There’s a thoughtful post today on FortWorthology about the greatest loss to Fort Worth’s history. Their answer is the decimation of Hell’s Half Acre, downtown’s “red light” district until the 1960s.
It’s worth a look for the amazing contrast of two photos of the south end of downtown Fort Worth — one from 1956, the other from Google Earth (a few years ago). You’ll see an unfortunate transformation:
The biggest change you’d see now is the completed Omni Hotel, which is just under construction in this image. This shows the amount of change and destruction brought to the south end: block after block after block of urban, humanly-scaled buildings, replaced by massive superblocks (such as the Convention Center) that impede walkability, overscaled architecture, and seas of storage for cars. The loss of density and walkable fabric is incredible.
You’ll remember that Wick argued for human scale in downtown Dallas.
