Editorials

Thank you, yes, Texas

Why central squares are a good idea

Inspired by a visit to Fort Worth's bustling Sundance Square, the mayor of North Little Rock--the always searching Joe Smith--had a bright idea. And a promising one that's worth developing. Why not turn his city's now empty Argenta Plaza into a small-scale replica of that Texas square? The mayor could scarcely have chosen a better model or one with a richer historical and aesthetic background. You've got to admire both his vision and taste.

"I've looked at photographs of different plazas from all over the world," says the mayor, "and I kept coming back to this one in Fort Worth because I could envision it here. It's something we could have that looks real classy, but also something we could do for a reasonable cost. I see this as a place to meet, to relax and to enjoy the water feature, but also a place to have festivals and functions."

Like so many "original" ideas, this one isn't. Which is just fine. Why go with the untested when an idea that has stood up over the years is just waiting to be used close to home?

The idea of a geometrically centered central square, usually built around a county courthouse, may be one of northern Ireland's unheralded contributions to American urban planning. The pattern spread across the American frontier, reaching and replicated throughout Texas, repeated in one county seat after another.

You may not have known just where you were when you walked into a familiar and assuring courthouse square in the American Southwest, but you could be confident you were somewhere deep in the heart of Texas. The neatly squared-off pattern doubtless was brought to the Lone Star state and empire by Tennesseans, who tended to be among its first American settlers, and has endured generation after generation.

Only on the wind-swept northern stretches of that state and in its far Southwest is the pattern missing, probably because Germans and Mexicans did not construct their settlements around a central courthouse but preferred open plazas. But elsewhere in Texas, the familiar sight of intersecting streets meeting at neat corners is repeated again and again. Now it may be coming to North Little Rock, Ark., where it would be more than welcome.

Editorial on 05/27/2015

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