The Mediterranean-styled Woman’s Forum Building, by Oklahoma City–based Sorey and Vahlberg, set the tone for large, architect-designed houses along what came to be known as “Oil Baron’s Row.” Irregular massing, red barrel-tile hipped roofs, pink stucco, and an arched entrance loggia create the atmosphere of a village of picturesque buildings, a place built up over time.
The building is located in Country Club Estates, which was developed in 1926 by N. H. Martin and W. B. Hamilton as a 660-acre garden-suburb division with deed restrictions, brick streets, underground electrical lines, street trees, and parks. It remains the most elite of Wichita Falls’s west-side neighborhoods. Hare and Hare of Kansas City laid out the curved streets that cross central Harrison Boulevard, following such City Beautiful models as Dallas’s Highland Park West (1923) and Houston’s River Oaks (1924). Parks to the east and south and the Midwestern State University campus (AQ26) to the west bracket the neighborhood. The Forum was where Wichita Falls’s oil elite held social and cultural gatherings. The property was donated to the Arts Council of Wichita Falls and is now used for visual and performing arts events and conferences.
The subdivision’s developers, Martin and Hamilton, donated 6 acres for the adjacent Benjamin Franklin Elementary School (1926, Voelcker and Dixon; 2112 Speedway), a Tudor Revival–styled building. Across the street at 2201 Speedway is the Gothic Revival Fain Memorial Presbyterian Church (1950, Bennett and Crittenden), notable for the stone tracery of the rose window and the nave windows.