How Fort Worth's Oil Kings Built a Ridge of Mansions and Then Sold Them All Off: Westover Hills

In March 2024, a house in Fort Worth went on the market. That shouldn't be interesting — except this one had never been for sale before. Not once in 95 years. Westover Manor at 8 Westover Road was built in 1929 as a showpiece, put up to convince a skeptical city that anybody would want to live on a rocky hillside locals had nicknamed "Leftover Hills." The Fort Worth Star-Telegram named it the Home Beautiful of 1930. An oilman named John Farrell bought the advertisement for $50,000, became the town's first mayor, and personally paid Westover Hills' operating expenses out of his own pocket in its first year. The land had belonged to Amon Carter — the sandwich seller from a one-room log cabin in Crafton who bought his own newspaper's larger competitor when his paper was going broke, drilled 90 dry holes before he hit anything, and spent his life telling the world that Fort Worth is Where the West Begins. He never built there. He sold it, and his newspaper marketed it. From the very first transaction this place was inventory rather than a family seat. In 1937 the residents incorporated — not over a tax bill, but to escape a 1921 state law letting any Texas city over 100,000 annex an unincorporated area of 5,000 or fewer without anyone's consent. Fort Worth's response was to cut off their water within days. The settlement left the town independent and paying a premium for every gallon. They then taxed themselves and paved their own streets. Today: 277 houses, roughly 700 people, seven tenths of a square mile, and in 2000 the wealthiest place in Texas by per capita income. This is not a demolition story. The houses are still standing. What's going is everything inside them. Anne Burnett Marion died in 2020 in the last private house Ieoh Ming Pei ever designed. In 2021 her collection sold at Sotheby's in New York for $157.2 million. The house followed at $22 million. And Westover Manor went public for the first time in its history. Compare that to what Amon Carter did with his own Remingtons and Russells. He wrote them out of the market in his will, six years before the museum existed to hold them. CHAPTERS 0:00 The House That Had Never Been Sold 2:17 Leftover Hills 3:51 The Man Who Sold It 7:53 The Show Home 9:49 Who Came 12:07 The Vote, and the Water 14:26 The Town Hall That Washington Paid For 16:13 Seven Tenths of a Square Mile 17:35 The Last House Pei Built 18:51 The Selling Off 21:24 What Amon Carter Did With His 23:48 What Fort Worth Has and Westover Hills Does Not 26:44 What It Was Always For 28:27 What Remains SOURCES Westover Hills, TX — Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/westover-hills-tx Carter, Amon G., Sr. — Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/carter-amon-g-sr About Us, Westover Hills Facts — Town of Westover Hills https://www.westoverhills.us/residents/pages/about-us-westover-hills-facts Westover Hills — Historic Fort Worth, Inc. https://historicfortworth.org/neighborhood/westover-hills/ Historic Westover Hills Estate on the Block — Fort Worth Magazine https://fwtx.com/news/historic-westover-hills-estate-on-the-block/ Own a piece of Fort Worth history with storied mansion, listed publicly for the first time — The Dallas Morning News https://www.dallasnews.com/abode/2024/03/20/own-a-piece-of-fort-worth-history-with-storied-mansion-listed-publicly-for-the-first-time/ I.M. Pei-designed home hits Fort Worth market at $22 million — CultureMap Fort Worth https://fortworth.culturemap.com/news/real-estate/im-pei-westover-hills-mansion/ Historic Preservation — City of Fort Worth Comprehensive Plan https://www.fortworthtexas.gov/files/assets/public/planning-data-analytics/documents/comprehensive-planning/pdf-adopted/13_historicpreservation.pdf