FORT WORTH -- Early one recent morning, a lone customer stood at the counter buying stamps inside the historic downtown post office on Lancaster Avenue.
Otherwise, the long, ornate first-floor lobby, which features gold-leaf plaster on its ceilings and marble from Tennessee, Vermont and Texas on the walls, was empty.Upstairs is strictly off-limits. The second floor, with hardwood parquet floors, and third floor, with an abandoned shooting range once used by postal inspectors, are used as makeshift facility for items from a closed postal warehouse in Grand Prairie.The 1933 beaux-arts/classical revival structure is one of Fort Worth's iconic buildings, local historian Quentin McGown said. Noting the unique architectural flourishes on the exterior, which include longhorn and polled Hereford cattle, McGown said the building exudes a sense of place."To me, it is the ultimate federal building," he said. "It looks like something picked out of the nation's capital, but again with all of those nods to the region."But as the Postal Service faces increasing pressure nationally to cut costs or risk running out of money, the building's future is unknown. The agency has closed a number of offices. In a hearing in Congress last week, the Government Accountability Office said the agency must move faster to get rid of excess capacity.The Lancaster post office is among those deemed by the accountability office to have excess capacity. It noted in 2008 that the Postal Service had considered disposing of the station for years but had not decided whether to proceed.The city of Fort Worth, which has its own fiscal woes, has also stalled on the idea of buying the building as a possible City Hall. It has contemplated the move since 2004 and, officially, the city remains in negotiations. But City Council members say they believe they are no closer to buying it now than two years ago, when $200,000 was spent to study the idea."I'm hopeful until they tell me not to be hopeful," said Mayor Mike Moncrief, who will be leaving office July 12.Sam Bolen, a Postal Service spokesman, said the service had no comment about the negotiations with the city or a possible sale of the building.Building's historyThe post office was built early in the Depression. Work began in 1931, the same year the neighboring Texas & Pacific Passenger Terminal and the Texas & Pacific Warehouse opened. The location next to the rail station gave the post office easy access to mail trains and gave the city a bustling corridor."They were like a jobs program along Lancaster," said historian Carol Roark, author of Fort Worth's Legendary Landmarks, whose cover art includes the post office.Rather than follow standard Treasury Department post office designs, prominent local architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, who designed the neighboring passenger terminal and warehouse as well as Will Rogers Memorial Center and Amon G. Carter Stadium, was chosen to design the post office. It was designed down to the smallest detail.In the lobby are six glass writing tables with bronze lion's-head supports. The limestone exterior, which was cut at a quarry near Austin, has 16 classical limestone columns facing Lancaster, and the cornice features lion's heads encircling the building."I think the architecture we got out of that jobs program was outstanding," Roark said.Unlike the passenger terminal, which opened to great fanfare in 1931, the post office opened quietly on Feb. 22, 1933, George Washington's birthday.Perhaps that resulted from security concerns after the daring postal robbery the previous day, when bandits jumped from behind a billboard atop the South Main Street underpass downtown, overcoming a postal employee and a guard as they transported mail bags several blocks from a train to the post office. The robbers were after mail pouches containing cash from the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas and made off with $72,000, roughly the equivalent of $1.18 million today.A day later when the pouches would start being dropped off inside the new, secure postal facility, the robbery would have been impossible.From the 1930s through the 1950s, the post office was a downtown mainstay with parking spots at a premium as traffic grew.But when the Interstate 30 overpass went up over Lancaster in 1958, the post office was cut off from downtown.During 1960s and 1970s, appreciation for the facility faded. Then in the 1980s, the post office was threatened with a potentially fatal blow. The Texas Department of Transportation proposed widening the I-30 overpass to within 20 feet of the post office facade. That spurred a grassroots fight to stop the project with the filing of a federal lawsuit."It was a battle worth fighting and I'm sure everyone who was part of that battle would do it again," said Roark, who worked as a historian on the project.Irreplaceable todayLocal architect John Roberts, whose website fortwortharchitecture.com catalogs the city's most significant buildings, said the building couldn't be replicated today."The architect was involved in every detail down to the furniture. That is something you would see Frank Lloyd Wright do, but we just don't have the budget to do that nowadays," he said.Among the details, many of them out of the public's sight, is a six-panel canvas mural in the old postmaster's office off the first-floor lobby. The murals, by Dwight C. Holmes and former Star-Telegram illustrator William H. Baker, depict the history of the post office from an oxen-drawn mail wagon all the way to air mail, local art historian Scott Grant Barker said.The architect's grandson, local architect Ames Fender, said the building is best-suited to some sort of institutional use. "To see it lost as a public building would be tough," he said. "I think it would be difficult for a private entity or a corporation to make it financially viable."The building had been marketed by Concho Development. Company officials didn't return phone calls seeking comment. Under a plan floated two years ago, Concho would buy the building, which is appraised at nearly $7 million, renovate it to the city's specifications and lease it to the city for up to 30 years. That option isn't now being discussed.Fender, who led his final meeting of the city's Landmark Commission a week ago, said a designation of a Local & Historic Landmark of the City of Fort Worth would protect the building from demolition. But that designation was never sought, partly because the building is owned by the Postal Service and also because of the hopes that the city would buy it.The ownership is also a reason the building has not been placed on Historic Fort Worth's List of Most Endangered Places for 2011 while the nearby Texas & Pacific Warehouse has."It's the ones that are sitting vacant with no utilities on and open roofs that we really worry about. The Postal Service has been a good steward," said Jerre Tracy, executive director of Historic Fort Worth.The post office's could grow brighter with the resurgence of Lancaster. The T&P lofts have brought residents back, and the Trinity Railway Express brings commuters daily through the T&P station.Last week, the city announced a new mixed-use development along two blocks of Lancaster that would include the Roman Catholic diocese moving its offices downtown.The city is still looking at options for the post office and trying to determine financing, said Randle Harwood, director of planning and development."What makes the best sense for taxpayers is a situation where we can make a trade that is no-cost or low-cost," said Councilman Jungus Jordan, chairman of the Lancaster corridor tax increment financing district."Right now, I'm not sure how we could make it work," he said.Bill Hanna, 817-390-7698Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
