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HomeMy WebLinkAboutBryan College Station A&M---An Architectural Tour • B R Y A N C 0 L L E G E � ,� S T A T O A & M - AN ARCHITECTURAL TOUR STEPHEN Fox T • The Rice Design Alliance gratefully dedicates this guidebook to SARA H. AND JOHN H. LINDSEY Supplement to Cite 41: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston, Spring 1998. © Rice Design Alliance. Reproduction of all or part of this publication without permission is strictly prohibited. Managing editor Barrie Scardino Graphic design Minor Design Group Photographs Hester + Hardaway A B R Y A N - i _ E The Bryan townsite was surveyed by Theodore Kosse, engineer for the Houston & Texas Central Railway, on a 640 -acre tract in Brazos County that the Brazoria County planter, William J. Bryan, a nephew of Stephen F. Austin, had conveyed in 1860 for construction of the railroad line. The Houston & Texas Central was built to funnel the wealth of the Brazos River valley, the foremost cotton production area in Texas in the mid 19th century, through Houston. The outbreak of the Civil War halted railroad construction at Millican, in the southern part of Brazos County. The H &TC tracks did not reach Bryan until 1866 -67. The railroad passed through the townsite in a north -south alignment and Kosse oriented Bryan's gridiron street plan accordingly. But he rotated the boundaries of the townsite 45 degrees off a north -south align- ment, so that, in plan, the street grid appears to be inscribed in a diamond. There are shifts in the street grid on all sides of the original townsite, where it changes direction to conform to older boundary alignments. The grid inscribed in a diamond was a pattern that Kosse repeated for a number of the townsites he surveyed for the Houston & Texas Central between Houston and Dallas. These included Hearne, Calvert, Bremond, Kosse, Thornton, Groesbeck, Mexfa, Rice, and Ennis. Kosse adopted the Broad Street model for the Bryan town plan. Bryan's principal thoroughfare is the 100 -foot wide Main Avenue. The blocks fac- ing Main are only a half block deep. The Main Avenue storefronts back directly onto adjacent parallel streets — the main line of the H &TC on the east, and Bryan Avenue on the west — an attribute that reappears in Bremond and Calvert. Architectural historian John Garner's observation about 19th - century Calvert was equally true of Bryan: the railroad (and the cotton trade which occasioned its construction) was the constituent fact of urbanization in the Brazos River valley. B R Y A N I 1 Exit the Highway 6 Bypass at Briarcrest Drive, is the campus's only remaining historic building, head east, and after a right on Boonville, proceed the Spanish Mediterranean style Memorial Hall to Copperfield Drive. This is where Bryan most (1924), the work of A &M architecture professor resembles College Station. A left onto Copperfield Henry N. June. leads past Sam Houston Elementary School to the gated Courtlandt Place subdivision. On axis, at the Robertson St. leads to E. 21st Street, then to end of the entrance street, is the newest contender Bradley St., then to E. Martin Luther King St. for Bryan's grandest house, an enormous Highland This is the neighborhood of Candy Hill, one of Park style French chateau by Dallas architect Bryan's historically African- American neighbor - Richard Drummond Davis (1999). hoods. Bryan's best -known contemporary writer, Sunny Nash, grew up at Bradley and Dansby in Return on Boonville Road to William Joel Bryan Candy Hill in the 1950s and '60s, at the end of the Parkway, then turn right onto Boonville. At the segregation era. She vividly describes this neigh - Boonville-Ursuline- Osborn intersection is a vacant borhood in her memoir Bigmama Didn't Shop at tract that has been the site of two of Bryan's most Woolworth's (1996), and an adjoining neighbor - architecturally significant buildings. Both were hood called Graveyard Line, closer to the Bryan destroyed by fire. The Villa Maria Ursuline City Cemetery, where residents set up tables in Academy (1902), a girls' school established by the streets for nightly domino games. Nash refers the Ursuline sisters of Galveston, occupied a to her neighborhood's "awkward, small -town, Victorian Gothic academic building designed by urban -rural balance," an attribute that pertains N. J. Clayton of Galveston. The academy closed in not only to Candy Hill but 1929. After the building burned, the property was much of old Bryan. acquired by William S. Howell, Jr., a grandson of the wholesale grocer Dr. J. W. Howell. Howell had Proceeding west on Martin been in the diplomatic service and was first secre- Luther King leads one tary at the U.S. Embassy in Paris in the early 1930s through Bryan's Freedmen when the chancery there was designed by the New Town neighborhood, where York architects Delano & Aldrich. In 1938, Howell Endtime Evangelical Prntecostal Shiloh Baptist Church Church commissioned Delano & Aldrich to design his (1986) at 500 E. Martin expansive country house on this site The long, low Luther King and N. Houston, Howell House faced Boonville its gatehouse and the city's oldest African - driveway faced Osborn. The Howell House was American congregation, has the only building in Texas by Delano & Aldrich. occupied its site since 1870. The northern tier of Kosse's At 95 Allen Forest Lane, off Galilee Baptist Church original town plan was Osborn, is the last in a series $` the historically African- of houses built by several American, working class, and immigrant sector of generations of the Allen fami- Bryan. Twin towers and a geodesic dome give the 41111ilalliNimma 0 ly, who operated Bryan's best - Endtime Evangelical Pentecostal Church at 504 known educational i nst i tu - Allen and Armstrong houses W. Martin Luther King an eschatological aspect. tion, Allen Academy. The last The Galilee Baptist Church (1972) at 808 N. family member to administer Logan and W. 18th was designed by College Wolk NOW4Lie tt.