History
The Fairmount/Southside Historic District is a large, early 20th-century neighborhood on the near south side of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas. The Fairmount area is set on a flat prairie, slightly higher in elevation than the surrounding area and approximately two miles south of downtown Fort Worth. Forming a rectangle of about 360 acres, the district is bounded generally by Magnolia Avenue on the north, Hemphill Street on the east, Jessamine Street on the south, and Eighth Avenue on the west. Fairmount was developed as a middle-class residential area between 1890 and 1938, with the largest concentration of houses dating from 1905 to 1920. The predominant building type is the single-family residence, with wood-frame bungalows being the most common configuration. Variations on the Four Square form are scattered throughout the district. The Southside’s grander homes are concentrated in the eastern sections of the district and reflect a variety of stylistic influences. Chase Court, a private, deed-restricted street, contains a small pocket of these finer homes within a distinct streetscape. The Fairmount/Southside district includes many early 20th-century commercial buildings, which were developed along the streetcar lines. Also included are church, school and apartment buildings, which represent the continuing development of the area as a neighborhood in the 20th century. The nominated Historic District contains 1,016 Contributing buildings, one Contributing structure, and 425 Non-contributing buildings, amounting to a ratio of 71% contributing structures.
The Fairmount/Southside Historic District is approximately two miles south of the Tarrant County Courthouse (N.R. 19701), separated from the central business district of Forth Worth by the Texas & Pacific Railroad tracks that run east to west. Further defined by the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad tracks on the west and the Fort Worth & Rio Grande Railroad tracks to the east, the Southside was a geographically distinct area. The area was developed on a prairie without any bodies of water or topographical restraints. This allowed for the establishment of a street grid system along the cardinal directions with elongated blocks running north-south, bisected by alleyways. Main Street provided the primary transportation link to downtown and streetcar lines ran along Magnolia, Fairmount, College and Hemphill streets, defining growth patterns and areas of commercial development. Growth of the Fairmount area occurred generally from north to south, and east to west, reflecting proximity to downtown and transportation routes.
Although the Fairmount/Southside district includes parts of 22 subdivisions, the core area has a consistent, unified feeling to the blocks of modest houses, set closely behind small front yards. Garages were commonly constructed at the backs of lots, accessed by a narrow drive passing between houses from the street. Although alleyways were platted, few are open or in use. Shade trees occur in places throughout the district, but there is no regular pattern of landscaping. In places the collision of subdivisions creates a jog in the street or a shift in the street axes. While variations in scale do appear within the District, the dominant impression of Fairmount is of block upon block of small houses closely spaced, set back from the street in consistent rows. Variation occurs in the distinctive details of the bungalows, giving them their individual character.
The earliest homes built in the Fairmount neighborhood reflect Victorian influences dominant in residential architecture through the turn of the century. Examples of Victorian-era architecture occur in the northern section of Fairmount between Henderson and Sixth Avenue. The Meredith Benton House (N.R. 1978) at 1730 Sixth Avenue (photo #26) is a notable example of a Queen Anne cottage. It has a pyramidal roof with intersecting gables over offset, protruding bays and is distinguished by its wraparound porch and ornate Eastlake trim. A variation on the Victorian cottage occurs at 1600 Hurley Avenue (photo #39), again using a complex hip and-gable roof but replacing the Queen Anne wraparound porch with a Greek Revival-style gallery. The original house at 1330 Sixth Avenue (photo #27) is unusually symmetrical for a Victorian house. The two hexagonal bays with peaked roofs are connected by a front gallery with ornate Eastlake-style trim.
On a grander scale, the William Reeves/John Walker House of 1908, at 2200 Hemphill Street (photo #1), is an eclectic mix of late Victorian architectural elements. The 2- 1/2 story brick house uses a modified rectangular plan with projecting bays, porches and pavilions. The paired Doric columns, grand staircases, and prominent quoins borrow from revivalist styles in vogue in the early 20th century. However, the asymmetric arrangement of gabled dormers, the corbelled chimneys and the variety of color and texture in wall and roof finishes recall Queen Anne architectural characteristics.
