Debate over historic home’s future highlights Fort Worth’s struggle to preserve past

“It’s got a lot of little decorative items,” Jerre Tracy explained.

She stood at the edge of the Reilly-Lehane house lot, or what remained of it. Stripped paint and decaying wood obscured some of the one-story structure’s architectural flourishes. Two vultures milled about the gutted porch. Earlier this year, bulldozers razed the trees that had shaded the property for more than a century.

Named after the family that called it home until 1988, the house was built in 1889 on the western side of Samuels Avenue, four years after the completion of the Tarrant County Courthouse. It is, by the estimates of some Fort Worth officials, one of the oldest standing buildings in the city.

A team of real estate investors from Carrollton bought the property and two adjacent lots in 2020. It plans to level the home and build 22 townhomes in its wake. The group, ARNN Builders, applied to demolish the home in August.

Tracy and the organization she directs, Historic Fort Worth Inc., have fought to stave off the home’s destruction, imploring the city and developers to find some kind of workaround that avoids erasing it completely from the city’s landscape.

The city’s Historical and Cultural Landmarks Commission voted Sept. 9 to delay the demolition by 180 days, hoping to carve out some time for both sides to reconcile the iconic buildings of its past with the pressing housing needs of the present.

“It would be a horrible shame to lose it,” the commission’s chair, Rick Herring, said shortly before the Monday vote. “I’m hoping the owner can find a way to preserve this wonderful piece of Fort Worth history.”

Development Along Samuels Avenue

Samuels Avenue spans just over a mile, linking the northern fringes of downtown to the southeastern corner of North Side. Almost every major tide of the city’s past and future, and the transitions between them, have left their mark on the street.

It’s hemmed in by knots of railroad to the east and scenic overlooks of the Trinity River to the west. Fort Worth’s early barons and powerbrokers decorated the block with grand, intricately-designed homes. Over time, as the city’s economic gravity shifted elsewhere, many of the grand structures slipped into disrepair.

Recent waves of progress have beckoned new kinds of development. The street’s proximity to the city center, and the epic promises of Panther Island , have sparked rapid apartment construction.

In the eyes of investors, the avenue’s empty and neglected lots are ripe for revamps. Embrey, a San Antonio developer, transplanted acres of forest surrounding the Reilly-Lehane home with a 353-unit mid-rise complex in 2017.

The change has spooked members of Fort Worth’s vocal and active historic preservation community. Samuels’ homes, they say, are architectural marvels in their own right, and irreplaceable glimpses into the city’s past.

The housing needs of new residents, and the profit-seeking of real estate firms, shouldn’t overpower a place’s heritage and the aesthetic beauty that defines it, the preservationists argue. In fact, Tracy insists, they can happily coexist.

“They’re not mutually exclusive,” she said.

A few of the street’s memorable buildings — but far from most — have survived new development through creative feats of salvation.

Embrey agreed to preserve and refurbish an eye-catching Victorian home in the middle of their property, repurposing the structure as its leasing office. A year earlier, another historic Samuels Ave house standing in the way of a new apartment complex was lifted off its foundations and hauled a short drive north to an empty lot.

Tracy’s team pitched similar options to ARNN. Moving the Reilly-Lehane house forward a few yards and integrating it into the new complex would, in her eyes, be the most sensible path ahead.

“It’s so obvious that the way you win both ways is to move the house forward on its existing lot and use it as the beacon for leasing for your apartments,” she told commissioners.

The developer said it’s “open-minded” about alternatives to demolition, though it has yet to commit to one. (The firm did not respond to a request for comment.)

“He’s open to the option to transfer this building to another site,” a company representative said during the public hearing on Monday. “His major concern is that the building is not in good shape.”

The developer could, in theory, wait out the 180 days and push forward with the demolition. There are few other guardrails stopping them.

Samuels Avenue, unlike some other old and distinctive city neighborhoods, lacks “Local Historic District” designation and the exhaustive building and preservation regulations that comes with it.

That possibility, however unpleasant, doesn’t preoccupy Tracy.

“I’ve seen everything happen to houses with great potential, and you can’t worry about them,” she said. “You just have to be saying the right thing, showing up at landmarks at the right time if they’re going to make a decision on it — being an advocate for the best outcome possible.”