Hillcrest Historic District

HIllcrest

The deep history of land ownership and development reaches back to the 1850s. In 1906, a suburban developer from Denver began platting a neighborhood and created a boulevard linking it to the downtown area.

"Chamberlin Arlington Heights" was launched, but no houses were built on what is now the Tremont block. World War I proved to be a blessing for the next developers. Robert McCart bought up acreage and donated it to the U.S. Army for troop training. With the construction of Camp Bowie, the Army contracted for installation of water, sewer, electric power, and telephone lines in 1917. The camp closed at war’s end, leaving those elements of infrastructure. This led to the second, and successful, development era of the 1920s and 1930s.

The block became part of the Hill Crest Addition to the City of Fort Worth; construction of homes finally began in 1925 and continued into the late 1930s. World War II halted the process, but postwar homebuilding filled all but one of the few remaining lots by 1947.