Posts under ‘Vintage Buildings & Preservation’

Over the weekend, I took my photographic equipment to the Near Southside and spent some time wandering around taking HDR photos of things. For the uninitiated, HDR photography involves taking multiple photos of a subject at different exposures, then blending the exposures together on a computer to create an image with a much higher [...]

Here’s a real urban pioneer - this industrial building from 1926 on the long-beleaguered East Lancaster near downtown has been converted to residential loft apartments and is now leasing. The Lancaster Lofts have units ranging from 767 square feet to 1,000 square feet, with rents ranging between $700 and $900 per month. The [...]

As noted yesterday, over around Texas Wesleyan the TownSite Company has acquired most of downtown Polytechnic Heights and is in the process of restoring the buildings there. Here are some photos I took of the restoration progress over the weekend. Looks to be a cool project.

I’ve got photos coming up for tomorrow, but as a teaser - I recently took a trip down East Rosedale to the Polytechnic Heights old downtown area surrounding Texas Wesleyan, and was really amazed to see what’s going on. Local development company TownSite has acquired pretty much the entirety of the old downtown Poly [...]

XTO Energy continues their restoration of 714 Main to its original appearance - here, you see the building’s original facade, exposed after the removal of two modernizations.

Wagner Oil’s new Caceria Building is really looking like a gem. They’ve clearly spent a lot of time and money on the building’s beautiful detail work. The Caceria Building is a new mixed-use retail/office building.

Next door at 500 Commerce (also owned by Wagner Oil), the building’s ground floor renovations are nearly complete - [...]

The restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral continues, and is presumably leading up to the finishing touch of the project - the completion of the church’s twin steeples, planned but never built.

Developer Eddie Vanston is moving right along with his restoration and redevelopment of the former Sawyer Grocery Store buildings on South Main into ground-floor retail with apartments on the second floor. As seen above, the older building on the corner is nearing completion.

The slightly newer building next door is right behind it. The [...]

As I noted in a previous post, one of the items up for review by the Downtown Design Review Board this month was a proposal to light the top of the Texas & Pacific station/lofts. The proposed design would have seen the four domes at the roof’s corners and the parapet walls between them [...]

I’ve reported before on the sad state of Heritage Park, and the lack of any real information from the city on just what is going on with this neglected little bit of space on the Trinity Bluff. After a recent walk back to the park, I’m sad to say that nothing much has changed. [...]

Vintage photo scan by Pete Charlton, provided by Andy Nold
In late 1927, the North Texas Traction Company took delivery of ten of what you see in the vintage photo above - new 1928 Birney Safety Cars. Over the last 80 years, one of these streetcars has led quite the life - and now, thanks [...]

Built in 1889, the Reilly-Lehane House on Samuels Avenue on the Trinity Bluffs is a modestly-scaled Victorian that has a remarkable level of original trim and finish. The subject of years-long restoration work by its owners, the home is now up for sale - and developers are knocking at the door.
This Victorian-era house in [...]

I took these photos of Thistle Hill at twilight yesterday evening, and thought I’d share with you all. Click the photo for a bigger view.

The restoration and redevelopment of the Sawyer Grocery buildings on South Main has really brightened up that part of town, and work has been steadily progressing. As you can see, the exteriors are getting to be fairly complete, while significant progress inside can be seen through the windows compared to the progress I saw [...]

Continuing the series on the homes of the most recent Fairmount home tour, today’s entry takes a look the beautiful Reeves home. Built in 1920, it is a Craftsman bungalow which is in remarkable, mostly unrestored condition. As shown above, the exterior features a large front porch, twin symmetrical gables and matching twin [...]

Today’s Urban Home Tour entry takes us to one of Fort Worth’s most unique urban residences - the Victory Arts Center in the Near Southside.
Built in 1909 as Our Lady Of Victory Academy, the building was designed by legendary local architectural firm Sanguinet & Staats. Marshall Sanguinet and Carl Staats were remarkably talented architects, [...]

Sometimes, architectural history resembles archaeology or geology, and you get a rare glimpse into multiple strata of history. This is one of those times.
XTO Energy, the natural gas company that has been buying historic downtown buildings for some time, has now begun another of their celebrated historic restoration projects. The company has previously [...]

At last, the return of our Urban Home Tour series! I’ve got some cool stuff in store for this series. Today’s entry takes us downtown to the Kress Building Lofts.
Built in 1936 as the home of (you guessed it) the Kress five & dime store, the Kress Building has served a variety of [...]

Way back on May 15, 2007, I reported on the sale of the Shelton Building, 901 Houston Street, to a local real estate group. Indications were that Kinko’s would remain on the ground floor, but the vacant upper floors would be renovated for office or residential use.
Well, I don’t have an update on the [...]

Everybody say hello to the newest Fort Worthology staffer Stephanie Scarborough. This article makes her debut appearance on Fort Worthology.
Last summer, it was reported that plans had been put in place to convert the historic T&P Warehouse on Lancaster into apartments. Months passed and nothing happened. Then in February, the ever deteriorating warehouse made [...]

As I’ve reported not long ago, the old Sawyer Grocery Store buildings on South Main are now under restoration by local developer Eddie Vanston. Eddie was kind enough to take me on a walkthrough of the Sawyer buildings and show the progress that has been made thus far. Afterwards, I got an exclusive [...]

The two run-down buildings you see above are the remains of the old Sawyer Grocery Store on South Main. The red brick portion on the left was built in 1905, and the buff brick portion on the right was built in 1910. Henry E. Sawyer operated a grocery store here from around 1888 [...]

If you’ve been reading Fort Worthology for a while, you’re probably familiar with the saga of the old Knights of Pythias building in the Hillside neighborhood on downtown’s east side. For the uninitiated, though, here’s the summary:
The building, built in 1925, was threatened with demolition back in June by its then-current owners. As [...]

It’s official now - the work being done on the small, lovely St. Patrick’s Cathedral in downtown on Throckmorton is going to be quite significant. The building’s exterior is getting restored back to its original appearance (its limestone has been painted white for a long time), but even more noteworthy is that the building’s [...]

Finally, after sitting vacant for so long, and after both a condo conversion and office redevelopment fell through, the former Transport Life Building at 714 Main is getting some attention. The building’s new owners, XTO Energy, have begun carrying out work on the inside, removing the previous abandoned redevelopment debris in preparation for their [...]