Posts under ‘Vintage Buildings & Preservation’

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 [...]

The Dallas Business Journal is reporting that the Commerce Building (or what history buffs prefer to call the Fair Building) and the Oil & Gas Building on 7th have been sold to a private New York-based investing firm, RYLB FW Properties. The firm is said to be planning a “major renovation.”
Details were not given, [...]

Previously, all I’ve had to show you of the planned T&P Warehouse project was a very blurry shot of the project’s three renderings, but now I’m able to show each of the renderings in much greater clarity. Click the images for a bigger view:

The renderings show that not only would the warehouse itself be [...]

Looks like things are moving right along with the old Knights of Pythias building on the east side of downtown. For the uninitiated, this little building - a historic structure, being an African-American hall from back when the Knights were segregated - was slated for demolition, as we reported first, breaking the story back [...]

We reported earlier on the redevelopment of the old Sawyer Grocery buildings on South Main getting underway, and here’s a little peek at their progress. Some work has been done uncovering the ground floors of the buildings, but most of the work going on right now is inside - looking up through the windows [...]

We have learned that the Crestwood Place Apartments, on White Settlement Road across from the Monticello neighborhood west of downtown, will be demolished for the construction of about 20 large single family homes. This is a shame - the apartments date from the ’30s and are a beautiful addition to this area of town. [...]

Huh.
XTO Energy has bought the former Transport Life Insurance Co. building at Seventh and Main streets, just a couple of weeks after a real estate group detailed plans to redevelop the 24-story building for tenant office space.
So, the project we reported on earlier that would reopen the building as a multi-tenant office tower has been [...]

This is a project I’ve been looking forward to for some time. The old Sawyer Grocery Store on South Main, near the Axis club, is at last getting restored and redeveloped. Work is underway now on the two buildings to convert them to apartments over retail.
Here is a recent photo - they actually look *better* [...]

Looks like the SoDo name will be getting more public attention, as the now-departed Branding Iron Grill on Houston Street is being replaced by the SoDo Grill.
Meanwhile, across the street, Zambrano nears completion, and is now sporting a nifty sidewalk dining area.

Wandering around the city on Sunday, I grabbed shots of two very nifty vintage homes, both in Monticello in the Cultural District. The first is an honest-to-goodness Googie home, complete with arched awnings out front and a zigzag awning out back. Great Mid Century Modern look here:

What’s weird is that I entered the [...]

We reported on the beginnings of this deal back in March, and today it looks like it’s been made official - the Texas & Pacific Warehouse is getting redeveloped. Developer Cleopatra Investments and the city have reached a deal to remake the historic structure into 260 apartments or condos with ground-floor retail. Interestingly, [...]

One favorite building that I completely forgot to put on my list:

The Ashton Hotel (left side of photo), the gorgeous Italiante building from 1915 on Main Street. A former home of the Fort Worth Club, the building went through several modernizations over the years before being painstakingly restored to become the Ashton Hotel, a [...]