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The
1916 Federal Post Office Building
TE Photo, May 2003 |
The
now vacant Federal Building / Post Office in Port
Arthur remains a formidable building. Built to impress, it's massive
weight must've lowered downtown Port
Arthur another foot toward sea level when it was built around
the turn of the (20th) century.
When Port Arthur
streets were flooded during the hurricane that struck the upper gulf
coast of Texas in 1915 - the building suddenly became more than just
a place to buy stamps or mail postcards. It became salvation.
Several hundred people (most of them without an invitation) took shelter
in the all-night facility - two of them being Mr. Wright and his pregnant
wife. The falling of barometric pressure during a hurricane often
hastens labor and that was the case here. Mrs. Wright gave birth inside
the Port Arthur Federal Building - uncomfortable, but dry.
Evidently the delivery was without benefit of a physician - or else
the boy might've been named after the doctor. As it was, the parents
were so grateful that they named the boy after the building - giving
him the official name of Federal Building Wright.
No one seems to know anything about the life after birth of Federal
Building Wright. It is said that he went by the abbreviated F. B.
Wright during his adult life.
We will never know his accomplishments, his dreams or ambitions -
assuming he had some. His mark on the world seems to be simply his
name - and the story that we're still telling over one hundred years
after his birth.
© John
Troesser
"They shoe horses, don't
they?" - September 10, 2005 column |
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