Preservation group names most endangered places

The Alston Avenue gas station includes a small office and recessed drive-through. It has had many owners and names over the years.
Fort Worth, Texas - A 1918 service station, downtown’s funky “spaceship” arena and historic bungalow houses in the Near Southside are included in the 2019 list of Historic Fort Worth’s Most Endangered Places.

Historic Fairmount gas station, 1700 Alston Ave. This small gas station with pressed-metal simulated brick walls and a simulated Spanish tile hip roof has seen better days. It sits on the corner of Alston Avenue at Allen Street in a highly visible and busy location that connects Eighth Avenue to Hemphill Street.

Fort Worth Convention Center Arena, 1201 Houston St. The arena opened in 1968 and was designed by a consortium of architects that included Preston M. Geren, Herman E. Cox, Morris Parker and the firms of Hueppelhueser & White, and Wilson, Patterson, Sowden, Dunlap & Epperly. It has hosted a bevy of top talent including Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Pink Floyd, Bee Gees, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, U2, Peter Frampton, gymnastics star Nadia Comaneci and tennis stars Andre Agassi and John McEnroe.

Bungalows near the Fairmount-Southside Local Historic District. These 1920s bungalows represent a variety of styles and have no demolition protection. Currently, they provide affordable housing or might be adapted into office space. Because these residences have no historic designation protection, unlike Fairmount, they are highly vulnerable to demolition.

Wooden windows: Original wooden windows are important because they are often a key character-defining feature of a property and may actually be made of much higher quality materials than many of the new windows available today. Like many preservation organizations around the country, the board of Historic Fort Worth is making them a priority because they contribute to the unique historic identity of historic buildings, and building owners are vulnerable to marketing advertisements that promote expensive window replacements that may be of inferior quality.

The annual Most Endangered Places list, a program of Historic Fort Worth Inc., spotlights historic resources threatened by a variety of circumstances — extremely deferred maintenance, no local landmark designation, loss of parking and lack of awareness of economic incentives to rehab historic buildings. Owners of properties recognized as endangered benefit from increased public awareness and assistance from Historic Fort Worth to address these issues.