Fort Worth Will Christen New City Council Chamber on Tuesday

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The city of Fort Worth will formally dedicate the new City Council chamber after Tuesday’s meeting at 10 a.m.

New City Hall is Fort Worth’s fourth since 1893, succeeding the 1938 New Deal-era Classical Moderne building designed by Wyatt C. Hedrick — a Works Progress Administration special — and the 1971 $7.9 million City Hall it replaces.

No one, as far as we know, has given the new chamber the Margaret Rimmer treatment.

“It’s strictly throwupsville,” said Rimmer, the councilmember and future mayor pro tem — the first female pro tem on the council — of the grayish-brown carpet recommended by building consultants and laid down for the opening of the chamber in 1971.

Councilmembers should probably adopt shrouds as official meeting attire to match, she suggested.

Rimmer’s colleague Pat Reece wondered what up with all the open space above what many called the “hippie wading pool” on the bottom floor.  

“We should never have to build another City Hall if we utilize all the wasted space in here,” Reece said as he, his colleagues, and apparently a newspaper reporter took a tour of the new building. (Reece also once said he knew where to find savings in the budget rather than increase property taxes by 18 cents — city employee raises.)

Somewhere acclaimed architect Edward Durrell Stone of New York was growling and showing his teeth.

Well, all City Council jesting aside, Fort Worth — then a city of 383,000 — did need a new City Hall to accommodate its rapid growth toward 1 million residents while trying to ensure a government of efficiency. It’s an oxymoron, many will assert, but a government can be efficient — or, at least, lean that way.

The 20-story Pier 1 building, opened in 2004, is the place where many of the city’s operations have been consolidated. The architect of record was Kendall/Heaton Architects of Houston.

At just over 20 years old and fresh paint and renovations, the building has a new car smell.

Just to the west is new construction — a freshly minted City Council chamber, which officials have deemed the unofficial “Front Porch” of city government, so named because it’s a place for “community engagement and civic participation,” what with an adjacent plaza and green spaces. The chamber seats 250.

BOKA Powell was the architect of record on the tower renovations and the new council chamber.

City officials will cut the ribbon on the building in a ceremony that begins at noon on the 25th, immediately following the first council meeting there.

Mayor Mattie Parker and City Manager Jay Chapa will speak, as will former Mayor Betsy Price and former City Manager David Cooke, the public officials who led the acquisition of the property.

“It’s an incredible deal to taxpayers,” Cooke said at the time the plan was unveiled in 2020, citing considerable savings to buying this building rather than constructing from the ground up.

The 1938 City Hall, designed by Wyatt Hedrick, was described at its opening as “sturdy, unpretentious, yet impressive.” It was dedicated in March 1939, constructed at a cost of just under $500,000. A massive, aluminum-banded oak table, weighing 1,100 pounds, was the last piece of furniture to be installed in the new building.

The building is still in use today as the A.D. Marshall Public Safety and Courts Building at 1000 Throckmorton.

It’s a small wonder the city, then with a population of just under 180,000, managed to complete construction considering all the dysfunction on the council. Business interests in the city successfully plotted a coup through a recall election function to oust six members, including Mayor W.J. Hammond, in July 1938.

The six had been elected in 1937 under the Peoples’ Progressive League. (City Council elections today are nonpartisan.)

The same business group, headed by John P. King, led in kicking out the commission form of government, wrote a council-manager charter, and hired O.E. Carr, an experienced city planner, as city manager. Carr navigated controversy in his earliest days when he removed the portraits of city fathers E.M. Daggett and John Peter Smith. “That’s none of your particular business,” he said when a reporter asked him about it. But, otherwise, the transition was relatively smooth. 

A reported 20,000 residents signed a petition to conduct a recall election. All six were removed in the recall — five by election and a sixth by resignation. Between April 1937 and August 1938, the city went through three city managers with the fourth being appointed by the new council. 

It was a complete purging.

One of those sent out was George Seaman, the mayor pro tem, who within five days of the election was also dismissed from the Board of Tax Equalization. Newly elected councilmember Marvin D. Evans recommended his removal, citing insufficient experience in tax matters, appointment by a council which no longer exists, and “for the best interests of the taxpayers.”

Another of the six, Jerome C. Martin, said he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Only an order from the Texas Supreme Court can force me to leave the council,” according to the formerly “Fort Worth owned” Star-Telegram.

One presumes Mr. Martin, who also declared that he would march to his seat at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the council, ultimately simply took down his tent and went home. There is no further record.

He did stay active in local politics, as a critic of onetime Fort Worth resident Price Daniel, “the crown prince of the defunct Shivers dynasty,” and an outspoken proponent of Democratic candidates.

As an example, he wrote a letter to the editor in 1954, one of several through the years following 1938.

“Barnum the great showman was probably right when he said the people like to be humbugged, and this is just what happened in 1952 through the slogans of ‘I Like Ike’ and ‘The Mess in Washington.’

“The most gigantic flop we have ever experienced is these two years of the Eisenhower administration.

“They have given to the great monopolies everything but the Capitol and the White House.

“We are in a terrible recession with five million unemployed, but they are trying to put rose-colored glasses on us and tell us we are on a boom.

“The people are not as dumb as they were during the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover depression. Therefore, they will call a halt by a Democratic landslide at the election on Nov. 2.”

Ah, yes. The more things change, the more it smells the same. Or however that goes.

Well, in the year 2025, the citizens and VIPs will simply, it is expected, cut the ribbon on the new City Council chambers and get on with the business of city government.

Though, to be sure, all with a special interest, like Martin and all the others opposite him and in between, are still alive and well in 21st century Cowtown, today a vibrant city of, let’s face it, 1 million.