To your right stands a twenty-three-story tower of buff-colored brick, distinguished by its Art Deco setbacks-those stair-step terraces narrowing toward the top-and intricate terracotta ornamentation along the roofline.
This is the Blackstone Hotel, a monument to the roaring twenties and the eccentric fortunes of Fort Worth's barons. It opened its doors in October 1929, just weeks before the stock market crashed. It was built by a cattleman named C.A. "Gus" O'Keefe. Gus wanted the tallest, most opulent building in the city to overlook his cattle empire. Sadly, he didn't get to enjoy the view for long; he died on Christmas Eve, just two months after the grand opening.
But the hotel lived on, becoming the playground for the city's elite. One of its most famous residents was Sid Richardson, a legendary Texas oilman. During the Great Depression, Richardson lived in the penthouse, paying seven hundred and fifty dollars a month-a sum that would easily top thirteen thousand dollars now. Sid was a bachelor with fluctuating fortunes; sometimes he paid in cash, sometimes he survived entirely on credit. He was known for his homespun wisdom, famously advising friends to "Do right and fear no man; don't write and fear no woman."
The Blackstone was the first skyscraper here to embrace Art Deco, a style focused on geometric shapes and vertical lines. Inside, it was a hub of culture. The twenty-second floor housed the studios of WBAP radio. This is where the Light Crust Doughboys played and where the "King of Western Swing," Bob Wills, first broadcast his music. They used a cowbell as their station signal, ringing it on-air to remind listeners of the city's cattle heritage.
The hotel also hosted high-stakes political drama. In 1948, the Venetian Ballroom was the site of a tense showdown for Lyndon B. Johnson. He was running for the U.S. Senate against Coke Stevenson in a race tainted by the infamous "Box 13" scandal, where two hundred suspicious votes had suddenly appeared in South Texas to give Johnson the lead. The party committee met right here to decide if those votes were valid. In a nail-biting finish, they voted twenty-nine to twenty-eight to certify the results, effectively launching LBJ's national career.
But eventually, the glamour faded. By the 1970s, the once-grand ballroom was hosting a pornographic cinema. In 1979, Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci stayed here and called it "awful" and "terrible." To be fair, she was suffering from a severe wrist infection that required surgery at a local hospital during her stay. Despite the pain and the mediocre accommodations, she returned to the competition against doctors' orders and won the gold.
The hotel finally went bankrupt and closed in 1982. It sat vacant for nearly twenty years, its basement flooded and its windows boarded up with murals. But just as the city began to reimagine its downtown in the late 1990s, the Blackstone was saved. A twenty-six million dollar restoration brought it back to life, keeping quirks like the "steps to nowhere" in the lobby-a staircase that used to lead to a mezzanine that was walled off decades ago.
It was this kind of restoration that paved the way for the district we are walking into now. Let's continue down the street to a place that truly kickstarted the city's nightlife revival.
