Legacy in Motion:
Camp Bowie District Inc. Turns 25
By Stephen Montoya
Some places in Fort Worth seem to exist in two eras at once.
Camp Bowie Boulevard is one of them. Its red bricks still run beneath the tires, its old buildings still summon memories, and long-time institutions continue to do business alongside newcomers that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago.
For Lydia Guajardo Rickard, executive director of Camp Bowie District Inc., that continuity is personal. She has lived near the boulevard all her life, watching it change while holding on to the pieces that make it unmistakably Camp Bowie.
This year, CBDI celebrates its 25th anniversary, but Rickard sees the milestone as part of a much longer story. The organization was created in 2001 to strengthen the corridor, and its work has meant balancing new investments with protecting the landmarks that define Camp Bowie's identity.
Ridglea Theater. Ridglea Village. The former Camp Bowie Theater, now home to Frost Bank. For people who grew up in Fort Worth, these are more than buildings. They are landmarks in the city’s collective memory.
“What’s interesting to me is how we haven’t lost the visual character of the boulevard through the numerous decades that the boulevard has existed,” Rickard says. “Our organization is really focused on moving commerce forward while still preserving these icons that are the character builder of the area.”
That balance between preserving the past and creating something for the future is part of what has attracted longtime Fort Worth developer Mark Harris to Camp Bowie. Harris, president of 8 Feet Development Inc., grew up experiencing the boulevard and remembers going to lunch at the Back Porch after visiting the museums.
“Growing up along the bricks was really special,” Harris says. “It kind of became a linchpin of my future thoughts of a great place where I wanted to basically start a business and saw historical preservation as a main point of that.”
Harris sees Camp Bowie as a rare place to stay rooted in its history while continuing to evolve.
“It’s just such a special place with so much future potential to have a true neighborhood experience with a kind of cultural voice to the city,” he says.
That evolution, he says, is particularly evident in the boulevard’s independent businesses.
“In our Amazon instant world of big-box stores, it is definitely an anti-big-box place,” Harris says. “Whether it’s small retailers curating to the people around them, to the season, to what’s happening in Fort Worth, we have some really talented people running really talented businesses.”
His own work on the boulevard has also revealed just how much history remains embedded in its buildings. One property now home to Chieffalo Americana and Reed’s Jewelers had once been a streetcar stop and later became the Oasis liquor store after Prohibition. The building was constructed with Palmer bricks, and when Harris and his team removed the exterior cladding, they discovered layers of its past in the brickwork.
“We saw all these bricks with different paint spots on them,” Harris says. “And we noticed red and blue and white and different colors all over the place, like it was taken apart and put back together. And it absolutely was.”
The building had been dismantled in Waxahachie and transported to Fort Worth, where it was reconstructed.
For Harris, discoveries like that underscore why preservation and development do not have to be competing ideas. History can remain part of the story even as a building takes on a new purpose.
That same philosophy is reflected in the places Rickard sees shaping Camp Bowie today. The Market at Ridglea has brought together mostly women-owned businesses under one roof, creating what Rickard calls a “unique assembly” of businesses. Bowie House, meanwhile, has added a decidedly newer chapter, offering a hotel, restaurants and bars that turn a stop on Camp Bowie into an occasion.
His own work on the boulevard has also revealed just how much history remains embedded in its buildings. One property now home to Chieffalo Americana and Reed’s Jewelers had once been a streetcar stop and later became the Oasis liquor store after Prohibition. The building was constructed with Palmer bricks, and when Harris and his team removed the exterior cladding, they discovered layers of its past in the brickwork.
“We saw all these bricks with different paint spots on them,” Harris says. “And we noticed red and blue and white and different colors all over the place, like it was taken apart and put back together. And it absolutely was.”
The building had been dismantled in Waxahachie and transported to Fort Worth, where it was reconstructed.
For Harris, discoveries like that underscore why preservation and development do not have to be competing ideas. History can remain part of the story even as a building takes on a new purpose.
That same philosophy is reflected in the places Rickard sees shaping Camp Bowie today. The Market at Ridglea has brought together mostly women-owned businesses under one roof, creating what Rickard calls a “unique assembly” of businesses. Bowie House, meanwhile, has added a decidedly newer chapter, offering a hotel, restaurants and bars that turn a stop on Camp Bowie into an occasion.
And then there is Kincaid’s, which celebrates 80 years on the boulevard this year. For Rickard, its importance is not theoretical. When she and her husband were planning their wedding, they skipped the formal rehearsal dinner and chose Kincaid’s instead.
“We wanted it to be relaxed and something that our guests could co-mingle in and share time with,” she says. “It’s only appropriate that the entry to Kincaid’s says ‘Where friends meet to eat.’”
The next 25 years are already taking shape. The Ridglea Theater is expected to enter a new chapter under new ownership, while the 6333 complex is also poised for change. Bowie Hills is bringing adaptive reuse and new businesses to a full city block, including the forthcoming Morning Bar.
For Rickard, the exciting part is that the future does not require erasing the past.
“I’m just really excited about what seemed like very dated areas along the boulevard,” she says. “Those are like moving into the next chapter of their lives and still preserving the architectural styles of some of them that are kind of like a timeline stamp of the growth of the boulevard and Fort Worth as well.”
That evolution is supported by something less visible but equally important: a strong sense of safety and partnership. CBDI works with the Fort Worth Police Department and private security to help maintain a corridor where people feel comfortable shopping, dining and doing business.
After 25 years, Rickard is careful not to claim too much credit for Camp Bowie’s success. CBDI, she says, is only one part of a much bigger story.
“I think that we are a small cog in the success that the corridor enjoys,” she says. The real foundation, she believes, was laid by generations of people who understood what the boulevard could become.
“We’re able to celebrate 25 years because of 100 years of belief in Camp Bowie and strength in Camp Bowie,” Rickard says. “We have many legacy businesses that are nine to 10 decades old. And that’s a testament to the belief and the need of what Camp Bowie is, not just as a street, but as an ecosystem for business.”