Food & Fiber Building — Fair Park

Designed by George Dahl as a temporary exhibit hall for the 1936 Texas Centennial, the building now called Food & Fiber was originally designated the Poultry Building. Part of the collection of “Texanic” Art Deco exhibit buildings in Fair Park, Food & Fiber is listed as a contributing structure in the Fair Park National Register Historic District. Victim of several unsympathetic additions, renovations, and deletions in the intervening decades, the building had fallen into disrepair by 1996. GFF’s rehabilitation project at Food & Fiber was completed in two phases.

Phase One renovations replaced the roof, mechanical and electrical systems, and stabilized the building’s structure. Phase Two repaired all exterior plaster, restored clerestory windows and the historic scheme of 27 colors, removed later additions, and reconstructed missing elements including the aviary trellises and neon. Original construction drawings and historic photographs were used to ensure the accuracy of reconstruction. Four Centennial murals by Carlo Ciampaglia were conserved and restored after having been painted over for 50 years.