After decades in the dark, a restored Pioneer Tower shines again on Will Rogers center
With fragments of color fluttering along the spire, a restored Pioneer Tower was illuminated for the first time in decades Wednesday night at the Will Rogers Memorial Center.
The Fort Worth landmark glows now with a LED lighting system.
The tower “will shine like a beacon [in] the home of cowboys and culture,” Mayor Betsy Price said at a ceremony near its base. She recalled seeing it shining from her home 3/4 of a mile to the west on summer nights in her youth .
The 209-foot tower sits between the Will Rogers Auditorium and the Will Rogers Coliseum and was built in 1936.
Glass block panels internally illuminated with fluorescent light filled each side of the tower. Those lights shown through the 1950s, according to a National Register of Historic Places listing. The glass blocks were covered with aluminum louvers in the late 1970s or early 1980s, when it was decided to be too costly to repair.
A bit of additional work remains, Price said, but the project will be complete “long before the rodeo.”
A crowd counted toward the relighting Wednesday evening, and the bulbs came to life after about a 10-second delay.
The tower’s lights are to be on every evening. The plan calls for purple during TCU games, patriotic colors on national holidays and themes that represent the Fort Worth Stock Show.
Structural problems with Pioneer Tower drove restoration costs higher than the original estimate.
In the end, the cost was about $4.7 million. A $350,000 portion will aid a public art project that would project images onto the side of the tower.
Engineers originally thought a large limestone band about 50 feet up the tower was OK, but earlier this year pieces began to slough, a city official has said.
This story was originally published November 6, 2019 at 8:57 PM.
