Neil P. Anderson Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. Neil P. Anderson arrived in Fort Worth by 1882, and if you'd been watching closely back then, you might have sensed something was stirring.

Anderson, born in 1847 and gone from this world by 1912, was a talented broker, and the kind of man who doesn't just work a market, he shapes one. He helped Fort Worth set the pace for cotton trading across the inland markets of the Southwest. Let that sink in for a second.

Not just keeping up. Setting the pace. His firm brought in the architectural team of Sanguinet and Staats to design what would be called the Cotton Exchange, a building with seven skylights running across the top floor showrooms.

Seven. Go ahead and picture the light pouring down through all of that, onto the business of cotton, onto a city that had decided it was going to matter. The building was completed in 1921, and it drew in some of Fort Worth's leading businesses, the kind of tenants that tell you a place has arrived.

Now, the Exchange itself closed in 1939, and that's never a small thing, the closing of something that once set the pace. But the Anderson interests held on to the building clear through until 1963. Long after the man himself was gone, his name and his work kept standing right there on the Fort Worth skyline, which, if you think about it, is about as good an ending as a broker could hope for.

What the marker says

Neil P. Anderson (1847-1912) lived in Fort Worth by 1882. A talented broker, he helped this city set the pace for cotton trading in the inland markets of the Southwest. His firm had Sanguinet & Staats design this "Cotton Exchange" with seven skylights over top floor showrooms. Completed in 1921, it housed some of the city's leading businesses. The Exchange closed in 1939, but the Anderson interests owned the building until 1963. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark- 1978.