DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna let it breathe a little. William J. Bryce — born 1861, died 1944 — was the kind of man Fort Worth was practically built around.
Literally. He was a leading businessman and civic leader, and in 1910 he put up this very building to house the offices of his own construction company. Now think about that for a second.
The man who erected many of the city's commercial structures needed a place to run the whole operation, so he went ahead and built that too. Of course he did. When you're William J.
Bryce, you don't rent office space — you raise it from the ground. And it wasn't just any building he gave himself. The Bryce Building has an irregular five-sided plan — not your standard rectangle, not your tidy square — five sides, fitted and shaped to its lot like a tailored suit.
And dressed up in the Classical Revival style, no less. That's the kind of thing that makes architects stop on the sidewalk and just stare. A fine example, the marker calls it, of adapting Classical Revival to a commercial structure.
Irregular footprint, classical bones. That's a trick not everybody pulls off. Bryce kept building and leading, and the city kept growing around him, until Fort Worth decided the man who'd shaped so much of it ought to shape its future too.
He served as Mayor of Fort Worth — from 1927 to 1933. Builder. Mayor.
And still standing on that five-sided lot, the building that bears his name.
What the marker says
Leading Fort Worth businessman and civic leader William J. Bryce (1861-1944) built this structure in 1910 to house the offices of his construction company. Bryce erected many of the city's commercial structures and served as Mayor of Fort Worth from 1927 to 1933. The Bryce Building, with its irregulare five-sided plan, is a fine example of the adaption of the Classical Revival style to a commercial structure. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark- 1983.