Lecture Highlights Fort Worth’s Art Deco Architecture as a Part of Cowtown Culture

New York City has its Chrysler Building as a well-known example of Art Deco architecture, but Fort Worth boasts its own inventory of the style. Those examples will be part of the upcoming lecture presented Thursday by Kathryn E. Holliday, Ph.D., as part of Historic Fort Worth’s Cantey Lecture series, an annual event.

This year’s lecture, entitled “Nowtown and Cowtown: Art Deco Architecture and a Modern Fort Worth,” will be held at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Everly Plaza Gallery located at 1801 8^th Ave. “Art Deco is a style associated with commercial architecture,” Holliday said. “It was a symbol of American prosperity and corporate modernity.”

Known For Historic Preservation

Holliday will bring her ideas on historic preservation and the Art Deco movement that flourished in the 1920s and ‘30s. A professor at the University of Texas at Arlington for 16 years and a former Historic Fort Worth board member, she is known for her work in historic preservation within communities. Because of that expertise, she recently was recruited for a newly created position as the first Randall Biallas endowed professor of historic preservation and American architectural history of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

She points to Fort Worth’s Texas & Pacific Railway Station at 221 W. Lancaster as a fine example of Art Deco structure in Fort Worth. Built in 1931 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the terminal illustrates some of the hallmarks of Art Deco — simplified geometric forms, luxurious building materials, and transportation motifs.

“A lot of best examples are associated with the train,” Holliday said. “The T&P building is beautiful. The train company embraced this new modern style, to symbolize the modernity of the train and to make train travel exciting.”

One of the professor’s current book projects, “Telephone City,” focuses on the many telephone buildings built through the 1920s and ‘30s. Their Art Deco styles were “expressions of modern technology and modern cities,” she said. Her research has led her to “glorious Art Deco telephone buildings,” adding that they could be found in both Fort Worth and Dallas. “I got really interested not  in just how these buildings were built by architects, but how the telephone companies built these buildings.”

Historic Fort Worth and Cowtown Moderne

During her Thursday lecture, Holliday also will discuss Judith Singer Cohen’s “Cowtown Moderne,” a book about Fort Worth’s Art Deco architecture. Cohen and her late husband Don Cohen owned Art Deco items that have been displayed at UTA, and her husband’s photographs will be displayed at Thursday’s event.

An architecture historian, Holliday is a particularly appropriate choice for The Cantey Lecture since the annual event centers on architectural history and historic preservation. She was the founding director of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture. She also created the Dillion symposium to focus on issues concerning architecture and urbanism in North Texas.

Thursday evening Historic Fort Worth also will present The Cantey Awards recognizing outstanding achievements in historic preservation. The event is open to the public. Admission is free to members of Historic Fort Worth, and non-members may purchase tickets for $50 online via Historic Fort Worth here.