The move away from complex massing toward symmetry in the early 20th Century is illustrated by the popularity of the Four Square in Fairmount. This form allowed for more substantial homes than the modest bungalow, Four Squares generally being 2 to 2 1/2 stories. Good examples of the Four Square form in the Fairmount/Southside Historic District appear at 1551 West Morphy (photo #40), with Colonial Revival influences, and the house at 1904 Fairmount (photo #31), which exhibits the stocky Doric columns popular in Fort Worth houses of that era. The Eitelman House, circa 1906, at 1816 College Street (photo #13) is unusual in its early use of rough faced concrete blocks for walls and porch piers in imitation of stone, which gives the house a massive look. More ornate modifications to the Four Square form occur in the Moore House of 1908 at 1900 Sixth Avenue (photo #24) and at 1714 Henderson (photo #20). Both of these houses have prominent porticos carried up to a bay or open porch at the second story and topped with a deep pediment.
Chase Court, on the eastern edge of the Fairmount/Southside Historic District, is a notable collection of large homes built after the turn of the century, demonstrating varied architectural influences. Chase Court was developed beginning in 1906 as a private, deed-restricted street between Allen and Jefferson streets. Its eight homes are oriented inward on a private boulevard and set apart by a decorative concrete wall on Lipscomb Street to the west and pylons, which flank the entry to Chase Court. The Rogers House, circa 1920, at #14 Chase Court (photo #6) is another example of a modified Four Square form in brick with its tile roof; cast stone balustrade, and blind round-arch motif borrowing from revival styles. The spreading porch roofs, deep-bracketed eaves, and the fenestration set just beneath the cornice show Prairie School influence. The Parson House of 1921 at #1 Chase Court (photo #2) also suggests Prairie School influence in the low parapet, which runs around the terrace of the house, and in the clustering of the windows to accentuate the horizontal. The Johnson House of 1910 (N.R. 1984) at #3 Chase Court (photo #3), in contrast, borrows Renaissance Revival elements: round-head windows, balustrade and parapet at the roof line, and decorative consoles and cornice reflect a Mediterranean villa. Other Chase Court houses borrow from the Tudor and Colonial Revival styles, further illustrating the eclecticism of architectural tastes before and just after World War I.
While Fairmount includes many large homes, it was predominantly a middle-class neighborhood where the modest bungalow was the most common house form. Some of the early Fairmount houses, particularly in the northern sector of the district, show the evolution of a bungalow form merged with vestiges of a Queen Anne cottage. The Baird House, circa 1908, at 1610 Alston (photo #9) has the hip-and-gable roof and decorative shingling of a Victorian cottage, but with the later addition of a porch with a broad end-gable and boxed columns, which are common bungalow features. The Hammond-Brown House of 1910 at 1800 Alston (photo #101) is another example of the cottage/bungalow amalgam. An L-plan with intersecting gables and a wraparound porch, the porch is still an appended element, not yet sheltered beneath the main roof mass. The porch has a concrete block foundation and piers with wood half-columns in the bungalow manner. The broad end-gable uses decorative shingling and has an unusual recessed window alcove framed by Doric columns and a denticulated cornice. None of these houses yet exhibit the exposed rafter tails or eave brackets that are an identifying element of the Arts & Crafts-style bungalow.
Two examples of the typical Arts & Crafts style bungalow occur at 1704 Henderson (photo #19) and 2230 Fairmount (photo #33). Both have tripped roofs with a central tripped dormer, inset porches, broad eaves and exposed rafter tails. While these two houses illustrate the bungalow form most common in the district, Fairmount also contains more sophisticated examples of the Arts & Crafts style. An outstanding example is the bungalow at 2108 Sixth Avenue (photo #23) that uses a combination of fieldstone in the porch foundation and piers with clinker brick walls. The focus of the facade is the end-gable over the porch with open timbering, which is echoed by an offset half-timbered dormer. Narrow French windows with vertical mullions accentuate the romantic design. Similar influences can be seen in the house at 2008 Fairmount (photo #32). The offset porch gable again uses an open framework of timbers set on a foundation and piers of clinker brick. After the First World War a grander variation on the bungalow form developed, popularly known as the Airplane Bungalow. 2224 Fifth Avenue (photo #22) illustrates the visible origin of the name. The main roof mass is a long, side-gable, extending over a porte-cochere. Offset end gables extend forward and backward like wings, and a small second story rises like a cockpit from the central block of the house.
