88 replies to this topic

[Dylan]

A few suggestions:

 

- On the home page, you might consider putting the white text (Downtown, Cultural District, etc.) above the yellow text (Skyscrapers, Museums, etc.). Then, change "Medical District" to "Hospitals" to keep the theme going.

 

- On the navigation bar, you might move "North Side" and "East Side" to below "West Side," so "Near Southside" and "Southside" are next to each other. People may not realize you have two "Southside" options on the list if they are quickly glancing at it.

 

- On the "About, Search, and Contact" page, you might add a little more space between paragraphs, and make the "architect" circle plural.

 

A comment: The new building description pages (the few that are up) look nice.

 

A question: Is the home page counter gone for good?

[John T Roberts]

Dylan, those are good comments.  Here are my replies.

 

• I can reverse the white and yellow text.  The reason that I called the Near Southside the "Medical District" was that was the name that was given to the area when I started the website.  Of course the area is so much more than that, but I also don't want to clutter the pictures with text.
• The areas were in the same order as are currently listed on the old pages.  I'm not opposed to changing the order, but I think I would still stick to the points on the compass going clockwise.  That would be Northside, Eastside, Near Southside, Southside and Westside.
• On the "About, Search, and Contact" page, I can see how that looks with more space between the paragraphs.  The architect counter is a placeholder.  I can make it plural in the meantime. 

The counter may or may not be gone for good.  I'm still playing around with a lot of things.

 

I do like the building description pages.  They really look sharp.

[John T Roberts]

Dylan, I have rearranged the order in the Navigation Bar on the left.  I have also changed the paragraph spacing on the About page to 1 1/2 spaces.  "Architect" is now plural.  I will switch the yellow and white text tonight, hopefully.

[John T Roberts]

I have now flipped the white and yellow text on the intro page.  I also changed the order of the images to match the navigation bar on the left hand side.  The one good thing about this layout is that I can change out photographs fairly easily. 

[renamerusk]

Suggestions:

 

Districts:  Center Port/DFW

                Alliance

                Lake Worth/Northwest

                Far South

[John T Roberts]

Rename, a long time ago, I thought about doing some sections on the Far South and Alliance.  However, I'm not going to make a split until one section gets too big, or I have enough buildings for a section.  If you look at the Cultural District right now, you can see the number of listings is significantly smaller than the other areas. 

[John T Roberts]

The Garvey-Viehl-Kelley House has been added to the site and it is part of the new site design.  I have "Before" and an "After" photos and they orient vertically.  This listing has historic designations and they start off the description and they are spelled out.  Here's the direct link:  The Garvey-Viehl-Kelley House

[John T Roberts]

Another plus to this layout is that the text length and picture size don't necessarily relate to each other.  They are contained within boxes that extend in length depending on the size of the photograph or link of the text.  If they don't line up, that still works. 

[JBB]

The site looks really great.  Disregard my bold font concern.  The more I look at it the less it is an issue.  Probably just an aging eyes issue.

[renamerusk]

Riverside...in what district?

[John T Roberts]

Riverside is in the east.  Actually, everything east of I-35W is lumped into the Eastside section.  I have had complaints about that before, but I also tried to keep the areas simple and equal as far as the number of buildings.  One reason that I'm hesitant to divide up the city more is that whether on the new or the old version, the navigation bars are a little limited.

[Jeriat]

Everything is looking good, so far. 

[John T Roberts]

It's going to be a slow process.  However, if I could update one building a day, and two on each day of the weekend, it wouldn't take too long to redo every page.  I appreciate all of the positive comments.

[John T Roberts]

Over the weekend, I converted the Tallest Buildings in the City page over to the new format and I converted a few building descriptions.

[Dylan]

On the tallest buildings page, would it be possible to have the names of buildings link to their description pages?

[John T Roberts]

I was planning to do have the individual buildings linked.  Maybe I can do some or all of that tonight.

[John T Roberts]

It took me two evenings after work to link all of the buildings on the tall building page.  The links are in bold text.  Buildings without links are not bold.

[John T Roberts]

I'm also discovering that even though I have been out taking photographs of buildings, quite a few of the photographs are now outdated, or not high enough quality.

[JBB]

I would imagine that improvements in the quality and convenience of digital photography and the speed of internet connections makes higher quality photos more of an option.

[John T Roberts]

JBB, you are correct, but the low resolution version photos of some of these buildings are the only "before" photos that I have, unless I want to start scanning slides and negatives.  When I first started this website in 1997, all of my photographs were on film and the prints were scanned for the JPG image.

