The Omni Theater's projector, housed beneath the seats, is 6 feet tall and weights 1 ton.
LET'S TAKE THE STREET CAR: JOURNEYING THROUGH FORT WORTH'S PAST
One of the goals for expanding the physical Museum of Science and History was to enhance the historical aspect of the exhibitions the Museum offers. The new 3,000-square-foot Fort Worth History gallery provides just that opportunity. From transportation to aviation, the gallery will feature a changing stream of large, multi-layered exhibitions that tell the many stories of the region’s colorful history.
The Museum’s opening exhibition, Let’s Take the Streetcar: Journeying Through Fort Worth’s Past, follows the rise and decline of city and interurban rail travel in Fort Worth from the mid 1870s to the mid 1930s. By focusing on the development of five areas – Spring Palace; North Side Rosen Heights; Lake Como and Camp Bowie; the TCU Area; and Stop Six/Handley, Lake Erie and the Interurban. The exhibition reveals how rail travel greatly influenced the settlement and development of the city.
Museum guests are encouraged to board an exquisite replica of a late-19th Century streetcar and travel throughout Victorian Fort Worth. Designed and constructed by Museum exhibits staff, the streetcar moves and rumbles as it takes guests to popular Fort Worth landmarks. It’s as if families are on a Sunday afternoon outing, exploring the sights and sounds of Fort Worth during an early heyday.
Trolley stops within Let’s Take the Streetcar: Journeying Through Fort Worth’s Past, include:
Karporama – Texas Spring Palace: Visitors could take the South Main mule-drawn street car to the end of the line, near the Texas and Pacific Railway, and walk a short distance to the Texas Spring Palace. Modeled after the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota, and Ice Palace of St. Paul, Minnesota, the Spring Palace was conceived as a regional agricultural fair. It advertised Texas by displaying all the natural products of the state in an educational, cultural, and entertainment exhibit designed to attract settlers and investors.
Pleasure-seekers assemble here every evening – Lake Como: Lake Como was built in 1889 on the west side of town by promoter H.B. Chamberlain to cool power generating equipment. The 40-acre artificial lake provided water for the resort and cooled the generators that powered the Inn and a street car line that ran the three and half miles from downtown to the hotel.
Lake Erie Tonight – The Lake Erie Amusement Area: The 30-acre Lake Erie, with its pavilion, was one of the most elaborate theaters and amusement areas in North Texas. The two-story pavilion that jutted over the lake had indoor vaudeville acts, concerts, movies, dances, and a roller skating rink.
Buy a Lot in God’s Country – North Side, Rosen Heights, and White City: Cattle have always been important to the city of Fort Worth, but by the early twentieth century, meat packing plants and stockyards emerged as a major presence on Fort Worth’s north side. Workers rode the street car down North Main Street on a line that crossed the Trinity River and ended at the steps to the Armour and Swift plants. A young Jewish immigrant named Sam Rosen from Kovarsk, Russia, saw the possibilities the meat packing plants brought to the area. In 1901 he purchased land west of North Main Street at present-day Twenty-Fifth Street. He divided it into home lots to sell, naming the subdivision Rosen Heights.
Free land, Free utilities, and a Street Car – Camp Bowie: Named for Alamo defender Jim Bowie, the camp occupied 2,186 acres in the Arlington Heights and Monticello neighborhoods of west Fort Worth. Geographically most of the camp encompassed an area between the current University Drive to the east, Horne Street to the west, the current Camp Bowie Boulevard to the north, and Vickery Boulevard to the south.
Church, Community, and Education – Stop Six: Stop Six is located between the communities of Polytechnic and Handley. The historically African American community, one of the oldest in Tarrant County, stretched between Rosedale and Berry Streets and from Edgewood Terrace to Stalcup Road. Village Creek separated Stop Six from the mostly anglo area of Polytechnic Heights.
Horned Frog Crazy! – TCU: Texas Christian University, founded in the city in 1869 by brothers Addison and Randolph Clark, returned to Fort Worth in May 1910 after a fire gutted its administration building on the Waco campus. The school’s trustees chose to return to Fort Worth because the city’s civic leaders had made a genuine and generous offer to the university. TCU would receive 50 acres of land, $200,000 in cash, guaranteed utility hookups, and streetcar services for the campus.
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