�. the academy, Nat B. Allen, Station architect David G. Woodcock the steeple Jr., built this ranch type house was the congregation's finishing touch. Robert (1952). Its combination of C. Neal Elementary School (1998) at W. Martin materials marks it as the work Luther King and N. Randolph of Bryan architects Norton & Manorial Hall, Allen Academy is one of a number of striking Mayfield. Farther west along f riy postmodern public schools Ursuline St. lie the R. V. Armstrong House (1911) _ by Bryan architects Patterson at 1200 Ursuline and, next door, the Rivers O. Associates. The complex Allen House (191 1) at 1120, both set deeply back has a strong civic presence, from the street. Across the street at 1113 Ursuline is Robert C. Neal Elementary which is amplified by public the Nat B. Allen House. Ignominiously, the his- recreational facilities in the toric Allen Academy campus is now a Federal _ city's Neal Park, also designed by Patterson Prison Camp. At the Ursuline -E. 22nd intersection — Associates. Following W. Martin Luther King to 2 B R Y A N N - its conclusion, past the ex -Carver Elementary 20th and 22nd were once part of the G. S. Parker School (1949, Norton & Mayfield) and the ex- Lumber Co. complex — the cotton gin opera - Kemp Senior High School (1962, E. Earl Merrill), tions on the west side and the lumber yard on one finds that the "rural" of Sunny Nash's "urban- the east. The lumber yard sheds survive, as does rural" balance asserts itself with suprising rapidity. the office building (1911) at 419 N. Main and E. 22nd. Across the street, the entire west -side At 900 N. Parker Ave. and W. 18th is the J. B. block front is filled with one -story brick buildings, Leonard House (c. 1875), a Victorian cottage which represent the early 20th - century storefronts with a kick roof over the inset veranda. Historian characteristic not only of Bryan but other Brazos and preservationist Marlene Elizabeth Heck Valley towns. It is such individually unexceptional believes this may be one of the oldest buildings buildings as these that give Main Ave. its strong - in Bryan. The cedar trees that surround the house form urbanity, the only such space in Bryan or give it the look of a rural College Station. The buildings at 406 -400 N. homestead. Cedars seem to Main contain a cornerstone dated 1900, which have been the preferred tree '' "' identifies them as the Allen Smith Buildings. of 19th - century Bryan. Main Avenue widens at 23rd Street, marking the The Lawrence Shed of the transition from the blue - collar downtown sector Bryan Compress and Leona House to the middle -class uptown sector. Warehouse Co. complex in – the 1000 block of N. Bryan _ At 219 N. Main Ave. and E. 24th rises downtown Avenue (c. 1930s) is one of - Bryan's mini - skyscraper, the 7 -story Varisco the most intact reminders of Building (1948). Built by Brazos A. Varisco, the Bryan's identification with most prosperous member of Brazos County's cotton and the railroad. The Sicilian community, it was designed by Bryan 6 -bay, metal surfaced shed architects Philip G. Norton with its saw - toothed profiles Bryan Compress & Warehouse Co. and S. C. P. Vosper. Sam is striking in its simplicity and Vosper's touch is visible in repetition. Across the street are a row of wooden the building's modernistic duplex cottages, a residential complement to the terra cotta spandrel panels working landscape represent- and crowning Greek frets. ed by the cotton sheds and - Varisco Building Despite its highrise aspira- the railroad tracks. Adjoining - tions, the Varisco Building the sheds on the south area`' is securely integrated into the small -town pair of 1950s modern struc- streetscape of Main Avenue. tures, the Bryan Central Fire Station Drill Tower at 802 Bryan Central Fire Station Drill _ Th crossroads of downtown Bryan are Main and Tower N. Bryan Avenue and, across 25th (now William Joel Bryan Parkway). In the the street, the Bryan Central early 20th century, Bryan's major financial institu- Fire Station, at 801 N. Bryan Avenue (facing W. tions staked out this intersection. Dallas's fore - Martin Luther King). These were the only two most corporate architects of the pre- Depression public buildings that Caudill, Rowlett, Scott & – era, Lang & Witchell, designed the Art Deco jewel Associates designed for the City of Bryan (1953). of downtown Bryan, the limestone -clad ex -First State Bank & Trust Co. Next door to the fire station is a railroad -era land- _ Building at 200 N. Main mark, the Bryan Ice Co. Building (1912) at 800 (1929). The insistent parapet N. Main Avenue and Martin Luther King. Built by decorations suggest that this the Houston Ice & Brewing Co., its distinctive was planned as the base of a scalloped gable and high -set multi -story building. Across sidewalk terminate the vista First National Bank Building Bryan Parkway at 120 N. down Main Avenue. Across i Main Ave. lay the competi- the street, at 725 N. Bryan, is – - - tion, the ex -First National Bank Building (1919), the bowstring -truss roofed 1 ! a small, beautifully detailed, limestone and brick - Scardino Garage (1945). faced, neo- Renaissance strongbox, constructed by The blocks of Main between Bryan Ice Co. Building Bryan's oldest bank. First National was the Bryan B R Y A N I 3 family bank William J. Bryan's descendants are through the 1930s. The Masonic building was still connected with it. At 100 N. Main and W. designed by the Dallas architects Flanders & 26th, the 4 -story E. H. Astin Building (1915) Flanders and displays the impact of early 20th - housed Bryan's third bank, the City National Bank. century Chicago School progressivism on James E. Like the Varisco Building, the Astin Building fits Flanders. Two railroad -side hotels survive with into the downtown street scene, alterations. J. Allen Myers built the Hotel Charles despite its height. at 201 S. Main (1912), but it was his son Charles f 1 who had Atkinson & Sanders give it a streamlined The crown floating over the pylon `y ' refacing (1939). Although covered with porcelain of the Queen Theater at 110 S. enamel panels, the three -story Hotel Bryan at 211 Main (by Dallas movie theater archi , ifEr S. Main (1911) by Dean & Giesecke exhibits an tect Jack Corgan & Associates) is a architectural kinship to the Masonic Hall in its downtown landmark. The 7 -story La red brick facing and hipped roof. Salle Hotel at 120 S. Main and W. 27th (1928) was designed by Austin - Note