Thannisch Block Building
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The eastern portion of this structure was built in 1906-07 by Col. Thomas Marion Thannisch (1853-1935), one of north Fort Worth's early developers. Designed for use as a hotel and office space to serve the Stockyards community and trade, the building was expanded in 1913. The three-story commercial structure features decorative brickwork, chevron designs in the upper story, and a corbeled parapet.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1906β07 by Col. Thomas Marion Thannisch, one of north Fort Worth's early developers, the eastern portion of this block rose to serve the booming Stockyards district as a hotel and office space. As cattle trade swelled the neighborhood, the building was enlarged in 1913 into a three-story commercial structure. Its decorative brickwork, chevron detailing, and corbeled parapet still mark the streetscape of the historic Stockyards.
Why it matters
The building is a surviving anchor of Fort Worth's Stockyards, the commercial heart of a city that made its fortune moving cattle to market.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- Β· Thomas Marion Thannisch
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Worth Stock Yards Entrance
Fort Worth, TX
Completed in 1910, this concrete gateway spans Exchange Avenue to announce the Fort Worth Stock Yards, one of the great livestock markets of the American West. Built by the Topeka Bridge & Land Co. for the Stock Yards Company, its towering columns and long sign made it an ambitious feat of concrete construction for the era. The entrance still stands as the iconic threshold to Fort Worth's historic stockyards district.
Thomas B. Saunders Family
Fort Worth, TX
North Carolina native Thomas Bailey Saunders brought his family to Texas in 1850 and started a cattle ranch near Gonzales, launching a dynasty that would shape the state's beef industry for more than a century. His sons and grandsons drove herds to New Orleans and Kansas, became noted trail drivers, ran livestock commissions in San Antonio and Houston, and β in Thomas B. Saunders II β opened the first cattle-dealing firm on the Fort Worth Stockyards in 1902, pioneering the shipment of cattle by truck. Later generations built ranching operations and cattle clearinghouses across the Southwest.
Coliseum
Fort Worth, TX
Built in 1907β08 with money from the Swift and Armour packing companies and the Fort Worth Stock Yards, this hall finally gave the traveling Fat Stock Show a permanent home. Within its walls the indoor rodeo was born, and in 1923 WBAP carried the first live radio broadcast of a rodeo from this very floor. Over the decades the Coliseum also welcomed former President Theodore Roosevelt, who spoke here in 1911, and the great tenor Enrico Caruso, who sang here in 1920βall while the ground beneath it passed through three different cities.
Fort Worth Stock Yards Company
Fort Worth, TX
Formed in 1893 when a Boston-led group of investors bought the Fort Worth Union Stock Yards, this company transformed the city into a livestock capital. It courted the Cattle Raisers Association and lured meatpacking giants Armour and Swift to build plants nearby, then drew animals to market through publicity and its Fat Stock Show. During World War I, foreign armies buying draft animals made Fort Worth the world's largest horse and mule market, and receipts soared into the millions before postwar decline.