Alice E. Carlson Elementary School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, there stands a school building that's got more layers to it than a good piece of baklava. The Alice E.

Carlson Elementary School. Let me take you back to 1927, when architect Wiley G. Clarkson sat down and drew up something worth drawing.

Fort Worth's own, Clarkson was, and what he put on paper became a building with multilight frame windows and Spanish colonial revival details, a tile roof overhead and wrought iron lamps standing guard. The kind of place that looks like it has something to say before you even walk through the door. And it did.

Oh, it did. Now, buildings like this don't stay the same forever, not when a neighborhood is growin and children keep on comin. So in 1935, with Works Progress Administration funds behind it, the school was enlarged the first time.

That's right, the WPA, putting people to work and putting wings on a schoolhouse all at once. Then in 1953, noted area architect Joseph R. Pelich, Sr. came along and drew up designs for a second enlargement.

Original classrooms, the principal's office, the cafeteria, all of it supplemented by those additional wings reaching out like the school was trying to gather more children in. And who was this school named for? A teacher.

Not a general, not a politician, not a railroad baron. A teacher named Alice E. Carlson, the first woman to serve on the Fort Worth School Board.

Think about what that means. The first. And they named a school after her, a school that would go right on shaping the growth of a neighborhood and the children inside it, year after year.

Designated a State Archeological Landmark in 1983 and a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 2000. Fort Worth built something in 1927 that was still earning distinctions three-quarters of a century later. That tile roof, those wrought iron lamps, that name above the door.

Some buildings just refuse to be forgotten.

What the marker says

Designed by Fort Worth architect Wiley G. Clarkson and built in 1927, this building was enlarged twice, once in 1935 with Works Progress Administration funds and again in 1953 with designs by noted area architect Joseph R. Pelich, Sr. The original classrooms, principal's office and cafeteria were supplemented by additional wings. Named for a teacher who was the first woman to serve on the Fort Worth School Board, the institution shaped the growth of the neighborhood and its children. Architectural features include multilight frame windows and Spanish colonial revival details, including the tile roof and wrought iron lamps. State Archeological Landmark - 1983 Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2000