how the rear wall of the brick -built Grand Hotel La Salle and the architect George L. Walling for Quern Theater Lumber Company Building at 202 S. Bryan Ave. businessman R. W. Howell across (now Old Bryan Marketplace, Panabella's Grand Main Ave. from the original site of Cafe, and the Childrens Museum of the Brazos the H &TC passenger station. Across W. 27th Valley) curves along the alignment of the Street, the dark red brick J. W. Howell Building — International & Great Northern Railroad track. at 200 S. Main Ave. (1906) housed the wholesale The l&GN entered Bryan in 1900 its main line grocery company founded by R. W. Howell's was routed along W. 27th before arcing to the father. Both the La Salle and the Howell Building _ south. On S. Bryan one is very aware of the backs are due to be rehabilitated as a hotel and confer- of the business buildings that face Main. Sunny ence center by Houston developer Morgan Hill — Nash recounts in Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's (1998, Michael Gaertner, architect). that there was a racial undertone to this spatial arrangement. African- Americans did their business The block on the east side of Main, running from _ from the Bryan Ave. rear of cafes and shops, rather E. 26th to E. 28th, is two blocks long. In Kosse's than the Main Ave. fronts. town plan, this double block was an open square that stretched east to Regent Street and was Presiding over the west edge of downtown is St. bisected by the H &TC tracks. In the 19th Andrew's Episcopal Church (1914) at 217 W. century, free- standing buildings were built on — 26th Street and S. Parker, the oldest church build - this unbounded square, which explains the unusual ing in Bryan. Its stout, brick, neo- Gothic tower is lack of block -front continuity. Bryan's Victorian — a local landmark. The church's Astin Memorial city hall, which burned in 1909, stood near the — Parish House (1920) is by College Station archi- 26th Street intersection. It was eventually replaced tects LaRoche & Dunne. Across the street at 216 by the Palace Theater, which collapsed in 1986, — W. 26th, the U.S. Post Office (1915, Oscar leaving only the stage house intact. The Mathes — Wenderoth, Supervising Architect of the Group of Houston, with Treasury) offers a classical complement, along David G. Woodcock of with a basement -level courtyard. The live oak College Station, incorporat- trees that begin to line W. 26th Street and adja- ed the stagehouse into cent streets identify the West Side has having Schulman Palace Theater once been one of Bryan's elite neighborhoods. park (1996), a walled, open - air amphitheater and urban [yasonic Hall and Carnegie The grandest house on park. Bryan's red brick -faced Public Library Bryan's West Side is the Masonic Hall at 107 S. Main L ._ Roger Q. Astin House at Ave. (1910) and its red brick i l 508 W. 26th Street and N. Carnegie Public Library at 111 S. Main Ave. Logan (1922), designed by (1903) were built as free - standing buildings. The Astin House Dallas's foremost eclectic library is the oldest remaining Carnegie library architect, H. B. Thomson. building in Texas. It is an early work of F. E. At 100 S. Congress Avenue and W. 26th is the Giesecke, the first professor of architecture at imposing Colonial Revival -style George W. Texas A &M and College Architect from the 1900s Smith House (1911). Across the high embank- 4 B R Y A N N ment of the I &GN tracks, harking Bryan. Nearby at 1201 Ridgedale, in another back to an earlier era, is the Milton neighborhood spun off the Kosse grid, is a mod - Parker House of c. 1885 at 200 S. ern landmark, Ben Milam Elementary School Congress and W. 27th, a suburban (1953), designed by William E. Nash with A &M Victorian villa, its grounds enclosed architecture instructor Harry S. Ransom and Stone with a cast iron fence. Parker was a & Pitts of Beaumont. Although CRS made its repu- cotton merchant, partner in the tation with modern school design in the 1950s, it Parker -Astin Hardware Co., and one never designed a public school in Bryan Nash's of a number of locally impor- Milton Parker House Ben Milam is the town's representative school tant businessmen who, in the complex of this period. Harry Ransom worked as late 1860s, moved with the ti .'+ a' �i' an occasional designer for CRS and Nash. Many advance of the H &TC from of the young architecture faculty at A &M in the Millican to Bryan. Note the 1950s were part-time designers for CRS and other gate piers at W. 27th and S. s local firms. Randolph and the line of cedar trees leading toward Tin Hous Vi; " zs " This distended territory the Parker House. In the 100 -4 41 1 reconnects with the Kosse block of S. Randolph, visible up the driveway . r+ c t grid at the end of S. Bryan behind the cottage at 608 W. 27th Street, is the Ave., the south tip of the corrugated, galvanized, sheet metal- surfaced Tin -" "` original townsite. The George Samuel Parker House House that College Station architect and A &M Victorian style George professor Gerald Maffei built (1988). Whatever Samuel Parker House (800 its pretensions might once have been, the West S. Bryan, 1898 remodeled as Side neighborhood now absorbs Maffei's low -tech a one -story house following a vernacular as comfortably as H. B. Thomson's fire in 1947) is located across Swiss Avenue grand manner. ,oe Beck Street from the com- pact, manorial style Charles Tucked within the curve of the Myers House S. Myers House (800 Beck, l&GN track at 203 S. Parker Ave. is _ c. 1932). Alice Myers Kyle (a the tiny Temple Freda (1913), once subsequent owner of the Parker House with her home to Bryan's Reform Jewish con- husband, A &M dean Edwin J. Kyle) and Charles gregation and a very early work of / \ Myers were the siblings of Bryan (and subsequent- the Houston architect Joseph Finger / \ ly Houston) landscape architect J. Allen Myers, Jr. and his partner L. S. Green. In the Their father, the senior J. Allen Myers, had been next block, at 306 S. Parker Ave., one of the transplanted Millican merchants. is the much more conspicuous St. Temple Freda Anthony's Catholic Church (1927), S. Bryan leads to W. 28th, which crosses Main designed for Bryan's Sicilian parish and the H &TC tracks. At S. Tabor