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HISTORY
The Ryan Place neighborhood lies approximately three miles from the Fort Worth Central Business District and is included in the 1863 W. B. Tucker Survey. The boundaries for the area are Jessamine Street to the north, the railroad tracts to the east, Berry Street on the south and 8th Ave. on the west.
Camp Worth, later called Fort Worth, was established in May of 1849, to help control Indian uprisings in the area. On the prairie south of the camp, the Joshua Ellis family settled after receiving a land grant that same year, 1849.
Fort Worth became a town and grew into a city, and in 1911, pioneer developer John C. Ryan platted what is now Ryan Place. He and his wife, Elizabeth Willing Ryan, wanted an area to rival that of "Quality Hill" on Summit and Pennsylvania Avenues, and they established the quality controls for the area that was always referred to as "elite" and "exclusive." The entrance gates on the east and west ends of Elizabeth Blvd. and on the north end of 6th Avenue marked the area as something special.
Discovery of major oil fields during this time gave impetus to the building of the stately homes along Elizabeth Blvd. and surrounding blocks.
In 1911 the first airplanes came to Fort Worth, and one under its own power landed in Ryan's Pasture, an area just south of Elizabeth Blvd. An estimated 10,000 people watched for the plane's arrival, and as it approached, the excitement became so great thousands swarmed onto the field where it was to land. The pilot, Calbraith Perry Rodgers, saw the difficulty and pretended to be landing at one edge of the field. As the crowd ran in that direction, he quickly landed on the opposite side. Fort Worth philanthropist and showman, Amon G. Carter, was one of the first to greet the pilot.
During the "Great Depression", building stopped and some houses began to deteriorate. Families moved to new suburbs and property values dropped in Ryan Place. In the 1950's the western gates were partially torn down to widen access to Elizabeth Blvd. The city planned to widen 5th and 6th Avenues into one way thoroughfares. The residents formed the Ryan Place Improvement Association in 1969 to fight the decline, closely guarding the boundaries of Ryan Place from intrusions that would bury the past. They were successful.
The Ryan Place Candlelight Tour was established to raise money to replace the gates which was accomplished in 1991. Elizabeth Blvd. if now in the National Register of Historic Places, the first in Tarrant County to be so honored. Ryan Place is the oldest intact residential neighborhood in Fort Worth. |