agree with Ramjet’s post. Downtown Fort Worth was the heart and soul of Fort Worth’s urban/chic/historic revival over the past quarter-century, and the strides we’ve taken as a community, with the great leaders and developers we’ve been blessed to have take part in it over the course of the years, it’s truly a wonder of what a city can do. I would never venture over to downtown Dallas except to go to a Mavericks’ game. Why would I for anything else? Basically everything is right here in our own ever-evolving slice of downtown paradise.
I really can appreciate Mr Bass’ statement: “these are not [buildings] that are intended to impress architects, these are buildings that are intended to attract people…”. That really gets to the heart of solving the problem.
[...] features a video, “Restoring Civitas,” produced by David M. Schwart Architects about Fort Worth’s Urban Development history. The story of how the Gruen plan was adopted by “a blue ribbon panel” that nevertheless [...]