OAKHURST
To promote better communication, neighborhood unity, civic spirit and goodwill among area residents.
Our mission is to promote better communication, neighborhood unity, civic spirit and goodwill among area residents; to protect and promote the best interests of residents; to promote the improvement of public facilities and services, and to cooperate with government agencies and other civic public organizations for the general welfare of the residents of Oakhurst.
The Oakhurst Neighborhood Association is a volunteer organization, chartered in 1981, representing the residents of Oakhurst, a 1920s-era neighborhood in Fort Worth, Texas, and a designated Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.
By Susan Allen Kline, Historian; adapted from Oakhurst’s National Register of Historic Places Nomination and the History of the Landscape Architecture Firm of Hare and Hare, by Cydney Millstein, accessed April 16, 2005.
The Oakhurst Historic District is significant at the local level of significance as an example of the work of the landscape architecture firm of Hare and Hare of Kansas City, Missouri. Hare and Hare was a prolific, nationally known firm headed by the father-son team of Sidney J. Hare (1860-1938) and S. Herbert Hare (1888-1960). Their work included designs for private residences, residential developments, and institutional, commercial, and civic projects. The firm practiced extensively in the central and south-central parts of the United States, but their work could be found across the country. In Fort Worth alone, the firm had over 200 public and private commissions.
Sidney J. Hare was born in Kentucky and moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1868. He had no formal training in landscape design, but while in high school, he studied horticulture, civil engineering, geology, surveying and photography. He was employed in the city engineer’s office in Kansas City from 1881 to 1896, where he gained much practical experience. It was through this job that he met George Kessler, who was then a landscape engineer for the city and would become well-known for his parks and boulevard plan for the city. It was through Kessler that the elder Hare developed an interest in landscape design.