With the great growth of the Southside after 1905, apartment buildings became a significant element in the district. The Bomar Apartment of 1907 at 1507 Alston (photo #8), and the Dunn Haven apartments of 1915 at 1228 South Adams (photo #18), are both 3 stories, constructed of brick with brick galleries running the width of the facade at each level. This form is reminiscent of the "triple-deckers" common in New England and the Midwest and is unusual in this region. The Tudor Revival became a very popular style for apartment construction in Texas during the 1920s, as illustrated by the La Salle apartments of 1927 at 1420 College Street (photo #14).
Commercial buildings in the Historic District are clustered along Magnolia Avenue and Hemphill Street, the main arteries bordering the District. Pockets of commercial buildings survive along former streetcar routes, notably at College Avenue and Jefferson Street, at the corner of Fairmount and West Allen Avenues, and on the north and south ends of College Avenue. Most are simple, 1 or 2-story Commercial style brick structures with storefront windows, examples of which occur at 1615 Fifth Avenue (photo #21) and at West Allen and Fairmount Avenues (photo #28l). Magnolia Avenue has the greatest concentration of commercial development in the district because it served as the main cross-town streetcar line and continues to be a major thoroughfare. The South Side Masonic Lodge (N.R. 1985) at 1251 Magnolia Avenue is a prominent landmark of the area. It is a 5-story Classical Revival brick building with bays of round-head and broken-pediment windows separated by fluted pilasters. The Lodge, which was built in the form of a commercial building and is currently used as such, stands out beside the 1- and 2-story buildings that line Magnolia.
The Fairmount/Southside district contains quite varied examples of church and school architecture. The sanctuary building for the Magnolia Avenue Christian Church of 1909, at 950 West Magnolia Avenue (photo #17), is built in the Spanish Mission style. Constructed of brick, it has a shaped, gabled parapet and an offset square-plan belfry with a domed roof. A Jacobethan style education building at the rear of the property was added by the church in 1935. The classically influenced DeZavala School building at 1419 College Avenue (photo #15), built in 1914, is a striking 2 story structure of buff brick and cast stone using giant-order Tuscan columns. Other important institutional properties in the district include the subdued Gothic Trinity Episcopal Church at 1501 Lipscomb Street (now the Boys & Girls Club), and the Tudor Gothic style Central Methodist Church nearby at 1519 Lipscomb Street (now Southside Preservation Hall), neither of which remains in use as a church.
Modern intrusions in the Fairmount/Southside Historic District consist primarily of 1-story brick duplexes, which are scattered throughout the district. Most of the buildings determined to be Non contributing are contemporaneous with the historic period of significance in the district but have suffered inappropriate alterations. The most common alterations are the use of inappropriate siding materials, the replacement of original windows with non-wood alternatives, the replacement of porch columns with fabricated metal members, and the enclosure of porches. The edges of the District along Magnolia and Hemphill streets have deteriorated. Because these streets are used as arteries, many buildings have been lost to commercial development and the boundaries of the District were drawn to include only areas with substantial integrity. The Fairmount/Southside Historic District is a remarkably intact neighborhood, representative of the early 20thcentury streetcar suburb, with a diversity of house forms and related institutional and commercial properties.
The south side of Fort Worth was developed beginning in the 1880s as railroad and livestock related expansion brought new residents to the young city. Incorporated in 1873, Fort Worth had originally defined its boundaries as a nearly perfect square between the branches of the Trinity River on the north and Terrell Avenue on the south. The central business district comprised the northern sector of the original city, hemmed in to the north by the confluence of the Clear and West Forks of the Trinity River. This topographical barrier initially prevented the city from growing in any direction except south. In 1876 the Texas & Pacific Railroad laid its tracks running east to west near the southern boundary of Fort Worth. The 1880s brought additional railroads to the city and parallel rail lines were established running north and south on either side of the area, which came to be known as the Southside. The railroad brought an economic boom to the city and shifted the epicenter of Fort Worth to the south, causing real estate development to jump the old southern city limits.
The city’s expansion south of the Texas & Pacific tracks began about 1890. The Fairmount/Southside Historic District is a product of that rapid growth of Fort Worth, defined by the railroads that hemmed it to the north, east and west. The streetcar further accelerated development of the Southside after 1900 when establishment of the meatpacking industry created another growth spurt in Fort Worth. Although parts of the Fairmount/Southside Historic District were platted for working class housing, the area was ultimately populated by an economic mix of the middle class: workers, clerks, civil servants, teachers, business owners and professionals. As the city’s population grew from 23,000 in 1890, to 27,000 in 1900, to 75,000 in 1910, the District saw proportionate growth. The Fairmount/Southside Historic District includes parts of 22 subdivisions and takes its name from the large Fairmount subdivision in the southwest portion of the district. The densely constructed houses of the Fairmount/Southside district were commissioned by a family or, sometimes, built on speculation by contractors providing a wonderful composite of popular house types of the early 20th-century.
