✧ Downtown Fort Worth, 1926. A distinctive skyline began to emerge during this decade. In the left foreground the Medical Arts Building is under construction, looking southeast over Burnett Park (see page 138). Its shadow, barely visible, falls toward the Neil P. Anderson Building (1921, eleven stories); just beyond it sits the Fort Worth Club (1925, twelve stories). The twenty-four- story Farmers & Mechanics Bank (top middle) towers over its neighbors. It opened at the beginning of the decade with bragging rights of being the state’s tallest building—a crown that it quickly surrendered. Roughly a block farther south, the Hotel Texas (1921, thirteen stories) and the W. T. Waggoner Building (1919, twenty stories) create a canyon that dwarfs the six-story Wheat Building, hailed as a skyscraper itself by boosters when it was completed in 1901. COURTESY OF THE FORT WORTH PUBLIC LIBRARY. C HAPTER 3 THE FRONT PORCH OF WEST TEXAS 1920-1929 Around Fort Worth, the “roar” in the Standing tall in the center of all the action biographer asserted that “the cowboy” was a Roaring Twenties sounded more like the was Amon Carter, publisher of the Fort “caricature, not a characterization, of the scream of a panther—bold, strong, and deter- Worth Star-Telegram. With the “glibness of a western Texan.” It was something an enam- mined. The bountiful resources of West Texas snake oil peddler, the dogmatism of a saved- ored public far beyond the Red River did not stoked the city’s economic engine, feeding again evangelist, and the sincerity of a first- know, and Carter played their gullibility for industries with cotton and grain, oil and gas, term congressman,” he played cowboy for all it was worth. For the Panther City, that and everything on four legs that bawled, whin- America and put Fort Worth and West Texas image was worth a fortune. nied, oinked, and bleated. This nature’s on the nation’s mental map. Typically Carter Bowie native Amon Carter had landed in metropolis was a magnet for the people of West wore his Shady Oak Stetson hat whenever he Fort Worth just after the turn of the century Texas, too. Some came to shop, others to make traveled, often accented by a bandana held and co-founded the interminably struggling money, and all to enjoy life in the city “Where in place around his neck with a diamond Star. When the paper finally foundered, the West Begins.” For better and worse, the stickpin. He stuffed his tailored pants into Carter “traded up,” he later said, manipulat- prosperous Twenties saw Fort Worth take great handmade purple and white boots—the ing the purchase of the successful Telegram. strides in the development of an urban society colors of TCU—stamped with the horned With the forceful cowboy behind it, the whose appetites and interests drew in part frog mascot, and occasionally topped off the combined daily would become one of the from its western and southern roots, but also outfit with chaps and spurs and a holster country’s most influential newspapers well from an emerging modern America. that cradled two pearl-handled pistols. His into the 1950s. By 1923 the Star-Telegram 54 ✧ THE NEW FRONTIER ✧ TCU’s campus shows signs of growth. COURTESY OF THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON LIBRARIES, ARLINGTON, TEXAS, AR 406-1-63-18. had become the largest newspaper in the newspaper led the fight for better roads and from Amon Carter’s black-bass pool,” wrote southern half of the United States. higher prices for crops and beef. It brought Johnston. Important guests usually left wear- It was West Texas that boosted the paper’s new industry into West Texas, and in 1923 it ing one of the publisher’s signature Shady circulation beyond those in such larger cities pushed the state to establish Texas Tech Oak Stetsons. He gave away thousands of as Houston, New Orleans, and Atlanta. To University in Lubbock. them. When Lord Sidney Rothermere visited, West Texans the Star-Telegram was their Amon Carter cultivated his contacts from his aides dryly informed Carter that the dis- equivalent of the New York Times. Most of a suite at the Fort Worth Club, but did his tinguished board chairman of the London them could care less about what was hap- most effective boostering at Shady Oak Farm Daily Mail would not “play cowboy with pening on the other side of the world. What on the shores of Lake Worth. Alva Johnston, him.” Yet, directly, there he was—plain ‘ol they wanted to know was: “Could Bossy live in a Saturday Evening Post article, described it “Sid” to Amon Carter—outfitted like one of on mesquite beans and cactus pods, and will as “a sort of one-man Bohemian grove,” the Sons of the Pioneers. When he departed, the turkey plague in Cuero spread to San where multimillionaires, politicians, and the