Fort Worth’s Fritz G. Lanham Federal Building Is on the Way Out
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The good Lord knows, and just about everybody else does, too, the federal government eventually became the sort of sprawling enterprise Thomas Jefferson warned against. It’s bigger than William Taft’s bathtub.
One measure of that growth sits at 819 Taylor St., where the government once needed a $20 million building to house 37 federal agencies.
The federal government sent out a notice last week that it plans to dispose of the Fritz G. Lanham Federal Building and its adjacent parking garage in downtown Fort Worth as part of a broader effort to reduce its real estate holdings and operating costs.
Our federal building is on the way out. So that’s got us down a little bit. Yes, the government needs to shrink, but not our footprint. (That’s how this works.)
Oh, well.
The U.S. General Services Administration announced the move Sept. 10, saying the Fort Worth properties are among buildings being moved through the agency’s disposition process because they are considered unneeded or too costly to maintain.
Fort Worth’s federal building is more than 669,000 square feet in office space. The parking garage is another 8,300 square feet.
“The federal government’s real estate portfolio must evolve with mission demands, workforce needs, and taxpayer expectations,” GSA Administrator Edward C. Forst said.
So, what does that mean for people in Fort Worth — America’s 10th-largest city — who have federal business to attend to? A chat bot?
“GSA is coordinating with tenant agencies to evaluate future space requirements and guarantee continuity of operations,” a GSA spokesman told me this morning. “We are not relocating out of the central business district and will follow all applicable laws and regulations throughout the transition. GSA will continue to offer cost-effective workspaces to federal customers and ensure that those spaces are safe, efficient, and capable.”
GSA will also partner with the impacted federal agencies to identify cost effective, efficiently utilized leased space solutions where there is a continuing mission need in or near the downtown Fort Worth area.
The agency did not announce a timetable for disposing of the Lanham building or specify in its announcement how the property would ultimately be transferred. GSA’s disposition process can include public sales and auctions, negotiated sales, and transfers to other government agencies for public purposes.
The building at 819 Taylor St. is named for Fritz G. Lanham, who represented the Fort Worth area in Congress from 1919 until his retirement in 1947.
The 14-story building was designed by Wyatt C. Hedrick and Thomas E. Stanley. The feds included it among more than 440 federal properties on the GSA’s “non-core” list in 2025 — those sites deemed underutilized and potentially up for sale.
A contemporary newspaper account of the building’s dedication almost 60 years to the day in September 1966 described it as a $20 million federal office building and reported that 37 federal agencies were represented there. Then-U.S. Rep. Jim Wright spoke at the dedication, with Lanham’s widow, and family attending. Lanham died in 1965 at age 85. He is buried in City Greenwood Cemetery in Weatherford. So, too, is Wright.
Mayor Willard Barr also took in the dedication ceremonies.
The building was, Wright said, "the embodiment within our city of the government of our nation," according to a GSA history of the edifice.
Since 1919, Texas’ 12th Congressional District has been represented by Lanham, Wingate Lucas, Wright, Pete Geren, Kay Granger, and Craig Goldman.
Lanham succeeded James C. Wilson, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Woodrow Wilson.
More recently, the building has housed numerous federal agencies. GSA documents for a previous renovation project identified tenants including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Department of Transportation.
The Fort Worth move is part of a much larger GSA effort to shrink the federal real estate portfolio. Since January 2025, the agency says it has disposed of more than 127 properties, generating $614 million in proceeds and avoiding $1.15 billion in delinquent maintenance and operating expenses. GSA also says lease negotiations and reductions have eliminated more than $1 billion in costs.
Other properties have been disposed of in Washington, D.C., Texas, Maine, Minnesota, California, and Tennessee.
GSA has identified additional federal buildings for accelerated disposition and estimates removing those properties from its portfolio will eliminate another $2.7 billion in delinquent maintenance and annual operating costs.
Only $39.973 trillion to go.