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Monday, September 24, 2018
Texas History Minute The skylines of such major cities as Dallas and Atlanta changed markedly in the 1960s and 1970s. Though it took millions of Dr. Ken dollars and an Bridges army of builders and architects, these projects emerged from the visions of only a handful of individuals. Trammell Crow was one of the leading developers of the mid-twentieth who brought these visions to reality, moving from a modest background to becoming a Texas business legend.
By the mid-1950s, he was the largest developer of warehouses in the city. He also worked with fellow Dallas real estate developer John Stemmons for many years. The two developed the Dallas Market Center in 1957. Stemmons, concerned with the large debt accrued with the project, largely ceased working with Crow afterward. However, Crow continued to expand and develop the property which eventually included the Dallas Trade Mart and Dallas World Trade Center.
The decade of the 1960s saw some of his most ambitious projects materialize. In the early years of the decade, he began working with Fred Trammell Crow was born in Georgia businessmen to create Peachtree Center in downtown 1914 in East Dallas. He was one of eight children in a small, three- Atlanta. Billed as “a city within a city,” developers envisioned it as a room house. His father was an accountant and provided a modest new downtown core for the city. living for the large family. From a A series of 14 buildings would be young age, Crow was willing to go built or redeveloped into out and find work. Starting at age conference centers, office space, and hotels. Peachtree Center ten, he took a series of odd jobs from plucking chickens to loading Tower, a 31-story building, was unveiled in 1965. In the late trains. 1960s, he partnered with financier David Rockefeller and developer Crow graduated from Woodrow John Portman to build San Wilson High School in Dallas in Francisco’s Embarcadero Center, 1932. Initially unable to afford college, he took a series of jobs to ultimately a complex of seven save for his education, which was buildings. The complex included difficult as it was during the Great hotels and office buildings, the Depression. Eventually landing a first of which was completed in 1971, with the last completed in $13 per week job (or about $254 1989. per week in 2018 dollars) as a messenger for a local bank, he was In the mid-1970s, inflation and able to enroll at Southern increasing interest rates started Methodist University in 1933. causing problems for Crow. This After an extended program of forced him to reorganize his night courses, Crow graduated company, but his properties kept with a degree in accounting in bringing in rents. Business 1938 and that year became the journalists began calling him the youngest certified public world’s largest landlord. His accountant in the state. business expanded into dozens of He worked for a Dallas accounting cities across the nation. By the firm before enlisting in the navy in boom years of the 1980s, a real 1940. During his time in the navy, estate development could scarcely he worked as an auditor to ensure be found in Dallas without proper fulfillment of contracts with Trammell Crow’s name on it. In 1984, he completed the 50-story defense manufacturers. Crow married Margaret Doggett in 1942, Trammell Crow Center in who had narrowly escaped death in downtown Dallas, a building that topped 700 feet in height. As a 1939 when the Nazis sank an noted patron of the arts, he donated English passenger liner she had much of his East Asian art boarded. He stayed in the navy until 1946, and returned to Dallas. collection to establish an Asian art museum open to the public inside Crow and his wife eventually had the building. six children. Crow was reported as a devoted father, attentive in their However as the new century lives, and would often bring them began, he slipped into Alzheimer’s Disease. His once brilliant mind to the office as young children for business slowly eroded until he while he worked on his various projects that developed into a real slipped away entirely in 2009 at age 94. His epitaph read, “Builder estate empire. By 1949, he saw of Buildings, Builder of People.” manufacturing and distribution His wife of 66 years passed away increasing in Dallas and the need in 2014. for storage. He built his first warehouse and leased out the The company Crow built was sold space to Ray-o-vac Battery. to CBRE Group, a CaliforniaHowever, almost half the space based real estate conglomerate, in was unused; and Crow leased the 2006 for $2.2 billion. remaining space to Decca Records. It was a different approach than the traditional Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, practice of building to the writer, and history professor. He specifications of a specific can be reached at customer. Crow made it drkenbridges@gmail.com. successful and quickly branched out. © 2018 The Howe Enterprise
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