[John T Roberts]

Jeriat, when you have time, would you mind coming up with a list of "Architecturally Significant Buildings" to add to the area listings?  Also, anyone can suggest structures to add.  I will put them unlinked to the master list, and if I have photographs already taken, then I will add those to the site.  If I don't have pictures, I will either go out and take them, or you may submit them.

[John T Roberts]

Also, on an almost daily basis, I have been upgrading the pages to the new format.  I have added a few new pictures to the Flatiron Building page.

[renamerusk]

Also, on an almost daily basis, I have been upgrading the pages to the new format.  I have added a few new pictures to the Flatiron Building page.

 

Thanks JTR.  Your work is enormously appreciated always; as well as the notifications of recent updates.  

 

The Flatiron Building is so gorgeous. In these busy times, we don't take time to stop and take in the beauty that is all around us.  The City has honored Mr. Sanguinet with the naming of a park but I hope someday that there will be skyscrapers with the names of Sanguinet and of Hedrick erected in Downtown honoring these outstanding architects.

[John T Roberts]

You're welcome, Rename. 

 

If you remember, the preliminary name of the Chase Bank Building in Sundance Square was The Sanguinet Building.  If they had not signed a signature tenant, they were going to name it in honor of Marshal Sanguinet.

[renamerusk]

I do remember now. 

 

I do get the financial reasoning for granting naming rights.  I also get that in doing so, the fingerprint of the City is blurred.

 

For instance, we no longer have the Hotel Texas, a local and national historically significant landmark; instead, we have had a number of musical chairs rebranding.

[Austin55]

That is a good fact

[John T Roberts]

The one saving grace is that all of the historic designations are titled for the historic building names.  I think this occurs at all levels.

[roverone]

I appreciate all the work that goes into this site and how it organizes our city's history.  Any website always has the challenge of organizing data for searching (knowing what you are looking for) vs. browsing (enjoyable wandering and discovery).  As a long-range goal, the more different ways that the data can be discovered, the better.  When I think about architecture, the dimensions that I think about are: geographic location, time of construction, use, and style.

 

I'm not saying any of this is easy to maintain, but I would love to see the entire city's buildings designated on scrollable / zoomable map.  I expect that this could be done more easily than it seems using Google Maps APIs.  It would be great if the Jack White collection could be included in this.  It might take a lot of community involvement to properly place the camera positions, but worth it.  It would be nice if even the forum posts had topic locations connected in, so all of the talk about an area through time could be brought up.

 

Time is a very interesting dimension to me.  I work in a very old building downtown, and I often think about what it would have been like to look out my office window over the last 134 years.  Using javascript you could probably relatively easily make some of the lists be dynamically sortable without running anything on the site back-end.  This would let us see things in the order they were constructed to give us context.

 

The Jack white collection is already kind of sorted by use, but this a difficult dimension for me to to browse with.  Works fine to search, but hard to wander around and discover.  Still useful dimension if you want to know all about churches, for example.

 

Style will certainly be open to interpretation, but I still think useful for those wanting to explore all of the, for example, mid-century modern buildings that are documented.

 

The more different ways that data can be organized, the more fun ways there are for people to discover all the content that is there.  It is importnat not to forget that people use some of the most tangential information to discover new things.  How many of us have not been guilty of choosing a bottle of wine among hundreds because the label color or design caught our eye or the name intrigued us.  It would be easy to say that the label has nothing to do with the product is inside, but it provides another dimension of discovery.

 

I feel like I'm being the worst person in the world suggesting things and then not having the time to help implement them right now.  That doesn't mean that I'll never have the time, it is just a busy time for me right now (as I'm sure it is for many of you).  But by thinking about how things could be in the future, extra data could be collected and infrastructure started to make it easier in the future.  This can be as simple as making sure that addresses are in a very formal properly structured format, so in the future it is easy for Google geocoding to work.  Or maybe it is to come up with a uniform way to interpret and represent what it means in terms of construction dates when a building is remodeled or repurposed.  Getting the data consistent is always the first step to organizing.

 

Again, I don't in any way want this to be taken as criticism on what is a great site -- I greatly enjoy visiting often and think it is a fantastic resource to document where the city has been and where it is headed.  And I appreciate that it exists and all the effort that goes into it.  I would like there to be a means that I could donate funds toward the project and will do so immediately when I learn how to do that.