This area had been part of the Joshua N. Ellis and William Welch patents of the Peters Colony in 1850 and 1856, respectively. The platting of the land began as early as 1884 with the Fields-Welch Subdivision, followed by the Bellevue Hill subdivision of 1885. In 1890 the Lawn Place Addition and Fairmount subdivision were platted. Fairmount, from which the neighborhood takes its common name, is the major subdivision in the nominated district, totaling 116- acres and comprising about 25 blocks in the southwest sector. These four subdivisions, along with all or part of 18 others, established the layout of streets and lots of the District. However, it was not the platting of subdivisions that brought real development to the prairie south of downtown. Few structures were built in the area until the Southside was annexed to the city of Fort Worth in 1891. This annexation was the second official expansion of the original city since its founding in 1873 and allowed for the extension of city services to the Southside. The provision of infrastructure and fire protection was a prerequisite of residential development, but it was the extension of streetcar lines and the simultaneous boom of the Fort Worth economy that triggered the growth of the Southside in the 1890s.
E.E. Chase, president of the Fort Worth Land and Street Railway Company, was one of the first people to capitalize on the development value of the Southside. In 1887 he had purchased 79 acres of land near present-day Hemphill and Allen streets for his estate and had built a large home (no longer extant). In 1888 he began acquiring vast land holdings in the area. By 1889 streetcar lines had reached south from downtown to Pennsylvania Avenue, 7 blocks north of the District, causing a steady increase in value of the property. Chase promoted and financed development of street railway lines in the Southside until 1891 when he suffered a financial collapse and all of his land holdings were auctioned off.
Meanwhile, Fort Worth was evolving from a cow town to a major Texas city with the growth of railroad service. By 1890 Fort Worth was served by seven railroads. As a rail center, it became both a supply station for the Texas frontier and the livestock center of the state, from which cattle could be shipped to the major markets and meat packing plants of the north. The next factor in the city’s prosperity was the attraction of packing plants to Fort Worth. In 1902 the Swift and Armour Companies both opened packing plant in Niles City, north of downtown. Fort Worth experienced a second population boom and the growing streetcar system directed a great deal of the residential development to the Southside. By 1919 the Southside’s five streetcar lines provided extensive mass transit service to the Fairmount neighborhood. Tracks extended south from downtown along the western edge of the district, down the middle of the District on Henderson, on College Avenue in the eastern sector, and along Hemphill Street at the eastern boundary of the District. Cross-town streetcar lines serviced West Magnolia, the northern boundary of the District.
The building of houses in the Fairmount area accelerated after 1905. The Fairmount Land Company and other developers were actively marketing lots to prospective homeowners. Some of the subdivisions, including Fairmount, were platted with 25-foot-wide lots. This suggests that the neighborhood was originally conceived as a working class area. Increasingly, however, the lots were sold in pairs and put together to build bungalows on 50-foot lots. The typical home in the Fairmount/Southside District was built on contract to the property owner to standard designs but without an architect’s involvement. Variation occurred in detailing and finishes specified by the owner or improvised by the carpenter. Indeed, the significance of the Fairmount/Southside district is in its collection of quality, modest residences.
A few residents of the Fairmount/Southside Historic District were employed with the railroads or stockyards, but most early residents of Fairmount were middle class tradesmen and downtown office workers. A review of the city directories of the early 20th century shows that bank presidents and business leaders were also represented, reflecting an economically diverse neighborhood. The Southside contained a significant Jewish community clustered in the eastern sector of the present District among the larger homes along Hemphill. The original synagogue and Jewish cemetery in Fort Worth were in the Southside, although outside of the Southside/Fairmount Historic District. Blacks in the Southside of Fort Worth were generally segregated east of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad tracks, about a mile from the District. Many of the planned subdivisions established in the early 20th century explicitly prohibited the sale or leasing of property to blacks.
