When Fort Worth, Texas, unveiled Fire Station No. 5 in the city’s Southside neighborhood in 1911, fire engines were pulled by galloping horses. The facility was decommissioned in the 1970s, and the station became a storehouse and later a vodka distillery.
It now serves as the lobby of The Nobleman Fort Worth Tapestry Collection by Hilton, which opened to the public in April 2025. During the 20-month construction process, the 8,000-square-foot fire station was transformed into a hotel check-in area and a small retail space, and its second story into an event space. Interior subway tile and exposed brick were cleaned and refinished and the cement floors were cleaned, polished and sealed.
To preserve the station’s historical integrity, extreme care was taken to limit the size of the aperture that leads to the new hotel. “We made it a narrow hallway that attaches through a 10-foot-wide opening at the back of the building, so it has the least impact on the historic fabric of the structure,” says Ames Fender, principal of Fender Andrade Architects, the project’s historical architect of record.
After checking in, hotel guests pass through the portal and into an area featuring a modern bar and restaurant. “That makes you feel like you’re moving from the old to the new, as you enter the new building,” says Jeff Blackman, owner of Dallas-based Bedford Lodging, which bought the station in 2021.
Among the few major renovation concerns was the condition of the windows, as well as the barn door through which sped horses, and later gas-powered fire engines. “They needed to be replaced, and we replaced them with in-kind materials,” Fender says.
Also of concern to team members was an area to the immediate northwest of the firehouse. “It was owned by the city of Fort Worth, and that was where they grazed the horses for the first fire wagons,” Fender says. “It was important we continue to respect that open area. That’s why the hotel’s swimming pool and deck structure are there in that open space.”
The development is reviving the neighborhood, Blackman says, and garnering attention from the firefighting community. “There’s such a culture among firefighters. And that’s one reason we named it the Nobleman, drawing on the nobility of firemen.”
We get current and retired firemen stopping by the building all the time to take a look, and they’re so pleased we were able to retain the building.”
-- Jeff Blackman, founder and president, Bedford Lodging
