I miss Leonard's Subway.
Leonard's Department Store used to have a subway line to shuttle customers to their downtown Fort Worth store from a free parking lot by the Trinity River. Here's a picture of one of the original cars. Those cars were replaced by these tres-70's cars when the Tandy Center was built. The subway line was closed three years ago, in part due to low ridership, and in part to build the new Radio Shack headquarters.
UPDATE: Here's four more pages of Leonard's/Tandy's subway images, and more about Leonards Brothers history. I also made a correction - the subway closed in 2002, not last year.
The downtown courthouse is magnificent. Its addition is wretchedly, monstrously, and hideously abominable.
Don't get me started on the Firestone Apartments, though. The fat-cat developers (which were likely in cahoots with the city administration) booted my great-aunt out and bulldozed the house that the family had owned since the mid 30's. Grrr. Eminent domain, my pinkytoe.
(p.s. Here is the home page for the architecture links.)
1 comment:
about the leonard brothers stories and pictures.
thanks for the memories.
the best was their bakery above the grocery store. there was a vertical conveyor belt that would bring down the fresh loaves of bread. wonderful!
i also remember buying huge black-diamond watermelons for half-a-cent a pound. the leonard brothers had their own farms and sold their own produce. also wonderful!
at Christmastime they had the most enormous toy department. i know that at least once they had an elevated train inside the toy department that went through a wall and there were animated scenes.
also one time they had a train engine inside where kids (including me) could play conductor. looking out of its windows we could see movies taken from a real train route, so it was very realistic.
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