Fort Worth Stockyards Historic District

Fort Worth Stockyards Historic District covers about 98 acres north of downtown Fort Worth. Its nucleus is the stockyards begun in 1890, later joined by the Armour and Swift packing plants, which opened in 1903. The district includes the stock pens, the 1902 Live Stock Exchange Building in Mission style, the 1908 Coliseum, the Horse and Mule Barns rebuilt in the late 1920s, the Old Stockyards Bank, and blocks of early twentieth-century hotels, saloons and shops along Exchange Avenue and North Main Street. The packing district was laid out as Niles City in 1898 and annexed by Fort Worth in 1922. The nomination presents the stockyards as the city's first industry and the main driver of its growth, with the yards serving as the southwest's leading livestock market from about 1900 into the late 1950s. By the time of listing, the Armour building had been razed and the Swift building was being demolished, while public grants and a private developer were funding restoration of the Coliseum and nearby buildings.