Vandergriff Building
a.k.a. Vandergriff Chevrolet Building; Thannisch Chevrolet Building
100 E Division St, Arlington, TXThe Vandergriff Building is the oldest standing commercial structure in the original town site of Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas. The building, a two-part commercial block type, was designed in 1928 by Fort Worth-based architect Harve Withers for J.C. Thannisch, a local automobile dealer. While Thannisch was an early pioneer in automobile sales in Arlington, the industry greatly expanded in the city due to the involvement of W.T. "Hooker" Vandergriff, who purchased this building in 1938 for his own Chevrolet dealership; Vandergriff and his son Tom, the city's mayor at the time, brought a General Motors assembly plant to town in 1952. Today the Vandergriff family owns three automobile dealerships in the area, and the General Motors plant remains in operation; this building stands as the earliest physical remnant of the American automobile industry's impact on the city of Arlington. The Vandergriff Building is therefore nominated to the National Register under Criterion A in the area of Commerce/Trade at the local level of significance as a property strongly associated with the growth of the automotive industry and greater commercial development of Arlington; its period of significance begins in 1928 and continues to 1960, the current fifty-year minimum, as the Vandergriff family's Chevrolet business continued to operate from this building until 1966, when it relocated a few miles to the east of this site.
Local significance of the building:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2010.
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.