Pollock-Capps House
1120 Penn St., Fort Worth, TXThe Pollock-Capps House at 1120 Penn Street, Fort Worth, Texas, is one of two remaining 19th century residences in the once-fashionable neighborhood called "Quality Hill." This house, constructed in the Queen Anne style of the late Victorian period, reflects the prosperity of Fort Worth after the railroad made the city a center of the important cattle industry. The Pollock-Capps House was built in 1898, probably by an English architect, Howard Messer, for Dr. Joseph R. Pollock. Dr. Pollock, a native of Galesburg, Illinois, and a graduate of Hahanemann College, Philadelphia, practiced medicine in Fort Worth for twenty-five years, from 1885 until two years before his death in 1912. A homeopathic physician, Pollock served three separate terms as president of the Texas State Homeopathic Physicians' Association. The Pollock family built the house at 1120 Penn Street because they admired the house being constructed at 1110 Penn Street for Frank Ball, an attorney from Galveston. The Pollocks are believed to have employed the same architect, Howard Messer, to design a similar residence for them at 1120 Penn Street, next door to the Ball residence. In 1910, the Pollock residence was sold to William Capps, co-founder of the law firm of Capps and Cantey (later Capps, Cantey, Hanger and Short). This firm published the Fort Worth Record and was also a developer in real estate. The Capps family included three children, Count, Alba and Mattie Mae. The youngest of the three, Mattie Mae, married Frank Anderson, business manager of the Fort Worth Record. The Andersons, with their adopted son, William, occupied the house with Mr. and Mrs. William Capps. Mr. Capps died in 1925; Mrs. Capps in 1946; and Mrs. Anderson in 1963. In 1971 Mr. Anderson moved to the Forth Worth club and sold the house to Historic Fort Worth, Incorporated, a preservation group organized by the Amon G. Carter Foundation and the Junior League of Forth Worth, Incorporated. Historic Fort Worth, Incorporated, plans to restore the residence as a house museum. This property as well as the Ball House (later known as the McFarland-Eddleman House) are historic properties that will be incorporated into a proposed public park on the flood plain of the Trinity River, an area directly behind the bluff on which the two houses sit. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1972.
Local significance of the building:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.