A look back in time
In 1946, thirteen-year-old Frank Widacki moved to Fort Worth and into Markeen Apartment K with his mother Josepha and his aunt Mary. His father Ted had become quite ill when Frank was very young, so to support the family, Frank's mother had moved to Fort Worth in 1941 to go to work with her sister Mary at the Dickson-Jenkins sewing factory. Frank's sister Christine would join them in 1948 and their father was finally able to come in 1950. Christine married and moved away in 1952 but after their parents passed away (Ted '65, Josepha '93), Frank continued to live at the Markeen Apartments. On December 8, 1999, Frank was the final resident to move out of the building prior to the start of our restoration work.
Since we first met Frank last year, he has been a good friend and an invaluable source of information not only about the building and the neighborhood but also about Fort Worth. In the early stages of our work, we found a collection of photographs tucked away in the basement underneath his Apartment K. As a boy, Frank became very interested in photography. In order to make his new hobby more affordable and more fun, Frank built his own small darkroom in the basement. He taught himself by trial and error and probably took and developed thousands of photographs over the years. The box we found was filled with negatives from around 1950. Naturally, we were very curious about what they might reveal. Frank had long since forgotten about them so he eagerly allowed us to have prints made. We've spent several hours together recently going over them and decided to post some of them here to share some of the history of this wonderful building and the neighborhood.
Click the photos to open each album!
The neighborhood
Downtown
Old Car Crashes at the corner
