The Growth of a City

Our second on-site visit of the day was to the Fire Station No. 1 Museum in downtown Fort Worth. Geoff Reiner and Bill Peterson from Jacobs Engineering met us on location to give us an overview of how Fort Worth became the city that it is now. Fire Station No. 1 is a museum that traces the city's development from its beginning as a frontier outpost, through its youth as a cattle town, to the current city it is now. The museum was created by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and is housed in the historic Fire Station building which was built in 1907 at the corner of Second and Commerce streets. The exhibit was originally opened in 1984 as part of the Texas Sesquicentennial Celebration and has been updated twice since. The Fire Station #1 building is also a valuable piece of Fort Worth's history on its own. It was the site of the original city hall which held the mayor's office and other city offices on the second floor.

As seen in the photo, Fort Worth first began as an outpost, grew into a small cattle town, then into a fully developed city and economic hub of Texas. When settlers first came to the area there was nothing here but dust and very hot weather but they were very smart about building to the area's natural limitations. The first buildings were very tall to allow heat to rise, they had large overhangs to shield people from the sun, they were built facing away from the Western sun when it would be the hottest, and they had large windows on the shaded sides of the structures to assist in ventilation. This style of construction shows that, even in the beginning, people were thinking about easy, cheap, and effective ways to live in new areas. However, 150 years ago the only building materials available were wood. This isn't a very sustainable method of building but at the time, the people really had no choice. Yet, as the forests started getting further and further way it became harder to use wood alone. 

Thankfully, in the late 1800's railways had made their way into Texas. With the arrival of rail there were new opportunities to obtain goods that were previously not available to small towns. It also made it possible for areas to focus on what they were best at, such as making glass, brick, cast iron, and terra cotta, and being able to sell better made goods at cheaper prices. By changing these materials they were able to build different structures. For the first time they could build vertically and construct longer lasting and more efficient buildings. The photo to the left shows how the landscape of the city changed from the original settlement to a vastly more populated area. Yet something you would still see in many of these new buildings was the amount of windows. It was still very necessary to have access to ventilation and proper air flow for every room which limited the ability of people to enjoy their living spaces or for areas to be too populated. 

The final step that drove Fort Worth to be the city that it is was a more reliable infrastructure, better building materials, and the invention of air conditioning. In downtown Fort Worth you will see a varying mix of all glass high-rises that you can find in every major city and historical buildings that are a sense of city pride. Fort Worth has restored or adaptively reused many of its buildings in order to keep the historical feel of the city in place. This is something very unique to Fort Worth and isn't found in many places. The focus of the city today is to move away from the giant glass structures made in the 1980's and becoming more sustainable by reusing the buildings already in place or, if new structures have to be built, focusing on renewable materials. My hope is that the city continues on this path and finds new and better ways to adapt the historic structures already available to keep the historical feel intact while improving the overall quality of life in downtown.