and 201 E. by Houston architect Maurice J. 27th St. is the ex -Bryan Municipal Building Sullivan as a scaled -down version of (1929), a modernistic, cast stone city hall and fire the 12th - century church of San station by the Austin architects Giesecke & Hams Michele, Pavia. Adjacent to the for- Bertram E. Giesecke was the son of Professor F. E. mer site of St. Joseph's Hospital is the modernistic Grant Clinic (1939) Giesecke. The corner of E. 27th and S. Regent is anchored by the ex- Wilkerson Memorial Clinic at 308 W. 28th St. and S. Sterling, (1931) by Waco architect Gabe Lewis. The pre - an early work of William E. Nash, St. Anthony's sent Bryan Public Library now the dean of Bryan architects. Catholic Church /41 ;. (1969, E. Earl Merrell, Jr.) 0:0 faces the Municipal Building Moving westward along W. 28th, one passes out at 200 E. 27th Street and S. of the original townsite at S. Congress, a transi- Regent. It occupies what was tion made apparent by the grid shift. Only seven once the H &TC Passenger blocks from Main Avenue, one is suddenly on the Bryan Municipal Building Station block. outskirts of town. A left onto Commercial takes one past the Tampico Cafe at Commercial and At 300 E. 26th Street and S. Washington is the 1 0 1 1 Olive, an authentic slice of backwoods most architecturally significant building in down - B Y A N I 5 town Bryan, the extensive- Matthews's tribute to MacKie & Kamrath's St. ly altered Brazos County John The Divine in Houston. At 901 E. Bryan Courthouse and Jail, Parkway and N. Pierce, the point of grid break, (1956, Caudill, Rowlett, ' "`` lies Travis Elementary School (1929), designed Scott & Associates). CRS by Giesecke & Harris in the linear Art Deco style abandoned the monumen- that they employed for the Municipal Building tality traditionally associated Brazo Count Courthouse and J downtown. From the last decade of the 19th cen- with Texas courthouses for tury well into the 20th, one of Bryan's most prolif- a suburban scale and spa- is builders was the English -born Charles E. tiality indebted to their Jenkins, who built the Edward J. Jenkins House schools of the period. This at 607 E. 27th St. (1895) for his brother, a phar- was the first important macist. Historian Margaret Culbertson has deter - k . modernist county court- mined that this towered and shingled house was house in Texas, and it is based on a design by the Knoxville architect and Bryan's most famous mod- house -plan publisher George W. Bryan City Hall ern building. The 26th Street ;� Barber. At 508 E. 28th St. and S. side of the courthouse, faced Houston Ave. is the First Methodist with hard red paving brick and polished traver- Church (1951, 1955) by Houston tine, is fairly intact, but the one -story, courtyard- architect Edward Bodet, a stream - centered wings on the Bryan Parkway side have lined neo- Gothic church faced with been subsumed within an elephantine rear addi- limestone, like St. Mary's. Note the tion (Jack. W. Cumpton & Associates). Mirroring figural carving perched near the top the scale of the CRS courthouse is the one -story of its attenuated tower. Bryan Utilities Building (1967) at 300 S. Washington Ave and E. 28th, with its articulated Jenkins House Where the grid shifts direction on concrete roof plate, by William E. Nash. Backing E. 29th, one enters the East Side up to this spatially amorphous cluster of public _ Historic District in the Phillips Addition, a focus buildings is the present Bryan City Hall (1988, of historic preservation efforts in Bryan. Another Williamson Group) at 300 S. Texas Ave. and imposing Colonial Revival house is that of Mrs. E. 29th. Assertively facing College Station, it James H. Astin (1907), matriarch of the Astin exhibits an aggressive application of maroon -col- family, by Waco architects Messer & Smith at ored reflective glass. — 600 E. 29th St. and S. Hill. The W. Olin Sanders House (1910) at 610 E. 29th St. was the home of Today Texas Avenue divides downtown from — Bryan architect W. Olin Sanders, Jr., and is still Bryan's east side neighborhoods as forcefully as owned by members of his family. The Edward the H &TC tracks once did. Originally called Hall House at 611 E. 29th St. (1902) contributes Dallas Ave., Texas was renamed College Ave. in _ to the significance of the district. Houston archi- the early 20th century. During the first half of the tect J. Rodney Tabor, a member of the first class 20th century, the blocks of S. College between E. to graduate in architecture from A &M, designed 27th and E. 31st streets were Bryan's residential the Allister M. Waldrop House (1910) at 615 E. grand avenue. In the mid- 1960s, the connection 29th St. and S. Baker. The between S. College Ave. and S. Texas Ave. was re- popularity of progressive engineered so that Texas took priority and the architecture in Bryan is name of this portion of the street was changed to attested by the Dr. reflect this. Its role also changed to that of an Seborn C. Richardson urban highway, the primary commercial strip of House at 811 E. 29th. At Bryan and College Station. The banks deserted the edge of the district at Main Ave., moving three blocks east to Texas Ave. Edge House 307 S. Coulter Drive and into free- standing pavilions surrounded by parking — E. 29th is the columned, lots. In the 1980s, most of the banks moved again, neo - Georgian style away from downtown altogether. _ Robert B. Butler House (c. 1947) by William E. Nash. The grandest house on the East Side, vying Bryan's oldest Roman Catholic parish, St. Joseph's — in size with the Astin House on the West Side, is Catholic Church (1959) at 600 E. 26th Street and — the Eugene Edge House at 609 S. Ennis St., N. Preston, is Bryan architect W. R. Dede between 31st and 30th (c. 1920), built by a Main 6 B R Y A N N Ave. clothier and attributed to the Texas Ave. is the J. H. Conway House, the last of Russell Brown Company of Houston. 