DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm tellin' it to you. Somewhere in the Park Hill Addition of Fort Worth, there stands a house with stucco walls and a tile roof — and if those walls could talk, they'd have a story worth pullin' over for. This is a Monterrey style house, built in 1927 by a man named Bert B.
Adams, a prominent Fort Worth contractor who clearly knew how to make an impression. Park Hill was the fashionable address of the day, and this house was one of the very first to go up there — which means Adams wasn't just buildin' a house, he was settin' a tone for the whole neighborhood. The moment it was finished, Thomas and Marjorie Shaw came along and purchased it.
Now, Thomas Shaw wasn't a man who wandered into success by accident. He was a highly successful independent oil producer, associated with the Standard Oil Company, and — here's the detail that tells you everything about the man's ambition — he had already founded the T.G. Shaw Oil Corporation back in 1924.
Three years before this house ever existed, he was already buildin' something bigger. So when a house like this came available in one of Fort Worth's finest new additions, Thomas and Marjorie Shaw knew exactly what they were looking at. The stucco walls.
The tile roof. The Monterrey style rising up in the Texas sun. Some people build for the moment.
Thomas Shaw built for keeps.
What the marker says
This Monterrey style house was built in 1927 by prominent Fort Worth contractor Bert B. Adams. One of the first houses built in the fashionable Park Hill Addition, it was purchased upon completion by Thomas and Marjorie Shaw. A highly successful independent oil producer, Shaw was associated with the Standard Oil Company and founded the T.G. Shaw Oil Corporation in 1924. Hallmark features of the house include its stucco wall finish and tile roof.