North Fort Worth High School, Fort Worth Texas

Date added: April 19, 2024 Categories:

Texas
School

The North Fort Worth High School (NFWHS), also referred to as North Side High School (NSHS), was built in 1918 to accommodate the educational needs of the growing population on the city's northside. From 1918 through the spring of 1991, the school was known sequentially as NFWHS, Technical High School (THS), and J.P. Elder Junior High (later Middle) School Annex. Closed in 1991 and scheduled for demolition, a group of concerned citizens formed the nonprofit North Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Inc., for the purpose of preserving and reusing the building.

Schooling north of the City of Fort Worth began in 1879 when land developer Meredith Ellis established a private school in a 20 x 30-foot building at the south line of the I. Thomas Survey just north of present 20^th Street and North Calhoun. After the State required counties to establish school districts convenient to all county children in 1884, Ellis' school became a county school in the Marine School District. The Marine School District is named after Marine Creek which flows through the area and empties into the Trinity River approximately one-fourth mile from the school. The original school building became the Marine Schoolhouse. This frame building still exists and is scheduled to be rehabilitated.

By the turn of the century, the population of Fort Worth and North Fort Worth increased significantly from the jobs available at the Armour and Swift meat packing plants at the stockyards on E. Exchange Street, the convenience of railroad transportation, the various oil industry offices and the Livestock Exchange building (1906, date on building). The rapid influx of people left many living in tents until housing could be made. By 1908, the Circle Park High School replaced the Marine Schoolhouse on a new site at N.W. 21^st Street. By 1914 the school district added as second building at the site to accommodate a curriculum equal to Central High School in Fort Worth. The two buildings were overflowing with students by 1917 and the Fort Worth School District, an agency of the City of Fort Worth, made plans for another high school on the North Side. A bond issue for $400,000 including funds for the new high school, passed December 11tg, 1917. The School District's Board of Trustees received a Quit Claim Deed for $1.00 and other valuable considerations by the North Fort Worth Townsite Company on April 18^th, 1918, E. P. Swift of Chicago, President: T. L. Dollars, 1^st Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary and J. B. Googins, 2^nd Vice President.

At a meeting on March 13^th, 1918, school trustees hired Marshall Sanguinet and Carl Staats as architects and J.C. Buchanan as building contractor. Buchanan's bid of $130,000 was accepted. The architects designed a 3-story building (of Prairie School style architecture), that formally opened as NFWHS on September 11^th, 1919. Upon opening the students continued a North Side tradition of walking from the old school to the new school. Following two large blazes that almost destroyed the stockyards in 1911, seven years before the NFWHS was built, the architects departed extensively from the construction practice of the period. Instead of using wood for furring, ceiling structure, partition framing and roof framing in the building, all of these elements are either metal furring, metal ceiling suspension, metal lath and framing for plaster, or reinforced concrete for the roof and floors. The NFWHS, today, meets all code requirements for Type I fire-rated construction.

The new high school still did not keep up with population growth. The Fort Worth Sunday Record, September 14^th, 1919, states, "The Circle Park school in North Fort Worth is too full and some of the students there likely will be entered in Marine School." The NFWHS is entirely full, and the library is being used as a classroom. The building was steam heated, the radiators being placed under the windows in the rooms. Coal was burned to create the steam until natural gas was used to fuel the boiler. The boiler and coal bin located in the boiler room are still in place but no longer used. The windows in the building could be raised or lowered from the top and bottom to allow airflow in warmer weather.

During the Depression in the winter of 1933-34, the Civil Works Administration, later consolidated with other programs as the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the Fort Worth Parks Department, and the FWISD providing landscaping and stone walls to enhance the school grounds in the city. The extra frame classroom buildings shown in the photographs are an indication of growing curriculum and student body.

The population of Fort Worth continued to increase, which again necessitated a larger high school on the North Side. In the fall of 1937, a new high school on McKinley Street opened which is still in use in 1994. Along with the plans for the new NSHS on McKinley Street were plans for the adaptive use of the vacated building on Park Street. The School Board had planned to rehabilitate the NFWHS spaces to house the Vocational and Technical School at 504 Grant Street in the Samuels Avenue area since 1930. The school's name was officially changed to Technical High School. Green B. Trimble, principal of FWISD Vocational/Technical training from 1926-1930 at Cherry and Texas Streets near downtown Fort Worth and from 1930-1937 on Grant Street continued to lead the curriculum expansion as well as facilities changes caused by an ever-increasing student enrollment. Before 1937, NFWHS had temporary classrooms (three or four) on the flat space east of the building. There were sidewalks, but no restrooms. Continuous growth of Tech brought temporary classroom buildings that were placed all over the east area which had been paved, so that by 1955 THS had no more room to expand and the FWISD had to seek new space.

