DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the man passin' it along. Now, if you were standin' in Fort Worth in the early nineteen hundreds and you craned your neck skyward, there was one building that made the rest of the skyline feel a little embarrassed. They called it the Flatiron Building, and in its day it held the title of the tallest building in all of North Texas.
Let that settle in for a second. All of North Texas. It went up in 1907, and it wasn't built for just anybody.
It was erected for a man named Dr. Bacon Saunders — and that name alone ought to tell you something about the kind of era this was. Dr.
Saunders was the Dean of City Medical College. He was Chief Surgeon for nine railroads. Nine.
The marker calls him a pioneer of medicine in Texas, and the word acclaimed is in there, which means folks weren't quiet about it. The building itself was the work of Sanguinet and Staats, a distinguished architectural firm right out of Fort Worth. They built it of reinforced concrete over a steel frame, which was no small thing in 1907.
And the design — well, the design was inspired by that famous wedge-shaped Flatiron Building up in New York. That distinctive shape, narrow as a blade where two streets come together, rendered here in Fort Worth in the Renaissance Revival style. So what you've got is this: a towering, steel-boned, concrete-clad Renaissance Revival structure, built for one of the most accomplished physicians in the state, designed by some of the finest architects in the region, reachin' higher than any other building for miles around.
North Texas had itself a skyline, and this building was the whole argument.
What the marker says
Known in early 1900s as the tallest building in North Texas. Erected 1907 for the renowned Dr. Bacon Saunders, Dean of City Medical College; Chief Surgeon, nine railroads; acclaimed as a pioneer of medicine in Texas. Designed by firm of Sanguinet and Staats, distinguished Fort Worth architects. Of reinforced concrete over steel frame, this Renaissance Revival structure was inspired by the wedge-shaped Flatiron Building in New York. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970