Fort Worth Gazette

HOLD US, SOME BODY For We're Growing Mighty Fast,
AND DON'T WISH TO GET Too Big For Our Little "Breeches,"
But Some Attention Must Be Paid to a Sturdy Youngster Who Can't Make His Old Granddaddy's Small Clothes Fit.

Seventeen years ago Fort Worth was the twenty-second city in Texas in point of population.
Today she is the fourth in population, and, with the exception of Galveston, the first in commercial importance, and away up in front as a railroad town.
That is what the cold figures say-statistics gathered and compiled by men whose business it is to be accurate in the minutest details.

In 1876 Fort Worth's population was 1123, and last year it was 29,472, according to the advance sheets of the city directory now being compiled by Morrison & Fourney, who have published twelve directories of the city. This year, although the compilation has only reached the letter "R," the increase over last year down to that letter is 1011, and a greater increase will be noticed in the letters R. S. to W., making the total legitimate addition of nearly 4000 souls. From the directory source, therefore, which is known to be conservative and reliable, Fort Worth has now nearly 33,000 inhabitants.

The growth of the city keeps pace with the increase of population, and the directory men, who are going over every foot of ground in the city, and who visit every house in it, observed forty-four handsome houses under process of construction in thirty days. The number of vacant houses noted were 30 per cent less than the figures showed for the last directory. New houses are going up all over the city, built by the building and loan associations and private parties.

Only eleven vacant stores were stared at by the name-getters and those were mostly small places, hardly fit for use on account of age or bad condition from various reasons.

Handsome stores were found springing up in the places of frame ones and vacant lots where the "flying jenny" and the knife throwing gentry used to hold forth are now the busy marts of trade, occupied by big buildings of imposing height and splendid architectural design. Wherever a new building was put up it was found to be at least 50 per cent better than the one that stood before it.

Not including the above buildings and the various improvements too numerous to mention, a new city hall of stone has just been completed, a superb federal building of the same material, a handsome Masonic Temple, a court house to cost $400,000, an enormous packing house, the largest south of Kansas City, and which will begin operations in a few days, are three splendid public and private enterprises which the present month will see.

Buildings are actually being erected this month which will cost $765,000.

The directory men do not say so, but it is stated on reliable authority that a number of very large jobbing houses will be established here during the early part of next year, and these will most probably want new buildings.