The combination of the Cattle Trail drives and the arrival of the railroad in 1876 brought post Civil War prosperity back to Fort Worth. Both the aforementioned W.T. Waggoner and his Summit Avenue neighbor and fellow Cattle Baron Sam Burk Burnett started accumulating their wealth during that early post-war era. The 1890's were years of slower growth but the first decade of the 20th century was a time of exponential population growth for our City. Indeed, the vaunted neighborhood of Quality Hill boasted some of the finest homes in Texas. For comparison, Cleveland Ohio had Euclid Avenue, a continuous four miles of some of the most lavish Victorian mansions anywhere in the country, (Charles Brush founder of General Electric and John D. Rockefeller, who was during his life the richest man in the world, lived on Euclid) Fast forward to today and from several hundred mansions only about a half dozen remain on Cleveland's Euclid Avenue and the few survivors have been re-purposed for institutional or commercial use. The same wholesale abandonment of former prestigious neighborhoods occurred in American city after city so it's not surprising the same fate was experienced here on Quality Hill. When we moved to this area from Abilene, TX in the early 1980's I recall seeing frequent demolitions of turn of the last century homes going on all around the near Southside, from Vickery south to Berry Street but especially from South Main over to 8th Avenue (east to west) . Had not the Fairmount-Southside District been created, I'm not sure many old houses would exist today in the Southside. That brings me to the suggestion made of moving a few period homes to Samuels Avenue. I think it's a valid idea but ideas have to be embraced and acted upon to be worthwhile. We had a meeting with City and Downtown Ft. Worth Inc. folks on Nov. 12 and the topic of old houses or historic preservation for Samuels Avenue were not even mentioned; it was all about overlaying the downtown design review standards. Given all the concerns and doubts about the future of the Garvey House at 769 Samuels, I can't wholeheartedly recommend historic in-fill housing here although it would augment and bolster the historic character of the area. The Hyde Jennings house would be a welcome neighborhood addition if it were to happen. I personally know of at least a half-dozen intact Victorian homes out-of-state that could be bought, de-constructed, and rebuilt here but a local house always has more significance.
As for the wheel cut art glass windows you mentioned. That dovetails with a period in the last quarter of the 19th century when we nationally had a boom in decorative arts and that included architectural glass. Wheel cut glass windows and transoms are found on the Garvey House (c. 1898) and they also has the decorative motifs you mentioned, Millwork catalogs had art glass windows; items like staircase newels and balustrades; an almost endless variety of moldings/fretwork/pocket doors, ornate hardware, and everything needed to make an impressive Victorian era home. Mail order architects like George F. Barber in Knoxville, TN, and Herbert Caleb Chivers in St. Louis sold house plans in the 1890's via ads in popular periodicals with national circulation so building a high style house was possible even in small towns or in those without architects. Thanks to shipments by rail, you could have real L.C. Tiffany stained glass windows shipped from his Corona-Queens NYC studio to Texas although few did. Today, the wheel cut windows under discussion are no longer made although there is an Austrian ex-pat in California who does custom wheel cutting work on glass and charges by the square inch. The artisan traces the pattern on the glass pane, and then holds the pane over a cutting wheel to rough out the design. That is followed by a series of polishing wheels and compounds to produce a finished smooth cut pattern. One mistake ruins an entire pane so it requires a lot of skill and patience. in the 1890's and early 1900's when wheel cut glass popularity was at a peak most of the work was being done by European immigrants who had learned the craft back in Europe. Here's a photo I took of a pair of doors from 1895 showing complex wheel cut patterns in the panes (the Phillips Mansion in Bradford, PA) https://www.flickr.c...57618714282071/
The metal roof crestings seen in the vintage photo of the Hyde Jennings house are still being made by the W.F. Norman Corp. in Nevada, Missouri using tools and equipment dating back to the 1890's. For missing interior pieces, salvage sources are best although there are people who can make custom Victorian millwork. The fireplace tiles seen in the photos are most likely by the American Encaustic Tiling Company with showrooms in NYC and a factory in Zanesville, Ohio. We have some marked A.E.T. (the initials of the aforementioned company) encaustic tiles on the backs and a pattern number 29 installed in front of the mantel hearth in an added bedroom of our Samuels Avenue home dating to 1897. Encaustic tiles differ from surface glazed tiles (glaze brushed on over a bisque blank) in that the pigmented color goes all through the tile not just the surface. (I have links to archival A.E.T. company catalogs from the Internet Archive)
While some reproductions of these glossy glazed tiles can be found, the figural tiles with figures from mythology or historical figures are rare and available only from salvage sources. In summary, everything that was once on the Hyde Jennings house could be put back but it wouldn't be cheap. Seems like a futile idea when the landmarked Garvey House sits boarded up with its fate uncertain yet it's an intact Victorian era towered Queen Anne style home.