The End of the Beginning

Quite awhile back I tracked down some locations of the first episode of Walker, Texas Ranger in Dallas.  I thought we could have a look at some Fort Worth locations of that episode and end with a bang (ha! Get it?  Because there's an explos...oh never mind).

But I found myself stymied but the ever changing nature of downtown Fort Worth.  For example, in the climax of the first episode, the bank robbery scene took place at what was the offices of the Fort Worth Star Telegram which they made up to look like this:

A few years back, when I was taking pictures, it looked like this:

The newspaper moved their offices a block over and we are left with a location that just doesn't match up with a screen grab from a 20 year old TV show episode.  There's just no justice in the real world.

However, in TV world there's plenty of justice delivered from the gun barrel and boot heel of Mr. Chuck Norris.  In the episode he starts of across the street from the "bank."  That side of the road was also completely unrecognizable from the episode but if you look behind Chuck there's a definitive "marker" that can still be seen today:

The Texas Historical Marker commemorates the Neil P. Anderson Building which has an interesting history, the highlights of which include being a cotton exchange and being featured in the background of an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.

My problems with documenting the shooting locations of this episode continued with the attempt to capture the parking garage behind the exploding truck:

This was the best I could do but I'm assuming this building has been through some changes as well since the windows don't seem to quite match up with the shot from the episode:

 

So the bad guys then try to make their getaway along Taylor St. but I'm confident the Rangers got 'em.

You can see that there has been some cosmetic changes to the buildings in the background but the same basic architecture is still in place:

Change eventually comes to every man and every street corner but thankfully freeze framing old movies and TV shows will never go out of style.