Fort Worth’s historic Brace Building scheduled for demolition

by Kevin Buchanan of of West and Clear

The historic building at 8th Avenue and Magnolia, known as the Brace Building, is scheduled to come down to make way for a single-story Comerica bank building. The Brace Building’s impending demise is an unfortunate example of what I believe is needless demolition.

I’ve heard before that the Brace Building is not savable, but then, the same thing was said about the east downtown Knights of Pythias Hall, another building “too far gone to save” which is scheduled for restoration and redevelopment into residential units. It is my belief that the building is in fact not too far gone to save - rather, its new owners do not want to make the effort.

It has been brought to my attention from sources close to the situation that a meeting was set up around a month ago between Historic Fort Worth, Fort Worth South, Inc., the City of Fort Worth Planning Department, a local developer with experience in historic building rehabs, and the vice president of real estate for Comerica Bank. The groups made various points to Comerica, such as:

- Magnolia Avenue has a long history of public/private investment.

- Magnolia Avenue is becoming an artistic, offbeat, “indie spirit” destination and that the street’s historic buildings are a key part of that sort of redevelopment.

- Magnolia Avenue has a perfect example of a bank that made a historic building work well for its needs - Fort Worth National in the historic Modern Drug Village mixed-use structure at Hemphill & Magnolia.

- The largest Local Historic District and National Register Historic District in the entire city, the Fairmount Southside Historic District, is adjacent to the site, and the residents and businesspeople of Fairmount, who are potential Comerica customers, expect strong historic preservation efforts.

A couple of weeks after the meeting, Comerica declared that their “numbers did not work” with the historic structure and that it would be demolished. The new Comerica building will be a single story building with no possibility of mixed-use either now or in the future, and that single story design also reduces the building’s urban space definition (the need for buildings in urban settings to help define the street as an “outdoor room” with walls made up of multistory building facades to encourage pedestrian activity and create a sense of place). And of course, it will erase a historic structure’s influence on a significant corner (the only historic structure at the 8th Avenue & Magnolia intersection).

Because the Brace Building carries no historic designations of any kind, there is no recourse at this point beyond contacting Comerica and urging them to reconsider (Comerica’s Central time zone phone number is 1-800-925-2160, and they have a web contact form here).

Without a stronger preservation effort, unfortunate losses to urban Fort Worth’s historic fabric will continue as central city neighborhoods redevelop.

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