11: c , the old "College Avenue" grand avenue houses. The McMichael - Wilson House at ` C L-1 712 E. 30th St. (1903) is a grandly I Where Texas Ave. bends to the southeast, one scaled C. E. Jenkins -built house. enters the old "new" highway (the "old" highway The William R. Cavitt House was S. College —this is the curve that was re -engi- (1876) at 713 E. 30th St. and S. McMichael - Wilson neered in Texas' favor in the 1960s). The head - Bryan's most famous House Haswell is B ry quarters of Butler, Inc., the contractor and pre - Victorian house and one of the old- 41 engineered metal building manufacturer at 1504 S. est buildings in the city it occupies _ Texas, is an early work of Bryan architect W. R. a half -block site in the district. It is Dede Matthews (c. 1956). Carson St. connects especially notable for the splendid Texas to S. College Ave. allee of cedar trees framing the front walk. Both the Cavitt and At 2101 -2105 S. College Ave. and Carson are McMichael - Wilson houses were the Hillcrest Apartments (c. 1951) by Norton & rehabilitated by A &M Professor Mayfield, which are especial- and Mrs. Paul Van Riper. William J. Cavitt House / ;,J.. ly prized by A &M architec- Bryan's grandson Travis B. Bryan occu- ture staff and students. pied the house at 615 E. 30th St. and S. Hutchins. ion Downstream, at 1505 S. Members of the Bryan family still live in the College, is the ex- Norton & Phillips Addition. Another notable house built Mayfield architecture studio by C. E. Jenkins is the first Eugene Edge House Hillcrest Apartments (1949). Williamson St. leads at 508 E. 30th St. and S. Hill (1902). • into Lakeview Addition e "tk • ; alongside a municipal golf W. Olin Sanders, Jr., produced several houses on szv, course that was, in the 1940s his home territory. The Wilmer R. McCullough and '50s, the Bryan Country House at 600 E. 32nd St. and S. Haswell is a one- Club. At 2313 Truman St. is story French provincial style house, while at 812 the extensively altered Caudill House S. Ennis St. and E. 33rd is the picturesque manori- – William W. Caudill House al style J. M. Jones House (1931). Sanders and his + (1946, Caudill &Rowlett), a , partner J. B. Atkinson collaborated with Giesecke , l , the first work of Bryan archi- & Harris on the imposing Stephen F. Austin High ' ' tecture to be published in a School (1939) at 801 S. Ennis St. and E. 32nd. national architectural jour - Austin anchors the intersection with its flamboy- nal. On the south side of the ant angled corner entrance, a restatement of the Olexa House golf course, at 3101 Green Giesecke firm's Martin High School in Laredo. – St. and W. Villa Maria Road, Near it, at 715 E. 31st St. and S. Ennis, is the ' *� is the handsomely main - Spanish style Roy C. Stone House (1925). One .. ' tained Edwin R. Olexa of the most imposing houses in the East Side dis- House (1956), designed trict is the Hudson - Harrison House (1896) at 616 by architect and CRS E. 31st and S. Haswell, employee E. R. Olexa and moved to this site in 1984 Munnerlyn Village subsequently owned by and restored by Dr. and architect, A &M instructor, and CRS partner Mrs. J. Russell Bradley. Charles E. Lawrence. Green St. leads south to the parallel Ehlinger and Lynn drives in the At E. 31st St. and 701 S. Munnerlyn Village subdivision. At their west Texas Ave. is the Searcy Stephen F. Austin High School end is one of the most striking neighborhoods in Clinic (1950), a low - lying, Bryan, a collection of stationary mobile homes Frank Lloyd Wright- used as affordable housing. The trailers are faced inspired suburban profes . with corrugated siding, which gives them a curi- sional building faced with ously vanguard look. The landscape improvements limestone and designed by are, in some cases, quite imaginative. Bryan (later San Antonio) architect L. Brooks Martin. Villa Maria Road connects Bryan's south and north Next door to it at 705 S. Searcy Clinic sides, arcing through what still remains in places B R Y A N I 7 undeveloped territory on the southeast side of roof in 1998. Partners P rY town. This is the post- highway suburban strip it A. M. Martin and James H. makes S. Texas and S. College seem spatially inti- Lemmon, Jr., of the same mate by comparison. Off E. Villa Maria at 3300 BW Building firm were responsible for Parkway Terrace is Sul Ross Elementary School the BW Building across (1961) by C. R. Watson Associates of Bryan, f < the street at 2909 -2919 which is very CRS -like in character. At 3403 _ S. Texas Avenue (c.1956), Parkway Terrace is the starkly modern D. Brooks which also features a Cofer, Jr., House (1964) by A &M architecture continuous clerestory. professor Theo R. Holleman. Near the intersec- tion of Villa Maria and E. 29th are two major sub - Medical Arts Clinic At S. Texas and Mary Lake urban institutional complexes of the 1960s: St. Lane, a pair of modern clinics Joseph's Hospital and Health Center (1971) by confront each other. The ex- Medical Arts Clinic Matthews & Associates at 2801 Franciscan Drive at 3501 S. Texas (1951, Caudill, Rowlett, Scott & and the pyramid- roofed pavilions of Crestview Associates) is faced with CRS's distinctive hard Home for Senior Citizens (1964) at 2502 W. red brick and lit by a continuous clerestory band Villa Maria by E. Earl Merrell, Jr., with Thomas tucked beneath the low- pitched roof overhangs. B. Thompson of San Antonio. The ex -Dr. W. H. Ritchey Clinic (c. 1953, William E. Nash with Harry S. Ransom) at 3500 S. East 29th Street leads to Esther Boulevard, which _ Texas is more contained, with its flat roof, framed intersects Wayside Drive in Cavitt's Woodland loggia, and walls of glass. Heights Addition. Woodland Heights was planned in 1935 Down Mary Lake Lane, on both sides of the street by landscape architect N. M. between S. Texas and Holick, are several duplex McGinnis for the W. E. houses in varying states of repair. These spill Cavitt Estate along the new around the corner to 3419 -17 Holick Lane. Built Highway 6 (now S. Texas), in 1953 by College Station builder, developer, and just as construction was near Cunningham House architect manqui William D. Fitch, this was the ing completion. It was the architects' ghetto in the 1950s. CRS partners first of the highway- related Wallie Scott and William M. Pena lived here, as subdivisions and Bryan's first did A &M design faculty members Edward J. garden subdivision. At 2111 ''' Romieniec, Frank Lawyer, Ed Olexa, Tiny Wayside Dr. is the beautiful- Lawrence, and Dave Yarbrough. A &M landscape ly detailed, limestone -faced architecture professor Robert F. White designed Earl C. Cunningham House Bryan Building and Loan Bldg. _ a garden and swimming pool area (no longer (1959) by Merrell & Vrooman, extant) shared by the housing units. The integra- an especially notable work of A &M architecture — tion of house and carport beneath a low- pitched, professor Richard E. Vrooman. At 2601 -2609 S. open gable roof represents the most pervasive Texas, corner of Lawrence, is the trimly detailed modern house type in Bryan and College Station Mauro Building, a strip office building with a con- of the 1950s. tinuous clerestory built by the father of Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro (1956, Henry — Off S. College Ave. at 100 W. Brookside Dr. is D. Mayfield, Jr.). At 2800 S. Texas and Oak, the the ex -W. R. Dede Matthews architecture studio four -story, reinforced concrete ex -Bryan Building _ (1961), with its laminated wood beam roof deck. & Loan Association Building (1967), designed by _ After CRS moved to Houston in 1958, Matthews's Chartier C. Newton for the office of Matthews & — office became the talent pool of Bryan and Associates, stands out as one of the most architec- — College Station, especially when A &M faculty turally distinctive buildings on Texas Ave. Next members Charles E. Estes, John Only Greer, door at 2900 S. Texas and Dellwood is the ex- _ Hal Moseley, Jr., Chartier C. Newton, and W. Clayton's Restaurant (1957) by E. Earl Merrell, _ Cecil Steward, Jr. were associated with the firm Jr., of the Martin, Lemmon, Merrell & Vrooman — in the 1960s. partnership, a spirited example of designed road- — side architecture, with its wide roof overhangs and At E. Brookside and S. College one enters North angled window bays. Unfortunately, its owner, — Oakwood Addition, laid out in 1938 by the First Federal Bank, added a gratuitous mansard _ College Station developer H. E. Burgess and 8 B R Y A N N designed by Frederick W. Hensel, the first proles - unassuming entrance sor of landscape architecture at A &M. Bryan archi- ' ° ``� (alongside a strip shop - tect Henry D. Mayfield, Jr., built his family's w ping center), Beverley house at 100 E. Brookside (1946 altered) this Estates presents a line -up was the childhood home of his son, Houston Albritton House of big biggies on N. architect H. Davis Mayfield III. At 301 E. Rosemary Dr., of which Brookside Dr. is an early work of Caudill Rowlett _ the most notable is the Scott & Associates, the Professor R. L. Puerifoy Ford D. Albritton, Jr., House at 726 N. House (1950). Along E. Brookside, stands of — Rosemary (1965). This was designed by dense, post oak woodland — William E. Nash based on a preliminary landscape alternate with the "'' design by Mrs. Albritton's brother, San rolling suburban lawns of Augustine architect Raiford W. Stripling. It North Oakwood.° is a grand- scaled, Palladianized version of the Greek Revival Ezekiel W. Cullen House in San The combination of lime- Augustine. Several years after completion, stone, wood, and brick iden- Varisco House Dallas architect John Astin Perkins made major tifies the contemporary style additions to the rear of the house, including a Brazos A. Varisco House at r'" {, domed classical bathhouse pavilion. Around the 415 E. Brookside (c. 1952) loop at 748 S. Rosemary is the Professor Philip as the work of Norton & G. Murdoch House (1950), a large modern Mayfield. Bryan's first house by Caudill, Rowlett, Scott & Associates modern house is the now that has suffered unsympathetic alterations. slightly altered Margaret Pearce House Pearce House (1941) at — 303 Crescent Dr. by , � � 'p Houston architects MacKie , F & Kamrath. The most stun- if„ 1, f t�ne�f.x. ning modern house in North Oakwood is the Clifton C. Carter House at 411 Carter House — Crescent Dr. (1956), designed by William E. Nash for — Carter, an LBJ political operative, where the architecture accentuates the sloping site. At 500 — Crescent Drive is the Dr. R. P. Marsteller House (1946), the most handsome traditional style house in North Oakwood. At 510 College View and Oakwood is the Dr. William C. Banks House (c. 1952), another work of Norton & Mayfield. — On the east side of S. Texas Ave., Inwood Dr. leads to the intersection of Tanglewood Dr. — and the Andrew L. Ogg House (c. 1954) at 801 Tanglewood by William E. Nash with Harry S. Ransom, which displays a sectionally activated profile. Across S. Texas Ave. from Ogg House North Oakwood is Bryan's posh- est in -town neighborhood, Beverley Estates, designed in 1938 by landscape architect Fritz Hensel for developers William M. Sparks and Douglas W. Howell. As if to compensate for the B R Y A N I 9 TEXAS A &M UNIVERSITY T he Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, the oldest state - supported institu- tion of higher education in Texas, opened on this site in 1876. In 1871, a group of Bryan citizens offered the State of Texas 2,416 acres of land, 41/ miles south of the center of town and adjoining the Houston & Texas Central Railway line, as an inducement to locate its land -grant college in Brazos County. This offer determined the long -term future of Bryan and its eventual sibling College Station. Architecture began to be taught at A &M in 1905 under the direction of Frederick E. Giesecke, an engineering graduate of the college. This was the first academic program of architectural instruction in Texas. Landscape architecture began to be taught as a disci- pline in 1923 under Frederick W. Hensel, also an A &M alumnus. From the 1900s through the 1930s, the senior architecture faculty were responsible for designing new campus buildings. Because of his long tenure, Giesecke's name appears with great frequency on university cornerstones. During the 1940s and 1950s, the College Architect (an appoint- ment that tended to circulate among Bryan architects, all A &M alumni) designed most new buildings. As late as the mid- 1960s, Dede Matthews of Bryan filled this role in a de facto capacity. In 1931, following protracted negotiations with the University of Texas, Texas A &M got access to the state's oil -rich Permanent University Fund endowment, which financed a wave of ambitious new construction at both A &M and UT. While UT