In addition to teaching high school students, Tech High was immensely important in training citizens in job skills directly applicable to the WW II defense effort. Mr. Trimble and some of the faculty were directing 24-hour classes in any available buildings and in quonset buildings in Trinity Park during the defense job effort and after WW II. The cost of readying old NFWHS for Tech needs was $75,000 to $78,000. The school became coed for the first time in 1937. Spaces were planned for a wider curriculum including welding, sheet metal working, drafting, carpentry, linotyping, cosmetology, and business courses along with History, English, Math, and athletics. Projected future needs were planned for in 1946 on a site at White Settlement and University Drive where $1,000,000 was projected to build a Technical Institute second to none in the state; twenty acres were bought to that end. This plan was abandoned after the great flood of 1949 inundated that site as well as a wide area of Fort Worth.

As Technical High needed more classrooms, the FWISD began in 1950 to plan for moving the school to the Paschal High building at 1003 Cannon Street. Many changes were required at that site. The estimated cost was $400,000 for eighty new classrooms and $50,000 to prepare the existing PHS. Joseph B. Gaylord and Herman Cox designed the building changes for the new Tech High. The remodeled buildings for THS opened in September of 1955. Later, in 1965, Mr. Trimble was honored upon his retirement, with the enlarged building being named the "Green B. Trimble Technical High School." Tech Vice Principal, A. B. Conner, found in a survey he conducted that a higher percentage of THS graduates went to college than from the other high schools in the area. Also, a quote from Ms. Harriet Griffin, THS retired, indicated that the Fort Worth business people asked for THS graduates with as much respect as for business school graduates. When THS moved in the summer of 1955, old NFWHS/THS was again rehabilitated for use as the "Elder Annex" as the Junior High School was also overcrowded. A quote from the June 20, 1955 Fort Worth Press, "E. P. Williams, business manager expects work crews to get busy here this week". In August, General Construction Co. was contracted to build a covered walkway between the two buildings (THS and Elder) for $2364. There was also a contract with another for the grooming of the grounds in the same area. Elder Jr. High was built in 1927 at 709 N. W. 21^st Street. The 16 classrooms in the Annex were readied in the summer of 1955. The woodworking machinery was relocated from the gymnasium and the building was used for seventh-grade academic classes, shop and mechanical drawing, and Girls Physical Education. The adaption was done by Clyde Woodruff, AIA, using heating and ventilating drawings. When Elder's main building was added to and occupied in the fall of 1991 the Annex was declared as nonessential and was scheduled for demolition.

The North Fort Worth High School is a significant departure from the large school buildings designed before and after its construction. Circle High School (1908) is a red brick Tudor Revival building designed by Marion L. Waller. Unfortunately, later additions altered much of the original but retained the Tudor Revival elements. North Side Junior High (1927) designed by Wiley Clarkson also used Tudor Revival influences in the polychrome brick and cast stone building. Arlington Heights High Schools No. 28 and No. 46 are constructed with light-colored brick. No. 28, attributed to Sanguinet and Staats used contrasting colors of brick to highlight the horizontal presence of the school, but it predates the NFWHS building. Based on the Tarrant County Survey conducted in the early 1980s, the NFWHS is the only school building designed with a Prairie School influence on the north or west sides of Fort Worth.

Concerned citizens formed the nonprofit North Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Inc., for the purpose of rehabilitating the spaces as an asset to the community. The organization will be working with the Texas Historical Commission as the design is initiated and progresses to find the best accommodation between required new work and existing work.

Building Description

The North Fort Worth High School (NFWHS) is a 3-story load-bearing masonry and concrete building facing south at 600 Park Street. The Prairie School influenced building follows an "H" plan with an auditorium nested in the south opening and a gymnasium in the north opening of the "H". The building has a brick exterior with cast stone and terra cotta trim, wood double-hung paned windows and a flat roof. The cast stone and orange terra cotta trim express the strong horizontal and vertical massing lines characteristic of the Prairie School style. The balance of the elevations consists of blended red brick.

The North Fort Worth High School sits on a bluff, originally Circle Park, overlooking a wide linear park between two one-way streets of Circle Park Boulevard. Stone retaining walls on Park Street lead up about 12 feet to the building site. A fountain at the center of the terrace and wall contains three cast-stone lions spouting into a small pool. The brown and tan sandstone walls are part of the Civil Works Administration enhancement of the school grounds completed in 1934. The retaining wall was replaced with a crushed rock road west of the building which was used as a construction approach for the J.P. Elder Middle School remodeling was completed in 1991.

The principal facade (south) is symmetrical, with grand entry stairs from the ground to the second level on either side of the projecting auditorium mass. Doors on the east and west sides beneath the respective grand entry stairs allow entry into the first level. Three cast-stone eagles decorate the brick panel over the auditorium windows. Additional decorative vertical panels on the top over the auditorium mass are centered on vertical massing at the east and west faces of the projection. Second-floor door entries are surmounted by an entablature stating "High School". Entry doors, currently a pair of doors at each opening with a single fixed sidelight on the auditorium side, are recessed behind a cast stone framed rectangular opening with a keystone at the center. The "High School" entablature in cast stone is over that, and a pair of double hung windows gives light to the third-floor corridor above this entrance. The classroom face of the "H" on this elevation carries the same orange terra cotta trim as each side of the auditorium mass, calling distinction to these windowless masses and unifying the facade.

