2344 MCE

Build date: 1927

Builder: Unknown

Architect: Wyatt C. Hedrick

Architectural Style: Tudor

Historical Deed Card: click here

Previous Owners:

J. C. Maxwell - moved in 1950 to 1100 Broad Ave, see 1987 estate sale of Mrs JC Maxwell here
C H Boyd Jr
WO Kelly Reer
Atlantic Coffee Co
Ethyl Alice Boyd Lewis
E R Manresa etux Maribeth
Mary Elizabeth Ashley

Interesting facts:

Records indicate the architect was Wyatt C. Hedrick per UT archives, may have original plans archived here

Biographical Sketch of Wyatt C. Hedrick

Wyatt Cephas Hedrick (1888-1964) was born in Chatham, Va. He attended Roanoke College and graduated from Washington and Lee College in 1910. Employed as an engineer by Lane Brothers of Alta Vista, Va. from 1910 to 1913, he became associated in 1913 with Stone and Webster Engineering Corp. of Boston as a construction engineer in their Dallas office. Hedrick ran his own construction company in Fort Worth from 1914 to 1921, when he became a partner of the architecture firm Sanguinet, Staats and Hedrick, which had offices Fort Worth and Houston. In 1925 Hedrick established his own architectural enterprise, with offices in Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston.

Hedrick's moderne-style buildings in Fort Worth include the Worth Theatre (with Alfred C. Finn, 1927), Lone Star Gas Co. Building (1929), Hollywood Theatre (with Alfred C. Finn, 1930), Aviation Building (1930), Central Fire Station and Fire Alarm Signal Station (1930), Texas & Pacific Terminal and Warehouse (1931), Will Rogers Memorial Center (1936) and City Hall (1938), (both in association with Elmer G. Withers), and Mrs. Baird's Bakery (1938).

Although his firm became one of the foremost exponents of the moderne style in Fort Worth, Hedrick completed many more local commissions in other stylistic idioms. He had an active practice in many cities (often with partners, simultaneously maintaining Hedrick & Lindsley and Hedrick & Stanley, for example) across the nation from the 1920s to the 1950s, and at one time his was the third-largest architectural firm in the country. Hedrick's other Fort Worth projects included the Medical Arts Building, Worth Hotel, Electric Building, Fair Building, US Public Health Service Hospital, St. Joseph's Hospital, and the Tarrant County Civil Courts Building of 1953, which was resurfaced and given a disguising mural by artist Richard Haas in 1988. He also designed the Sterlick Building in Memphis and scores of educational facilities throughout Texas, including Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas Christian University and Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth, and North Texas State University in Denton. Other important Hedrick projects included the Shamrock Hotel in Houston (object of a famous jeer by Frank Lloyd Wright, who, on seeing the rooftop sign in 1949, said, "I can understand the `sham,' but where's the rock'?"), Scott and White Memorial Hospital in Temple, and US Air Force bases in Iceland (at $221 million, the largest in his portfolio) and British Guiana. Hedrick is a charter member of TSA [Texas Society of Architects].

-Judith Singer Cohen

-From "Texas 50." Texas Architect (Nov./Dec. 1989): p. 58.