FORT WORTH, Texas — Culturally, Fort Worth might be as far as one can get from New York City.
But it might surprise many to know Cowtown once had a subway line that brought passengers downtown for shopping, work and other business.
“People loved it because they could park free, ride the subway for free and come into the store before going wherever they wanted to go,” said Marty Leonard, the daughter of Marvin Leonard.
Marvin and his brother Obie Leonard were brothers who owned and operated the Leonard Brothers Department Store. It began as a small family-owned business across the street from the Tarrant County Courthouse in 1918 but eventually grew to consume seven city blocks at its very peak, shaping and transforming Downtown Fort Worth.
“It was a big part of the city,” said Marty who maintained a collection of Leonard’s memorabilia and artifacts at a museum devoted to the store’s history before donating the items to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History earlier this year.
Among the most significant projects to shape downtown was the construction of the M&O subway line. Leonard’s needed a way to get more people in and out of the store and their idea was to construct the only privately-owned subway line in the country. The M&O subway picked passengers up near Panther Island and brought them straight into the basement of the store.
But perhaps more importantly, it was a mass transit system for people to get to and from downtown.
“The city had no problem with it and the leadership of the city was willing to work with them.”
Vintage WFAA footage archived at SMU’s Jones Film Library shows the digging of the tunnel in 1962 followed by the inaugural ride in 1963. The subway became such a part of Fort Worth’s transportation infrastructure, that the city occasionally explored ideas to expand the line though they never came to fruition.
Leonard’s was sold to the Tandy Corporation in the late 1960s and then again to Dillard’s in the 1970s. The building complex that took up seven blocks was ultimately destroyed in 1979.
Yet, the subway rail remained until its final ride in 2002.
“Very few remember Leonard’s itself,” Marty said. “But a lot of people remember riding the subway.”
Today, you can still find a few remnants of Leonard’s and the subway system in Downtown Fort Worth. A bronze historical marker honoring Leonard's at the site of the original storefront at Houston and Weatherford Streets refers to how
“Two farm boys with ingenuity, determination and 600 dollars built an empire.”
A few blocks away at 300 Throckmorton, a refurbished M&O railcar is on display in the lobby of One City Place, a building that sits 40 feet above where a closed portion of the subway tunnel still remains.