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Zakery Sanchez
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Zakery Sanchez
When Zakery Sanchez steps into an abandoned building, he doesn’t just see broken windows, rotting wood, and graffiti-tagged walls. He sees stories — etched into crumbling plaster, whispered in echoes, revealed in shafts of light that pierce through collapsed ceilings. For Sanchez, a Fort Worth–based photographer and videographer, urban exploring isn’t about cheap thrills. It’s about finding beauty in ruin and preserving pieces of history that cities are quick to bulldoze away.
“I’ve always been intrigued by buildings, not just abandoned ones but the ones with dark histories that people don’t want to talk about,” he says. “To me, buildings are like people. The scars talk more about their era in time than a history book.”
Sanchez’s obsession began with nothing more than curiosity and a camera. He found a partner in exploration in Scott Grace, a fellow adventurer who nudged him past hesitation. “I was too nervous to go by myself,” Sanchez admits. “Scott’s a go-getter. He said, ‘Let’s go,’ and I brought my camera. That first trip, we explored three or four buildings, and I’ve been hooked ever since.”
What Sanchez and Grace discovered in Fort Worth’s back corners is history in its rawest form — stripped bare, often painful, and nearly always forgotten. Few buildings embody that more than the hulking structure at 1012 N. Main Street, perched on the edge of the Trinity River diversion channel with a red-brick façade weathered by decades of neglect. Sanchez calls it the Ellis Pecan building, but many locals remember it for a far darker chapter in its history.
In the 1920s, it served as the epicenter of division in Fort Worth. Klavern No. 1 — a Ku Klux Klan auditorium — was erected in 1924 after the group’s original hall was bombed. Built by contractor B.B. Adams and designed by Earl Glasgow, the structure could seat 4,000 and once housed a membership of more than 6,000.
Zakery Sanchez
Inside, the vaulted roof and tall arched windows bore witness to rallies where the Klan spread its gospel of fear. The irony of the place is stark: in 1925, just months after construction finished, famed magician Harry Houdini performed on its stage. Weeks later, the hall was bombed again. It survived, scarred, and by 1927, it had passed into a more mundane use as a warehouse for Leonard’s Department Store. Over the decades, it became a boxing arena, a concert hall, and finally a pecan warehouse for Ellis Pecan Co., which occupied the hall for decades before it fell into abandonment and decay.
Today, the building stands as perhaps the last purpose-built Klan Hall left in the United States. But its story is turning. In 2019, the nonprofit Transform 1012 purchased the property with a vision: to reclaim the space as the Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing, honoring the memory of Rouse, a Black Fort Worth meatpacking worker lynched in 1921. Contractors are now working to clear debris and stabilize the historic shell, with demolition of non-historical additions set to conclude by mid-October.
For Sanchez, walking through the Klan building is less about gawking at decay than it is about confronting ghosts. “It’s heavy,” he says. “You feel the aura, the history. Parts people would rather not talk about, but that’s exactly why I love these places. My camera doesn’t just capture what’s in front of it. It captures what lingers in the atmosphere. It’s dark, gritty, ominous — and beautiful.”
On one trip, he and Grace slipped in from the back of the Ellis Pecan Building and found themselves on the auditorium’s stage — the very stage where famed magician Harry Houdini once performed. “It’s wild to think of him performing there shortly after the building was bombed,” he said. “You can feel the history in the walls, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it.”
Sanchez was so enamored with what he saw that he devoted some considerable time to chronicling and creating a documentary about the building titled "The Last Standing KKK Building," available on YouTube.
Zakery Sanchez
Not every expedition comes with a ready-made story, but Sanchez insists each site has its own presence. Some of his favorites include the Inc. Cary Building, a Dallas hospital abandoned for twenty years, and the old Fort Worth Power and Light Company Power Plant, located at 411 N. Main St.
But for those who might want to follow in Sanchez’s footsteps, urban exploring isn’t a tidy pastime. Scaling fences, dodging security, and crawling through busted windows are part of the deal. “Some places have already been demolished before you even get there,” he says. “I hate missing them. Everything is frozen in time. You can see what life used to be like, and that’s powerful.”
But while the practice can skirt legality, Sanchez approaches it like a historian, intent on documenting what the city would rather erase. His photos — moody, textured, unflinching — capture not just decay but the weight of memory.
“Go with a friend,” he advises would-be explorers. “Be safety-conscious, but don’t be afraid to take risks. Keep it raw, keep it honest. Don’t sanitize the history. That’s the whole point.”
Sanchez also stresses the need for flashlights and air respirators, due to the debris and dust particles that can hang in the air and the lack of electricity. Many of these structures have very dark rooms and corners that can only be illuminated by a flashlight.
Every city goes through changes. Developers clear away the old, the dangerous, the unfashionable. That’s why Sanchez wants to catch them before they’re gone. “Fort Worth is full of hidden places people drive by every day and don’t know the stories,” he says. “I want to capture that. I plan to keep doing it as long as I can.”
For Sanchez, photographing abandoned buildings isn’t just about texture and mood. It’s about giving voice to the voiceless — the structures and the people who might otherwise be forgotten.
Sanchez puts it poignantly: “Every wall has a story to tell, if you’re brave enough to listen.”
