South Main Village – Redevelopment Of The Sawyer Grocery Store
by Kevin Buchanan
Fort Worth’s Near Southside, from just south of downtown to, oh, Berry Street or so, is one of the city’s big ongoing urban redevelopment areas. For the last few years, the district has seen remarkable success – classic old bungalow homes in Fairmount and other neighborhoods in the district have been restored and new ones constructed, old commercial buildings have been restored and reopened as office, retail, and loft space, and new infill townhomes and lofts have been constructed in several places. Oleander Street, formerly an alley-sized strip of broken pavement, is now a lushly landscaped pathway known as Oleander Walk that caters to bicyclists and pedestrians. Magnolia Avenue is being reborn before our eyes as a hotbed of indie eateries and urban living.
The Near Southside is made of several neighborhoods, some in need of more work than others. One of the neighborhoods that still needs some attention is South Main Village, so named as part of the city’s Urban Village program. This stretch of mostly vacant structures from the early 20th century has the potential to be a great place, and slowly but surely there are signs of life in this neighborhood. There’s a nightclub, Axis, now open, a restored building home to office space, a large land purchase was recently made by an urban infill developer, and Fort Worth Sound (a recording studio) has relocated from Bluebonnet Circle to a vintage structure on South Main.
Obviously, there’s still a long way to go. The city has plans to rework South Main itself, putting in proper on-street parking, resurfacing the road, and installing street trees and landscaping. There are still plenty of vacant historic structures to be restored and reused, as well. Fortunately, one of Fort Worth’s coolest developers has gotten ahold of one.
The two run-down buildings you see above are the remains of the old Sawyer Grocery Store on South Main. The red brick portion on the left was built in 1905, and the buff brick portion on the right was built in 1910. Henry E. Sawyer operated a grocery store here from around 1888 (in a previous structure) to the late ’20s. The buildings served various uses in the decades afterward, and at one point were mangled with bricked-up ground floors as seen above. They have been vacant for a long while now.
That’s about to change, thanks to Eddie Vanston of the Carillon Group. If you’re into historic Fort Worth architecture, you may have heard of Eddie, but if not, here’s a primer. Eddie’s made his living centered around restoring and reopening small-scale neighborhood structures in Fort Worth’s Near Southside. He restored the Leuda-May Apartments from the ’20s and ’30s at, well, Leuda & May. He restored the incredible Markeen Apartments on Daggett, built in 1909 and virtually the only surviving example of multi-family Prairie School architecture in the city. Most recently, he restored the LaSalle Apartments on College in Fairmount, one of only a handful of surviving Tudorbethan courtyard-style apartments from the ’20s in Fort Worth.
Eddie and his crew will go in, install modern HVAC, plumbing, and wiring, then take everything else back to as close to original as they can. In the LaSalle, for example, he used a surviving original cabinet set to recreate the original design for the other units, and used scraps of tile to restore the original green, yellow, and pink bathroom/kitchen tile sets. He found the original frosted glass kitchen cabinet doors and bedroom French doors painted over and restored them. He even restored the old milk & ice delivery doors in the stairwells. The result is like stepping back into the teens or ’20s, but with modern conveniences.
The Sawyer Grocery Store is Eddie’s current project. The photo above was taken right as work was starting to get underway, so you can see how far he’s had to go. These photos were taken just a few days ago, and show the remarkable progress he’s made since starting.
The difference is fairly incredible, even without all the work being complete yet. The bricked-over ground floor is gone, and friendly original-style glass & wood storefronts are going in. Restored windows on the upper floor combine with cleaned facades and repaired masonry makes the whole building come alive. The 1905 portion of the building is getting a nifty cut corner, much like many of the historic structures on Magnolia.
When fully finished, the buildings will look something like this:
The buildings will feature four ground-floor retail spaces for shops or restaurants, and the upper floors will be 14 apartments.
Obviously, one development won’t single-handily turn around a neighborhood. However, they can definitely get things rolling and build momentum. While this isn’t the first project on South Main, it is the most significant thus far. This is how you bring life back to a neighborhood – lot by lot, block by block. It takes time, but the end result can be wonderful. Rather than let these neighborhoods go to waste, the city’s Urban Village program and the renewed interest in central city living and development are helping to bring Fort Worth’s past into the future.
You can check out the Sawyer project’s web site for more info, as well as progress photos from the first few months of work.
2 Comments, Comments or Pings
steph
Yay! I can’t wait ’til the Sawyer Grocery Store is complete. Eddie’s restorations are top-notch! I should know, I live in one of his apartment buildings!
Feb 19th, 2008
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