Business owners: pay attention. There’s a historic Fort Worth office building for lease that has been a good luck charm for its former tenants.
The 1953 Yates-Ottmann Building, located at 1020 Summit Ave., has worked like a good luck charm for the previous businesses housed there. All have left because their thriving businesses’ expansion necessitated larger sites.
“Every little business that’s been in there has grown,” said Jerre Tracy, executive director of Historic Fort Worth, Inc.
Interestingly, Historic Fort Worth is the owner of the historic structure, buying it in 1998 to use as its first office.
“It is Fort Worth’s smallest, free-standing office building,” Tracy said. “It’s tiny, but it’s fabulous.”
Square footage totals 1,352 feet for this petite office built as an advertising agency for Harry Ottmann and a Mr. Yates, whose first name is unknown. Its location puts it minutes from Fort Worth’s downtown, its medical district, and the thriving West 7th area. Price per square foot is $26 per year, the going rate for this type of historic property, said Margaret Lattimore, an associate with Northern Crain Realty.
“A lot of people are looking at it because it’s very charming,” Lattimore said of the building that retains its Midcentury Modern appeal. “It has great constructional integrity.”
Credit The Architect
Credit for the building standing the test of time goes to the architect, Robert P. Woltz Jr. He was a Fort Worth native who never forgot his Cowtown roots.
He was born in 1905, the middle child of Jemima and Robert Pratt Woltz, Sr. The father was a real estate agent, which could have motivated his son to become an architect. The younger Woltz first studied at Texas A&M University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania where he earned an architecture degree, Tracy said. In Pennsylvania, he studied under Paul Philippe Cret, a French architect who was influential on American architecture in the last century.
After graduation, Woltz came home to Fort Worth as a licensed architect and worked under Hubert Crane, a prolific Fort Worth architect best known for his Dr Pepper building in the International Style and his residential designs in the neighborhoods of Ridglea, Monticello, Crestwood, River Crest, and Westover Hills.
Then Woltz worked in Dallas, with George Dahl on the 1936 design plans for the Texas Centennial Exposition. The results were the iconic Art Deco buildings still admired at Dallas’ Fair Park.
Afterward, Woltz helped found the Fort Worth chapter of the American Institute of Architects and was a charter member of the Texas Society of Architects. As a member and judge of the American Camellia Society, Woltz combined that interest with architecture in 1959 when he designed the Texas Federation of Garden Clubs headquarters found in the Fort Worth Botanic Garden.
The Legacy of This Historic Fort Worth Office Building
The Woltz-designed office on Summit Avenue features a building with four offices and a conference room, which could be converted to a fifth office, Lattimore said. In addition, the building includes a reception area, a work room, a storage closet, two restrooms, and a historic legacy.
“I’m certainly such a fan of historic architecture, in general,” Lattimore said. “Using these buildings and continuing to operate them is so important.”