[John T Roberts]

Roverone, I really appreciate the comments.  Some of the things you have mentioned are planned, but it gets back to manpower.  I run this site by myself.  I also work a regular job that averages more than 40 hours per week.  I try to do the best that I can.  I will admit that you all will probably see quicker things happening to this site when I retire.  However, I don't know when that will actually occur.  Plans are for the Jack White Collection to be more organized and to be made more easily sortable and searchable.  That will also be a project in itself.  I also will accept assistance for work and physical help on this project at any time.  Dontation of money is not the most important thing, unless you are suggesting hiring someone to help.  I do this on a volunteer basis, so I had always been thinking that my assistance would be by volunteers working on the site.  I have said many times that I needed an assistant, but I have never had the funds to hire one.  Remember, I am an architect on my day job, and a lot of people think we are rich.  The opposite is actually true, we are probably the lowest paid of the professions, except for maybe teachers.

[John T Roberts]

I have good news!  After two years of changing the format of the website, I think I have all of the buildings that had pages in Downtown switched over to the new format.  There is still a lot left to do, but they should go easier, since the pages outside of Downtown are simpler.

[ramjet]

Thank you, John.  Your attention to journaling in such great detail Fort Worth architecture is epic!  I don't know if other cities in America have such a resource, but I am grateful that Fort Worth, my favorite place, does.  You are doing an extraordinary public service.  Again, thank you.  I hope the Amon Carter Museum follows John's work.  That is where it belongs some day.

[John T Roberts]

You're welcome.  I'm glad that I can provide a service.  Other cities do have similar resources.  Houston is one of them.  I do believe the Amon Carter Museum follows this site, as well as the other museums.  I have friends at all of them.

[John T Roberts]

I have made a few minor updates to the website.  The name of Crockett Row at West 7th has been changed to Artisan Circle based on their announcement today.  I have added three buildings to the Tallest Building List.  They are Green B. Trimble Technical High School at 84 feet, The Center for Transforming Lives at 76 feet, and Water Gardens Place at 70 feet.

[John T Roberts]

I have been slowly converting all of the Northside pages to the new format.  I only have one description left to go, and that is the old Swift Plant.

[John T Roberts]

I think all of the Northside building descriptions have been updated to the new website format.

 

I also have found out the overall height in feet for the Mallick Tower.  The building is 140 feet tall.  That information has been added to the Fort Worth's Tallest Buildings Page.  With that, the Mallick Tower has been positioned to the correct location within the table. 

 

I also looked at some of the old Sanborn Maps, and I found that the old Swift Meatpacking Plant's tallest structure was 9 stories and 110 feet.  I haven't added it to the list, but I should, since I have other buildings demolished in the 1970s on the list. (They were a lot taller.)

[John T Roberts]

I had grand plans for the weekend, trying to enjoy this nice weather, but they were derailed.  On Thursday, a friend invited me out to eat lunch on Saturday because she was working in Fort Worth that afternoon.  We had talked about 3 Parrots and she had mentioned that she passed on US 377 many times, but had never eaten there.  So, I suggested that we grab a quick bite.  She invited another mutual friend and the three of us had lunch.  Some of the discussion was about Russell Feed's big new building diagonally across the highway.  We then decided to go over there to check it out.  We didn't buy anything, but I also mentioned that I was going over to Premier Nursery (formerly The Plant Shed) to check out what they had to sell.  I decided not to buy any flowers, since my winter plantings were still doing well, and I never buy spring flowers until after the average date of the last freeze.  Anyway, I bought a couple of perennial pots to plant and afterwards I did that.  My plans for Sunday afternoon were to get out and take some photographs.  To make a long story short, I did something to my knee and after I did the yard work, I took it easy and watched a little TV.  At some point, I got up and my left kneed nearly gave out on me.  Then it was terribly painful to walk from that point.  I applied some medication to the knee and then tried some other remedies.  When I woke up this morning, the stability of the knee and the pain were still there, so I knew I couldn't get out to walk anywhere.  So, I stayed home and didn't do any photography.  I did take it easy today, and the knee is a little better.  My walk is better, and there is a little less pain.  That's how my weekend was derailed, but I did enjoy my outing with friends on Saturday.

[roverone]

John; sorry about your knee -- I hope it heals up quickly for you.

[John T Roberts]

Thank you, Roverone.  Since I stayed off of it yesterday, it is much better this morning.  I can actually walk with not much pain.

[johnfwd]

Sounds like a sprain.  More walking exercise should speed up the healing.