John T Roberts

I was also there, and enjoyed my stay.  I was a little tired from walking on the Near Southside Version of the Downtown Fort Worth Walking Tour, but I walked the entire event and stayed a little while at some of the booths.

Austin, I'm already ahead of you.  I read the article early this morning.  As for the Power Plant, I'll believe it when I see it.

Barricades are still up, but the sidewalk is open and parking has been striped along Commerce Street. 

deco969base by jtrobert, on Flickr

The daylighting was nice on the artwork at the entrance, and some of the exterior lights on the base were turned on.

deco969entry by jtrobert, on Flickr

Finally, there is plywood installed over the area where the restaurant sign has been designed into the building's structure.

deco969restaurantsign by jtrobert, on Flickr

JBB, the answer to your question shows up on the western facade of the building.  The elevator cores were used as a design feature due to the narrowness of the building.  Each back of elevators stops at a certain height and the office floors pick up above the terminated elevator shafts.  The levels where the elevator lobbies exist have windows looking out to the west.  It appears that there are four banks of elevators that serve approximately 10 or 11 floors each. 

Here are my photographs.

partial by jtrobert, on Flickr

jupiter-venus by jtrobert, on Flickr

totality by jtrobert, on Flickr

I agree with you, Nitixope.  It was a little other-worldly and a feeling that there is a higher power.  As I had mentioned before I left home, I was about 18 miles south of my house in Johnson County.  Out in the country, it is a little different than in the city.  My experience showed me that the eclipse was everything people had said it would be.  Crickets started chirping before totality and we saw several birds circling for a perch in the trees.  Quite a bit before totality, Kalleen's goat started to bed down, and her chickens went into the coop.  Finally the last interesting thing during totality that I didn't expect was that we saw a couple of bats fly through.  We were very lucky down south.  It was mostly clear during the entire final phases of the eclipse.  I did see both Venus and Jupiter on each side of the corona of the sun.

The staff report is out on the Landmarks case, and it includes both the local and National Register Nominations.  The PDF file is 113 pages, but it has some interesting history of the Fort Worth National Bank and other banks in Downtown.  The National Register Nomination even mentions this website as a source.  This is interesting reading.

https://www.fortwort...hclc-24-044.pdf

Linda Blackwell Simmons has another article on Deran Wright.  This one appears in the 360 West Magazine.  Below is a link to the article.

https://digital.abpg...2024/page/78-79

My office does most of the interior work in City Center.  If you have been inside a few offices, there is a good chance that you have seen what our Interior Designer has done.  Most of the work we do has been on the interiors side, but if the interior work involves architecture, then one of the architects in our office gets involved.

I guess to some, "long vacant" means about 2 years.

I don't think it will be too long before this strip along N. Main takes off. 

Yes, it is that site.

The building is back on the HCLC agenda for April 8th.

I am in full support for this project.  Any time that a historic building is officially designated, I am in favor of doing so to preserve our history.  I'm also a big proponent of historic tax credits, which appears that the owner is intending to utilize.  Also, getting a vacant property back into use will benefit everyone. 

It was a good small group today.  We had 3 1/2 people at the meeting.  The reason we had a half of a person is that one of us was at the table next to us with his family, and he split time between the two tables.  It was fun.  I want to thank all of you who attended. 

When I was cycling a lot, I used to have a route that looped around Lake Worth.  The trail wasn't built then, but from South Fort Worth, around NASJRB, along Bomber, Shoreview, and Heron Drive on the south, then Silver Creek Rd. on the west, and then Watercress, Malaga, and Cahoba Drive on the north, and then finally a return home on the Trinity Trails, it was a 45 mile ride.  I always liked doing it in the spring because of the redbud, dogwood, and other flowering trees were in full bloom.  On that last stretch heading eastbound to Marion Sansom Park, there are quite a few challenging up hill sections.