hired Paul Philippe Cret of Philadelphia to reshape its Austin campus, A &M turned once again to Professor Giesecke. Giesecke's design staff, led by the brilliant draftsman and ornamentalist S. C. P. Vosper, a professor of architecture from 1929 until 1933, produced the buildings that symbolize A &M. These adhered to the conservative typologies that had dominated the campus since the beginning of the 20th century. But they are enlivened by sparkling, inventive detail in tile, terra cotta, cast stone, and metals. In 1963, Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College became Texas A &M University and women were admitted for the first time as regular students. Between the mid 1960s and the mid 1970s, the university's enrollment tripled. A building boom during the administrations of presidents J. Earl Rudder and Jack Williams met this increase in students and new acade- mic programs. Since 1970, new buildings have been much bigger than pre -1970 buildings and tend to consist of aggressive shapes masked by brick or precast concrete cladding. When not constrained by the spatial order of the campus core, they tend to lose any sense of connection to a larger spatial whole. As a result, the outlying sectors of the central cam- pus, especially the West Campus, lack a distinctive sense of architecturally defined place. 1 0 T E X A S A & M U N I V E R S I T Y i Beginning the fraying of the edges was the U.S. Department of Agriculture Building (1942, now Dulie Bell Hall) by Houston architect Alfred C. Finn at the corner of University Dr. and Wellborn Road. It is one of the few campus buildings not in align- ment with the university's Academic Building. Finn had no A &M connection. But this building was financed with loans from the federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation, presided over by Finn's client, Houston entrepreneur Jesse H. Jones. Finn's involvement at A &M hinged on this connection. Adjoining are two Finn- designed dormitories: Crocker and McInnis Halls (1942). Visible from Wellborn are the backs of Moses, Keathley, and Fowler Halls, low -rise, balcony- accessed modern dormitories by Matthews & Associates (1964). Marking the historic West Gate entrance from Wellborn Road (originally the entrance from the H &TC tracks and the College Station stop) is the Albritton Bell Tower (1984) by Morris *Aubry Architects of Houston, a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ford D. Albritton, Jr., which straddles Old Main Drive. As early as 1911 Professor Giesecke sought to reshape campus space more resolutely than it had been in the 19th century by enforcing axes of movement and view, to which Professor Hensel was to contribute with his planting of live oak trees. Thus the historic Simpson Drill Field, once disen- cumbered of the faculty housing and student dormitories built on and around it, became a monumental grass mall, establishing a grander sense of scale. On the south side of the Drill Field is the Memorial Student Center i ` (1950, Carleton W. Adams, System Architect). Despite an obtrusive .41..... porte - cochere added in 1973, the MSC stands out as a classic 40s -mod- ern version of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School architecture, with its emphatic horizontality and rich materials palette, including a base rY , . course of fossilated Texas limestone. The Los Angeles interior decorator Robert D. Harrell, who had just completed the interiors of the Menorm � i Shamrock Hotel in Houston, was responsible for the center's original interiors. Adams, a veteran San Antonio architect, had such archi- tects as Wallie Scott, Brooks Martin, and Nikkie Holleman on his staff when the Memorial Center was designed. Glommed onto the east side of the building is the J. Earl Rudder Center (1973) by Jarvis Putty Jarvis of Dallas, an arts, performance, con- tinuing education, and conference complex that includes a 12 -story tower. The New York decorator William Pahlmann designed its interiors; his excesses — particularly his Flag Room — prompted campus protest. On the north side of the Drill Field is Henderson Hall (1958), a dormi- tory by Carleton W. Adams that is a reprise of the Memorial Student Center. Next to it is one of the most modest and affecting buildings on Id.. campus, All Faiths Chapel (1957), by Richard E. Vrooman with Ernest °"' i NI- Langford. Faced with fossilated limestone, the chapel is the campus's 1 ` { All Faiths Chapel T E X A S A S I T Y 11 only contribution to the modern architectural movement that was so important to College Station and Bryan in the 1950s. Vrooman's expansive, de- centered interior, indoor - outdoor vistas, anti - monumentality, and fine detailing make the chapel a moving place. Unfor- tunately, the grounds, originally designed by Robert F. White, are not as well maintained as the building. Bookending the axis at the edge of the central campus are the YMCA Building (1914) by architecture professor S. J. Fountain and the Richard Coke Building (1951) by Houston architects Herbert S. Voelcker & Associates. They frame the domed Academic Building (1914) by F. E. Giesecke and Samuel E. Gideon. In 1912, Giesecke left ®.; _ A &M to start the architecture program at UT, taking his star design .. w"w 4 fl, --- critic, Sam Gideon, with him. This defection was not held against Giesecke, who returned to A &M as professor of architecture and College Architect in 1927. Until 1964, the architecture department .7. is occupied the top floor of the Academic Building. A focus of ritual rever- ence is Pompeo Coppini's standing bronze figure of Lawrence Sullivan Academic Building Ross (1919). Sul Ross was president of A &M College and governor of Texas. Flanking the Academic Building to the south and north are the nearly identical Civil Engineering Building (1909, now Nagle Hall) and Electrical Engineering Building (1912, now Bolton Hall), both by Giesecke. The Academic Building and the two engineering buildings are examples of the engineer's classicism that was Giesecke's forte. Their composition, scale, and brown brick facing are redolent of the coun- ty courthouses and high schools that A &M students would have known from their home towns, a connection that makes the