DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just along for the ride. Now, Fort Worth in the late 1920s was riding an oil-and-gas wave that had the whole city feeling like it couldn't lose — and right in the middle of that golden era, a pioneer oilman by the name of Richard O. Dulaney decided he was going to put something permanent on the skyline.
He hired a noted Fort Worth architect, Wiley G. Clarkson, and together they came up with something that still stops people mid-stride to this day. The building went up and finished out in 1930 — and now here's where the name comes in.
The Sinclair Oil Company leased offices there soon after the doors opened, and the building took on that name and never let it go. Then, just two years later, in 1932, something even bigger arrived: the billion-dollar Sinclair-Prairie Oil Company moved its very headquarters right there into that building. A billion dollars.
In 1932. Let that settle for a moment. Now, the architecture — because you cannot talk about this building without talking about what it looks like.
Wiley G. Clarkson built it in the High-Rise Art Deco style, and he did not hold back. There's a zig-zag motif running through it, Mayan accents worked into the design, and terra cotta detailing that catches the light just so.
It is the kind of building that reminds you what a city looks like when it believes in itself. Fort Worth's oil-and-gas golden era produced a lot of things, but the Sinclair Building — commissioned by Richard O. Dulaney, shaped by Wiley G.
Clarkson, and claimed by a billion-dollar oil company — that one has got some staying power.
What the marker says
Pioneer oilman Richard O. Dulaney hired noted Fort Worth architect Wiley G. Clarkson to design this building. It acquired its name from the Sinclair Oil Company which leased offices here soon after the building's completion in 1930. The billion-dollar Sinclair-Prairie Oil Company moved its headquarters here in 1932. Built during the city's oil and gas-inspired golden era, this High-Rise Art Deco building features zig-zag motif, Mayan accents and terra cotta detailing. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1993