The winning design, by the Dallas architects Wiltshire & Fisher (now F&S Partners) and their young designer Donald Jarvis, was hailed by Architectural Forum magazine as a model community center for mid-sized towns.

The civic center won a national design award from the American Institute of Architects in 1954, the year of its completion. Suburban in its scale the Fort Brown Center complied with Mayor Stokely’s call for regional awareness not stylistically but performatively, by incorporating patio-huertas, corredores, and ramadas to unify the complex spatially and experientially.