Much like the issues facing the Farrington Field and Billingsley Field House acreage on University and Lancaster, redevelopment of Butler Place, the 42-acre former public housing site east of downtown, can only be properly fulfilled if the sum total of the history of the property is preserved.
It is not merely plats of ground. The site is alive with generations of history that are significant to the history and culture of Fort Worth.
Sale of the property to a developer is contingent on Fort Worth Housing Solutions first gaining the approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Housing Solutions is seeking HUD consent through a “streamlined voluntary conversion” under Section 22 of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937, according to an informal report presented to the City Council on Tuesday.
Yet, redevelopment of Butler Place, bounded by Interstates 30 and 35W, and U.S. 287, took a step in recent days with a committee’s recommendations to secure its past.
“Redevelopment of Butler Place will present the city with great opportunity for appropriate redevelopment of various uses that will complement downtown Fort Worth,” said Fernando Costa, an assistant Fort Worth city manager, who noted the added cost of redevelopment, the adverse impact of historic resources on the site.
To that end, the Butler Advisory Committee, established by Fort Worth Housing Solutions in 2019 to study ways to conserve that history, presented its ideas to mitigate those adverse impacts.
Among the actions recommended were applying to the city for a historic landmark designation of three buildings, including the former Carver-Hamilton Elementary School building, and two former residential buildings on Stephenson Street, which is already within an existing National Register of Historic Places district.
The committee also recommended construction of a 6.5-acre outdoor amphitheater on a hillside adjacent to the I.M. Terrell campus; a Fort Worth African American museum and cultural center; a photo and video history of the Butler Place community; and the preservation of 1,000 bricks from the property for the fabrication of public art installation.
The city’s Neighborhood Services Department would be responsible for monitoring on the implementation of the recommendations.
Opal Lee made an impromptu appearance at the work session of the City Council on Tuesday to ask that more bricks be preserved to resurrect a building on the Guinn school campus on I-35W and Rosedale.
It is a “win-win proposition,” Costa added, “preserving the best of our past, while creating opportunity for development that will allow the city to continue remarkable growth.”
Butler Place was named for Henry H. Butler, a Civil War veteran who escaped from bondage and among the first African American teachers in Fort Worth. Butler Place was among those projects constructed under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
It opened in 1942.
Butler’s history — that of the man — is interesting in and of itself.
We know a little something about him through an interview he conducted as part of a “Federal Writers Project,” sponsored by the Library of Congress, between 1936-38 which set out to interview former slaves.
“My name is Henry H. Butler, and I am past 87 years of age,” he said during an interview in July 1937. “The figure may not be accurate, but you must realize that there were no authentic records made of slave births. I estimate my age on the work I was doing at the commencement of the Civil War and the fact that I was large enough to be accepted as a soldier in the Union Army, in the year 1864.”
He went on to say that he was born on the plantation of George Sullivan in Farquier County, Virginia. Sullivan owned Butler’s mother, too, and her other children, but his father was owned by John Rector, “whose place was adjacent to ours.”
“On the Sullivan place there existed consideration for human feelings, but on the Rector place neither the master nor the overseer seemed to understand that slaves were human beings.
“On neither plantation was there any thought or compassion when a sale or trade was in question,” he added, referring to the separation of husband and wife, or mother and child, “and the extreme grief of those involved.”
Butler said he escaped from Sullivan when the latter moved his slaves to Arkansas, near Pine Bluff, to avoid federal soldiers in 1863.
“I went to Federal Headquarters in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and was received into the army. We campaigned in Arkansas and nearby territory. The major battle I fought in was that of Pine Bluff, which lasted one day and part of one night.”
After the war, he left the army and set out to be educated, starting with grade school in Pine Bluff. He eventually entered Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas.
“After I graduated, I followed steam engineering for four years, but later I went to Fort Worth and spent 22 years in educational work among my people. I exerted my best efforts to advance my race.”