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HISTORY
The Berkeley Place
neighborhood, which commonly includes the Cheltenham
subdivision, is located approximately two miles
southwest of the Fort Worth Central Business District.
Its borders are Park Place on the north, the railroad
track on the east, Ward Parkway on the south and
Rockridge Terrace on the west. (Editor's Note -
Note that Kensington Drive actually marks the western
edge of Berkeley.)
Initially part of the
1850 Mexican Government's Peters Colony, Adolph
Gouhenant obtained a grant to the land in 1860 and
surveyed it in 1886. The Gouhenant grant was often
recorded as the Goughenant and Gunah survey because of
the verbal nature of many business transactions during
the period. Part of the survey description includes:
"...from whence a Pecan tree 15 inches in diameter bears
North 40.5 degrees East, three Pecans from the same root
bears South..."
In 1901 William Joseph
Rogers purchased about 137 acres of this land for a
grain and dairy farm. The farm house still exists at
2230 Warner Road. The original farm house was altered in
the 1920's by "Pappy" Lee O'Daniel, who lived in the
house and later became Governor of Texas.
Originally, this house
was a two-and-a half story frame-turreted Queen Anne
mansion. But because deed restrictions in the Berkeley
Place development forbade wood exteriors, a brick
exterior was added. Currently, this square two story
brick structure is entered into the National Register of
Historic Places, and bears the proper historical
markers.
Development around the
Rogers farm began in 1906, when the Fort Worth
Development Company acquired the land, in turn selling a
portion of the eastern border to the St. Louis and San
Francisco Railroad.
In October 1907, a
"ravine" on the west side of this land, described as "a
wild and worthless area" was bought for $17,000 by the
City of Fort Worth and turned into the present day
Forest Park. In 1910 the Fort Worth Zoo was created on
part of this land.
The stone gates at the
entrance of Forest Park were built by the city in 1917,
and were restored by the Berkeley Place Association in
1980. The Forest Park Apartments, the first "skyscraper"
apartments in Fort Worth were built in 1928.
Berkeley Place, a
planned professionals neighborhood, expanded greatly
when the area was annexed by the City of Fort Worth in
1922. By 1924 the Rogers farm was the last remaining
farm in the Fort Worth city limits. In that same year
the farm was sold, and subsequently divided into
residential lots.
In the Tarrant County
Historic Resources Survey, published by the Historic
Preservation Council of Tarrant County, twenty-seven
Berkeley Place homes, and five other structures are
listed as being historically significant. |