East and west facades of the building carry extensive windows for classrooms on all three levels. The windows are presented in groups of four, five, five and four wooden double-hung units with each of the four groups separated by brick. The facade is broken into three masses by recessing the center half about one foot on all levels behind the north and south ends of the wall. Two of the window groups are included in the center mass with a single window group on each level carried on the north and south masses. These are united by horizontal cast stone courses at the parapet top at the third-floor window head and in three horizontal bands of cast stone below the third-floor window head broken by each group of windows.

The rear (north) facade expresses each projection of the "H" on the second and third floors, with the gymnasium projecting out from the building on the first level. Classroom windows on the "H" wings north end are grouped in the same five patterns on the second and third levels, with the first level consisting of a single group of three windows on each side of a depressed double entry door to the first level. This entry design on both the east and west sides of the north elevation is six steps below grade in a concrete stoop with concrete retaining walls. The entry doors are recessed under the outside wall approximately six feet to form a shelter for the entryways. A brick furnace stack rises above the roof on the northwest corner of the building directly from the basement. The gymnasium is surrounded on the outside by a concrete airway, depressed to allow the windows to extend below the surrounding grade. The airway is properly drained, and surmounted by steel pipe guardrails. The gymnasium has three sawtoothed-shaped skylights in the roof located between the "H" of the building to allow light into the gymnasium. Interior east/west corridors are illuminated through double-hung windows on the interior of the "H" with five windows on the first floor and three single windows on each of the second and third floors. These interior windows lack the cast stone ornamentation of the east and west elevation windows.

The building was first remodeled to accommodate changes in use by the FWISD. Preston M. Geren, Architect and Engineer, completed design documents to remodel the building in 1937 as one of Fort Worth's first technical high schools. This work was completed in 1939. These changes included relocating nonbearing partition walls on the second and third floors, creating three classroom spaces, where formerly four had been, in order to accommodate instruction in hairdressing, photography, chemistry, hygiene, nutrition, and similar career-oriented courses. The first floor was converted into an auto shop, machine shop, wood shop, print shop, and other technical classes, and major removals of bearing walls were made for the metal and print shops. The cafeteria was removed; no food services remained in the building.

Clyde H. Woodruff, A.I.A., Liaison Architect for the FWISD, completed the design documents for this last remodel of the building as the Elder Annex in 1955. Work on the remodel seems to have continued to 1957 while the building was still in use for classes. The remodel included the restoration of the gym for girls' use, the elimination of the auto shop, and the restoration of some specialized technical classrooms on the second and third floors as regular classrooms.

Interior detail changes from both remodelings were significant though the materials remained the same. All first and second-floor corridor ceilings remained painted concrete, with the third-floor suspended plaster. All classroom ceilings on the second and third floors remained plaster, with first-floor classroom ceilings exposed concrete. Steam and drainage pipes were exposed throughout the first-floor ceiling. Steam pipes were concealed on the upper two levels. The gym remained all exposed brick and concrete. The area below the auditorium was the location of the cafeteria as originally constructed, then the metal shop, then the wood shop, was exposed concrete. The auditorium retains a suspended plaster ceiling, with plaster furring around expressed beams in the ceiling. Likewise, all walls on the second and third levels retain a plaster finish. Only on the first level was the bearing brick masonry exposed in most of the rooms. Window trim is completely uniform with no alteration save that required for partition locations. Doors, frames, and trim seem reasonably uniform. It is difficult to tell which might be early or late, as the construction used during this period of time was kept reasonably uniform, and as most items were salvaged from demolition and reused for remodeling work. Display cases and bulletin boards seen in the corridors according to staff at the present J. P. Elder Middle School, were removed from Elder and placed in the building as part of the 1955 remodel. Of Georgian derivative style, it is difficult to see how they could be part of the original construction.

Although significant alterations were made to the interior of the building in these two remodels, the exterior of the building, including all fenestration, remain as the building was built in 1918-19. Deterioration of the building fabric due to vandalism, neglect, lack of use and weather is limited. Although the original Sanguinet and Staats drawings do not survive, limited plan drawings of all three floors from both remodels (the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design drawings) survive as prints.

Within four months of the cessation of classes in the building, the windows were all boarded tight from the exterior by the preservation group founded for the building's reuse, the North Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Inc. The roof, though in reasonable shape, needs replacement, with only two areas damaged on the third floor from roof leaks. The same preservation group has also installed a chain link fence around the building to protect it from intruders, graffiti, and vandals.