100 E. Fifteenth Street (formerly listed as 1621 Main Street), Monnig Dry Goods Company, Wholesale/Water Gardens Place, 1925; 1983. Monnig Dry Goods Co. was founded by brothers William and George Monnig in 1898 with a retail store located on Main St. between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets. The wholesale operation was added in 1901, and in 1925 the firm hired Fort Worth architects Sanguinet, Staats and Hedrick to design this wholesale warehouse. Built by Butcher & Sweeney, general contractors, the building stood at the southern end of Main St. The warehouse survived several plans to demolish it. When the Texas Highway Department planned the route of 1-30 through the central business district, the Monnigs protested. A four-lane elevated overhead freeway was eventually constructed rather than a depressed roadway which would have required the demolition of the Monnig’s warehouse. The building also survived the construction of the Tarrant County Convention Center and the Fort Worth Water Garden. Developers of both projects had also wanted the building razed.
Monnig’s vacated the building in February, 1982. It was subsequently remodeled as Water Gardens Place, an office complex. Corgan Associates was the architect for the project which completely changed both the interior and exterior of the building. The north and south facades were rebricked with red brick, and the original buff brick on the east and west facades was painted in variegated shades of red to match the other walls. The window configuration was also altered when new fixed pane windows were installed, and the building’s entrance was moved from the west facade on Main St. to the north facade on Fifteenth St. All that remains of the original ornamentation is the cast stone trim at the roofline. Prior to the 1983 remodeling project, the Monnig Dry Goods Co. warehouse would have been eligible for the National Register for its architectural design and as a reminder of Fort Worth’s commercial prominence in the 1920s. As altered, it no longer meets National Register criteria.