delighted Rothermere was not only sport- Saba?” Of course, the Star-Telegram covered celebrities were always welcome. “It is hard ing the Stetson, but also one of Carter’s pearl- the news of the world, but usually explained for any financial or political giant to cross the handled six-shooters. events as they related to West Texas. With country without finding himself making a To Carter it was all about boostering. He Carter promoting the entire region, the stop-over at Shady Oak Farm and fishing reveled in the glow of friendships with ✧ Oilman and rancher W. T. Waggoner, a regular contributor to the publisher’s boostering schemes, holds ✧ up “the one dollar Amon Carter did not get,” as he put it. Lord Sidney Rothermere, board chairman of the London Daily Mail, joins in the fun at Carter’s Shady Oak Farm. COURTESY OF THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT COURTESY OF THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON LIBRARIES, ARLINGTON LIBRARIES, ARLINGTON, TEXAS, AR 406 2-116-15. ARLINGTON, TEXAS, AR 406 6-17-2. CHAPTER 3 ✧ 55 ✧ American Airlines can trace its beginnings to this airfield that critics described as a “weed patch.” COURTESY OF THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON LIBRARIES, ARLINGTON, TEXAS, AR 406 1-44-25A. ✧ In 1923 Fort Worth kicked off its Diamond Jubilee, which New Yorkers acknowledged with a wreath-laying ceremony. The caption read, in part: “Miss Dura Louis Cockrell, Daughter of Mayor Cockrell of Ft. Worth, ✧ Texas, Placing wreath on the Granite Monolith at Fort Worth, for awhile, was home to the Army dirigible Shenandoah. For a sense of perspective, note the truck parked at the Madison Square Garden, New York, which marks the base of the tower. Amarillo, which sat atop the world’s most abundant supply of helium, had little trouble making a winning burial place of General William Jenkins Worth, founder case for wresting the lighter-than-air craft from the Panther City. Both cities mourned the loss of the dirigible and most of its of Fort Worth, at ceremonies on Nov. 14 in connection crew, when a violent storm broke it into three pieces over Ohio. Although thirteen crewmen lost their lives in the tragedy, with the Texas City’s Diamond Jubilee. General Worth Lieutenant Commander Roland G. Mayer was able to rescue others by maneuvering one of the fragments safely to the was a notable figure in the War of 1812, the Seminole ground. He would return to Fort Worth at the onset of World War II as division manager of Convair—the “bomber plant.” War and the Mexican War.” COURTESY OF THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON LIBRARIES, COURTESY OF THE TOM RUSSELL COLLECTION, DALLAS, ARLINGTON, TEXAS, AR AR 407 1-6-52. WWW.GENEALOGYIMAGESOFHISTORY.COM. prominent men and women, but he always wanted something in return. Whether it was a business relocation, some money to fund a special project, or merely a good word for Fort Worth and West Texas, Amon Carter persisted until he roped in his prize. Once, when wealthy rancher-turned-oilman W. T. Waggoner posed for a Star-Telegram photog- rapher, he held up a silver dollar: “Here, take a picture of this,” he barked, “It’s one dollar Amon Carter didn’t get.” One of the publisher’s most significant coups was steal- ing Texas Air Transport from Dallas and winning a bid to deliver airmail from Meacham Field, a lonely spot north of town that observers described as a “weed patch.” Within a year a hangar capable of sheltering fourteen aircraft housed a fleet of Curtiss passenger planes and Pitcairn Mailwings on the former pasture. Shortly afterward, TAT became Southern Air Transport—an ances- tor of American Airlines. ✧ Carter represented modernity, and progress Back in the Panther City, revelers celebrate the Diamond Jubilee in true western style. meant that some older ways of life would COURTESY OF THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON LIBRARIES, ARLINGTON, TEXAS. 56 ✧ THE NEW FRONTIER disappear. During the decade the old commission form of government was retired, and in its place a city manager and council began calling the shots. In 1928 the Concho Wagon Yard was sold to a buyer who converted it—appropriately—into a parking lot. The last of about a dozen such facilities, the old stopover had taken up most of the 400 block of East Belknap since the 1850s. Greenwall’s Opera House fared better. Remodeled and renamed the Palace Theater, it cast its lot with Hollywood, boasting a massive pipe organ touted as “second to none in any motion picture theater in America.” When the new curtain drew for the first time, viewers ✧ delighted to Nazimova in the title role of The Students at Texas Women’s College (now Texas Wesleyan University), dressed up for the Diamond Jubilee.