At the upper end of the Fairmount/Southside economic spectrum were the residents of Chase Court. This private street was developed, beginning in 1906, on a portion of the estate previously owned by E.E. Chase. This one-block-long, deed-restricted enclave was the earliest documented subdivision in Fort Worth that attempted to establish a "private place" using restrictions to maintain the quality of the development. The substantial homes on Chase Court were architecturally designed for wealthy residents. These included prominent Fort Worth. Citizens Edward V. Parsons, president of Anaonian Petroleum Company, noted physician Dr. Clay Johnson, and E.M. Rogers, the president of a large Fort Worth grain company.
An interesting aspect of the Fairmount/Southside Historic District is the way it has appeared to develop almost as a small town unto itself. The bounding of the neighborhood by railroad tracks and major thoroughfares contributed to the sense of a distinct area. The boundaries of the District approximate the lines of the Eighth Ward of Fort Worth, so historically the neighborhood had a distinct political identity as well. A concentration of schools and churches was built within the nominated district to serve the population of the Southside. In 1909 a fire gutted a 20- square-block area eight blocks north of the nominated district containing the core of the Southside’s l9th-century development. Although the fire occurred outside of the District, it further shifted the commercial and institutional focus of the Southside, along with its population, to the south into the Fairmount/Southside district. In addition, some of the remaining homes in that area were moved into Fairmount/Southside.
The Fairmount/Southside Historic District was a choice neighborhood for the middle and upper middle classes prior to World War I, but after the war the prestigious new suburbs in outlying areas attracted those who could afford them. The growing dominance of the automobile contributed to the viability of these suburbs. Even after the era of the streetcar had ended about 1940, the Southside was readily accessible from downtown Fort Worth via a system of underpasses built between 1929 and 1937 to carry auto traffic beneath the Texas & Pacific Railroad tracks. Although the Fairmount area remained a stable, middle-class neighborhood throughout the depression years of the 1930s, conditions in the District declined following World War II. During that war a number of the larger homes were converted to multi-family residences. Many longtime residents had left the area as other parts of town became more fashionable. The Jewish community shifted to the southwestern sector of Fort Worth. Some of the departing families retained ownership of houses in the district, utilizing them as rental property. By the l950s and 1960s the resident population had grown older and was joined by a steadily increasing number of low-income residents. By the 1970s the ethnic mix had changed as well, with the primarily Anglo, long-time residents joined by Hispanic and Asian families. The expansion of Harris Hospital and the surrounding medical complex has encroached on the District at its northwest corner. Since the late 1970s a slow movement has begun to rehabilitate homes and commercial buildings in the District, most notably along the business corridor of Magnolia Avenue. At the same time, a strong neighborhood association is working to provide stability and to perpetuate rehabilitation work by individual homeowners.
Beginning at the center line of Magnolia Avenue and Hurley Avenue, continue south to the north property line of 1613 Hurley, continue west to the rear alley, thence following the alley behind lots facing east on Hurley to the center line of Jessamine Street, thence east on Jessamine to the alley behind lots facing west on Lipscomb Street, thence to the rear property line of 801 Powell Avenue, continue east along the rear property line of 717 Powell Avenue, thence north to the center line of Powell Avenue, thence west of Powell Avenue to the east side of the ally on the east side of Lipscomb Street, thence north to the southwest corner of 2200 Hemphill Street, follow the south property line to the center line of Hemphill Street, thence north along the center line at Hemphill Street across Hawthorne Avenue to the alley between Baltimore Avenue and Arlington Avenue, thence north along the center line of Travis Avenue where its intersects with the alley between Lipscomb and Hemphill Streets, thence to the east following the rear property line of 803 Jefferson Street to the center line of Hemphill Street, thence north to the center line of Allen Street, thence west to the alley between Lipscomb and Hemphill Streets, thence north along the alley to the center line of Myrtle Street, thence continue north along Travis Avenue to the intersection of Morphy Street, thence west to the intersection of the center line of Lipscomb Street, thence north to the intersection of Magnolia Avenue, thence west along the center line of Magnolia Avenue to the intersection of Alston Street, thence north to the rear property line of 950 Magnolia Avenue, thence west to the intersection of College Street, thence south along the center line of College Street to the intersection of Magnolia Avenue, thence west along the center line of Magnolia Avenue to the intersection of Adams Street, thence north to the north property line of 1228 Henderson Street to the intersection of Fifth Avenue, thence south along the center line of Fifth Avenue to the intersection of Magnolia Avenue, thence west along the center line of Magnolia Avenue to the beginning.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FILE IN THE NATIONAL REGISTER
FILE SOURCE IS TEXAS HISTORICAL COMMISSION