“Let’s build together” reads a sign in front of a property on Stadium Drive in Fort Worth’s University West neighborhood.

The property is sandwiched between two million-dollar Tudor-style homes built nearly a century ago. The stately street just steps from TCU sits on a hill overlooking the city. Unique brick, stone and stucco homes line the street, and mature trees lend necessary shade.

But the property with the sign is empty, save for a thick, tall tree on either side of the driveway.

The home was demolished in 2022. The advertisement in front of the property provides a unique opportunity to build a custom home in an established neighborhood 10 minutes from downtown, the zoo, museums and parks.

While new housing developments continue their march from the city, another home-building process is taking place inside Loop 820: the replacement of small, older homes with new, centrally located mansions.

Since the 1980s, said UT Arlington architecture professor Kathryn Holliday, old homes in urban neighborhoods have been slowly replaced by custom builds.

“In Fort Worth, it has come a little bit later, but it is definitely here to stay,” she said.

But, as quintessentially Fort Worth bungalows disappear, so do entry-level homes for first-time buyers, as well as neighborhood history.

Residential demolitions

Here are the locations permitted for residential demolitions from the beginning of 2018 to Jan. 20th, 2023, in the City of Fort Worth and their last known permit status. The map also shows new residential houses built since 2018 on the demolition sites. Circles represent the permit locations, and squares represent the new residential houses. Tap on permit locations for more info.

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Sources: Fort Worth Planning & Development permit center, Tarrant Appraisal District (TAD), NOTE: Some permitted demolition addresses did not appear in TAD's 2023 property data.

Steve Wilson swilson@star-telegram.com

Where homes are razed

In 2002, less than 50 residential razing permits were received in Fort Worth. That number surged past 400 in 2016. It dipped below 200 in 2020 but is again on the rise.

Between 2018 and 2023, more than 900 residential were demolished in Fort Worth.

The most demolitions during this time period were in the west side ZIP code that includes Arlington Heights, Monticello, Crestwood and Como. There were 184 demolitions here.

In the neighborhoods surrounding TCU, 157 structures were razed. There were 120 demolitions in Fairmount, Hemphill Heights and Ryan Place.

Southside, River Oaks and Stop Six each had about 60 demolitions.

In some cases, the plots sit empty, but most of these demolitions are the sites of conspicuous new builds.

Around TCU, the new homes are massive and utilitarian. Outside, they’re aggressively plain. Inside, they’re duplexes or four-plexes that can house a dozen students.

New homes in Arlington Heights are often much larger than the tiny bungalows they replaced. They stretch to fill their small, rectangular lots and have an aesthetic that mimics colonial or Tudor home styles. But some new homes in these areas are angular and modern.

Aesthetic choice is more limited for a new build in an officially historic neighborhood, like Fairmount, where new buildings must adhere to regulations about materials and form.

In Polytechnic and Stop Six, you’ll see starter homes onto lots where a home has been demo-ed.

Why demo?

In her 25 years of working in Fort Worth’s code compliance office, Shannon Elder has seen a shift around city-ordered home demolition.

Most home demolitions are initiated by a builder or buyer wishing to build a new house on a lot with an existing home. But some demolitions are the result of complaints made to the city of Fort Worth about a vacant dilapidated structure. If the Building Standards Commission, a board made up of residents appointed by city council members, determines the home is at risk of collapse, the city can order for the structure to be razed.

About 15 years ago, the city of Fort Worth might have conducted 100 demos in a year.

In 2022, the city demolished 26 structures, 15 of them primary residences. The rest were accessory structures, like sheds or commercial properties.

The reason for the difference? Dilapidated homes sit on land now considered valuable.

“People who cannot afford to take care of the structure are getting to the point of selling it to someone who is either repairing it or demolishing it,” said Elder.

For new owners choosing between repairing and demolishing, it often comes down to cost.

“Builders have a formula for how to build from scratch,” said Holliday, the architecture professor at UTA. “Building from a flat site is something that they already know how to do. And they can promote that ... Adaptive reuse of a house is more complicated and people often don’t even consider it because they’re told it’s a lot more expensive.

In University West, the recently demolished homes had fallen into disrepair or had not been well-maintained, said BJ Weber, president of the neighborhood association.

Less than 10 years ago, Weber’s neighborhood — and other communities surrounding TCU — was ground zero for the proliferation of so-called “stealth dorms,” or small multi-family structures that cater to local students and pop up in regular neighborhoods. Many were built on the site of razed single-family structures.

Outrage over increased traffic, noise and lack of parking prompted neighborhood residents to vote for more restrictive residential zoning.

In 2017, the concerns were renewed when a 10-bedroom home was constructed on Rogers Avenue. This prompted Rogers Avenue residents to initiate more zoning change requests.

HGTV, the tastemaker

When building a new home in an old neighborhood, builders often attempt to mimic the styles of existing homes built decades before.

“But they do it in a very different way than those 100-year-old houses had done,” said Holliday.

What does that look like?

Builders will invoke colonial style with shutters, but they’re often too small to cover the windows sandwiched between them. Gas lamps, a relic of bygone technology, are are a reminder of late 19th century vintage row homes.

If she were to construct a new home to fit into an old neighborhood, Holliday would pay special attention to the scale of the home, the materials and the way the house sits on the site.

When builders and developers don’t pay mind to those critical elements, and instead take a cookie-cutter approach, a new home can look out of place in an old neighborhood.

As for the aesthetic uniformity of new builds, Holliday points to hegemonic home style influencers like HGTV.

While people used to take cues from a variety of what were known as shelter magazines, popular home aesthetics are now streamlined.

“HGTV has created a stronger idea that one should be thinking about resale value, when you design and build your own home. And so there’s a kind of uniformity that it encourages in the way that people are approaching their construction,” she said.

Weber has mixed feelings about the new builds he sees in his neighborhood. On one hand, it’s sad to see an old home get torn down.

“But, it’s not really my business as long as they’re keeping up with the zoning and making sure things are well-kept,” he said.

Government’s role

When it comes to demolition and rebuild, the state of Texas and the city of Fort Worth make it easy to knock down a house and build almost anything you want in its stead.

Firstly, demolition permits are cheap and easy to obtain in Fort Worth. All you need is a licensed demolition contractor.

The cost of demolition for a Fort Worth property is determined by the size of the house.

For example, it costs $152 to demo a structure that is between 1001 square feet and 2000 square feet.

A house more than 20,000 square feet costs $1,527 to demo.

Furthermore, in 2019, the Texas Legislature made it illegal for local municipalities to pass ordinances banning certain building materials.

As a result, people building homes in Fort Worth — outside of official historic districts — can use any approved building materials, like shipping containers.

And it’s not possible for neighborhoods to issue restrictions that would make homes conform to a certain aesthetic.

Downsides to demo

It can be financially cheaper to raze a house rather than renovate it, but, that’s not the only cost homeowners should weigh when considering demolition, said Holliday.

“It has a huge environmental cost,” she said. “And so if we’re looking at this as an economic question, we should more fairly understand what the actual costs of sending a whole house to the landfill really are.”

There’s also the intangible cost of losing a historical structure.

In neighborhoods where the demolition and rebuild cycle took hold in the 1980s, the transition is complete.

Neighborhoods change, said Holliday. Change isn’t bad, necessarily, but certain types of change can erase history.

“I think we really lose a sense of the narrative of the city as a place that’s grown over time,” she said. “That may sound abstract, but some neighborhoods with all these little houses, those were houses for working class people. And as we lose them, we lose the ability to understand that the city was built through their work and their labor and that there were places for them to live.”