Herbert M. Hinckley

The dome belongs to the Frontier Centennial, Fort Worth's competing show to Dallas's official Texas Centennial fair. The Handbook of Texas says Amon G. Carter led it and Billy Rose directed it, and it opened on July 18, 1936, drawing 986,128 visitors to Dallas's 6.3 million. Wyatt C. Hedrick and Elmer G. Withers designed the Art Modern auditorium and coliseum, with Herman P. Koeppe's mosaic friezes of Western history, each ten feet by 200 feet. The 208-foot Pioneer Tower joins them. Rose's pitch was Dallas for education, Fort Worth for entertainment.

What the plaque says

Herbert M. Hinckley Engineering innovator who designed this dome for 1936 Texas Centennial. Staked reputation on plan (which uses a unique way of connecting radial arches at peak) despite doubts of many experts. Also designed nearby tower, buildings in major cities, and many bridges. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kimbell Art Museum — steps away
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 0.3 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 2.1 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 3.2 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Camp Bowie in World War I — 0.8 mi
• Ormer Leslie Locklear — 1.1 mi
• Ahavath Sholom Hebrew Cemetery — 1.2 mi
• Lawrence Clifton Elliott — 1.3 mi