Gayety Theater was on the downtown fringe. Now the corner it inhabited doesn’t exist.

Melancholy, grittiness, and a sense that things might soon fall apart - you can almost feel it in the air. This part of Fort Worth feels forgotten, but was only a few steps away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

A tiled curb sign gives a clue about the location, as do the neon signs receding in the distance. The view looking south on Main Street has at least one recognizable name - Frank Kent, the automobile company – and some may remember a family member buying a watch at Wolf & Klar jewelers.

For better or worse, this was the corner of East 14th and Main streets in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The Gayety Theater, on the corner at 1501 Main, was shoehorned into a turn-of-the-twentieth-century building that once housed the Crystal Saloon on the ground floor and offices, including the Burk-Ranger Oil Exchange and a military recruiting office, above.

Louis Richker, a World War I veteran, and L. B. Lewis leased the building and opened the Gayety in 1920. Never a movie palace, the theater originally operated as a second-run motion picture house, opening with “The Great Air Robbery” starring Fort Worth’s own daredevil stunt pilot Omer Locklear and followed by such forgettable thrills as “Ruth of the Rockies” and “Cyclone Rider.” By 1936, the theater even screened an occasional Spanish language film.

The Gayety re-branded itself as an “adult theater” in February of 1945, trying to hold onto ticket dollars. “Devil’s Harvest” exploited the dangers of smoking marijuana, warning about “a fifth column sowing destruction in the youth of America” and a girl who is good “until she lights a reefer.” “Youth Aflame” and “Child Bride” followed more tried-and-true sexual themes sensationalizing “innocent youth sacrificed on the altar of man’s desire.”

Richker, who managed the theater, gradually moved into other business endeavors. Downtown faltered as businesses moved to the suburbs, and the southern end of the central business district was hit particularly hard. Slowly worn around the edges, the Gayety became a barely functional entity, though it retained trappings of pre-civil-rights-era values such as the “colored entrance” just to the left of the box office.

The end finally came in 1965 when Tarrant County decided to build a new convention center in the area that had never fully recovered from being part of “Hell’s Half Acre.” R. H. Hollis and the West Texas Demolition Co. selected the block just north of the Gayety as the first to go. The initial demolition effort was clearly a promotional stunt, with over 5,000 feet of cable wrapped around the buildings. Six bulldozers hooked to the cable dodged a gaggle of onlookers as they pulled the buildings down.

The district did not go quietly. Despite decades of deferred maintenance, the brick and stone structures were well built. It took three different companies more than a year to demolish the buildings and clear the blocks.

Today the street corner on which the Gayety stood no longer exists. If you visit the Fort Worth Water Gardens and stand just north of the aerated water pool, you’ll be where the Gayety Theater once stood.

Carol Roark is an archivist, historian, and author with a special interest in architectural and photographic history who has written several books on Fort Worth history.

This story was originally published May 9, 2019 at 11:32 AM.