Butler Place Historic District is a 42-acre area east of the central business district of
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Tarrant County, Texas, Tarrant County, covering nearly into Denton County, Texas, Denton, Johnson County, Texas, Johnson, Parker County, Texas, Parker, and Wise County, Te ...
. From about 1940 to 2020, it was a public housing development with 412 units. The site is now to be dedicated to a new purpose, perhaps a museum focused on African Americans in Fort Worth's history.
Before the housing community was built, the area was known as Chambers Hill. In the 1930s, Chambers Hill was notorious for squalid housing and prostitution. In 1938 the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce lobbied the
Public Works Administration
The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by United States Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was ...
to help clear the dilapidated housing in Chambers Hill and replace it with low-rent housing. Financed by local and federal money, Butler Place opened in 1941. When it opened, rents ranged from $15.50 to $16.75 per month.
The housing project was named after Henry H. Butler, a Civil War veteran, who settled in Fort Worth after the war and became its first African American teacher.
He was a friend of I. M. Terrell, for whom the
closest school is named. The housing project was added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
on August 4, 2011.
See also
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I.M. Terrell High School
I.M Terrell High School was a secondary school located in Fort Worth, Texas. The school opened in 1882 as the city's first black school, during the era of formal racial segregation in the United States. Though the high school closed in 1973, the ...
, located within the district
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References
Further reading
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External links
National Register of Historic Places in Fort Worth, Texas
Historic districts in Fort Worth, Texas
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas
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