(See this forum for photo of Fruits and Produce Terminal building) Safeway was becoming large enough chain store to have their own commodities warehouse and this is where it all took place for Fort Worth in the 1930s. They continued to grow and eventually moved from this location which had their name carved into the building face. Building name carving was common in those days since many businesses stayed at the same location for generations. That was all about to change in the mobility of future commerce.
The Safeway Stores building site had the same style as the Tex-Ice building. It was own by the Tex-Ice company and demolished for a newer building in late 1940s or very early 1950s. The new building was named the Tex-Egg building and was specifically designed for egg processing – brokerage for institutional sales. The Tex-Egg building had the Post Modernist architecture style of red brick and green tinted large windows. The plant had large machinery that separated egg yokes from the egg whites and packaged them in large containers to ship to customers like large national bakery companies that needed large amounts of separated eggs. The story is that the owner eventually controlled the egg commodities market for the whole United States right here in this spot, in little old Fort Worth. Little did people know, at that time, that Wall Street and Chicago use to call Fort Worth early in the morning to find out which way the egg futures market was going to go for the day.
As noted in other post, this building (s) was sold in the early 1970s and demolished soon after. It was a public parking lot for many years.
What is located at the old Safeway Stores building today? Walk into the Trinity Railway Express (TRE) Station and you will be standing were these buildings are in the photo. (You can see a photo of the TRE station elsewhere in this forum.)
FortWorthMan