central campus buildings archetypes of the landscape of early 20th - century Texas. To the west of Nagle Hall is Hart Hall (1930), with its chamfered corners, a dormitory by F. E. Giesecke. According to Ernest Langford's invaluable document on the architectural history of the A &M campus, Here We'll Build the College (1963), all of the buildings pro- duced during Giesecke's second tenure as College Architect were designed by S. C. P. Vosper. Hart Hall's chamfered corners play off the angled front of the Extension Administration Building (1924, now Military Sciences) by E. B. LaRoche, a professor of architecture who went on to become a partner of Herbert M. Greene and George L. Dahl of Dallas, architects for UT during the 1920s and 1930s. LaRoche's building in turn frames the classical portico of the Research Hutlo Administration Building (1918, now Butler Hall), one of the few cam- pus buildings between the 1900s and 1950s produced by an outside architect, in this case, William Ward Watkin of Houston and his partner George Endress of Austin. Watkin, professor of architecture at the Rice Institute, also designed the original campus buildings of Texas Technological College in Lubbock in the 1920s. Abutting the Military Sciences Building is the Physics Building (1921, now Psychology). It was designed 1 2 T E X A S A & Al U N I V E R S I T Y , 4,1410 61 411-X1 11.6 1404 l by architecture instructor W. Scott Dunne, best remembered as a Dallas architect who spe- cialized in the design of movie theaters across Texas in the 1920s and 1930s. It mirrors the Mechanical Engineering Building (1920, now Fermier Hall) to the north of the Academic Building, by Rolland Adelsperger, a professor of architecture. A modern note is sounded by the concrete framed Biological Sciences Building (1966, now Biological Sciences West) by Matthews & Associates. The Matthews office adopted modern structural expression but fit • the building to its context by respecting existing heights, alignments, and typologies. The Cushing Library (1930, F. E. Giesecke) was designed and built before the Permanent University Fund monies became available. It has the scale and dignity, if not the ornamental exuberance, of Giesecke and Vosper's subsequent campus buildings. The quadrangle framed by the Cushing Library and the Academic Building is the heart of the old campus. The col- oration and scale of the surrounding architecture, and especially the presence of the live oak trees planted by Fritz Hensel, make this colle- i' 4. giate space feel very much like those on the UT campus in Austin. This ( Es; perception works best if one stands with one's back to the multistory Harrington Education Center (1974) by Bartlett Cocke & Associates of �— i ti San Antonio, a behemoth that parodies the architecture of O'Neil r j Ford. The mercilessness of post -1970 architecture at A &M begins to be inescapably apparent here. The Cushing Library is now the tail of a Plant Sciences Building vast library complex: the body is Jarvis Putty Jarvis's Sterling C. Evans Library (1968), the maw is the aggressive and ungainly Sterling C. Evans Library Addition (1980) by Preston M. Geren & Associates of Fort Worth, which consumed a landscaped plaza formerly located between the library and the classical Agriculture Building (1923, E. B. LaRoche). South of the Evans Library is another of Matthews & Associates' deferential modern buildings, the interestingly textured Plant Sciences Building (1962, now C. F. Peterson Building). Following the side street that Peterson faces leads, on axis, to the Corps of Cadets Dormitory Group (1939, Alfred C. Finn), a symmetrically organized complex of banded brick buildings forming a series of linked quadrangles built with RFC funding. South of the Agriculture Building is the ex- Animal Husbandry Pavilion (1917, Rolland Adelsperger), now a student services center. North of the library is another classically detailed Endress & Watkin academic building, Francis Hall (1918). To the west is a cross -axial mall onto which Giesecke and Vosper's , 471 immense Chemistry Building (1929) faces. Colorful tile spandrel panels ' ` *?1 beneath its second- and third -floor windows exhibit chemical symbols. '" ` , i Turning east along the street that passes the Chemistry Building, one is " !F especially aware of the line of cypress trees planted to complement '' Hensel's live oaks. Across the street is another of the extraordinar buildings that Giesecke and Vosper produced, the Petroleum Petroleum Engineering and Geology Building Engineering and Geology Building (1932, now Halbouty Geosciences). T F x A s A 8 Af [1 N t v F R r 13 Its polychrome tile spandrel panels are especially captivating, as are its crisp cast stone sculptural details, another Vosper specialty. Halbouty has lost its marvelous Art Deco tower, which was twice as tall as the building and meta- _ 1,41 morphosed from a square in plan to an octagon at its summit with inset muqarnas. A multistory annex to the Chemistry Building is the New Chemistry Building (1984) by Pierce Goodwin Alexander of Houston. At -.- - the east end of the street is the Veterinary Hospital Building (1934, now Veterinary Hospital Civil Engineering) by Giesecke and Vosper. Since the hospital was only two Building stories high rather than three, Vosper compensated by laying on the cast stone ornament. Turning back, then heading south, one re- engages the main axis and an entire new quadrangle shaped as part of the east campus expansion of the early 1930s. Facing each other across the wide green lawn are Giesecke and Vosper's Agricultural Engineering Building (1932, now Scoates Hall) and the Animal Industries Building (1932). Scoates Hall stands out by virtue of its giant - scaled entrance portal, suffused with Scoates Hall ornament in a variety of media. The tower - framed Animal Industries Building also possesses a bold entrance pavilion, where Vosper's iconography takes on a pronounced Texan flavor: cattle brands appear as cast metal ornament around the front door. Terminating the axis is the John K. Williams Administration Building (1932, F. E. Giesecke with S. C. P. Vosper and Raiford W. Stripling), a palace -like classical block faced with cast stone. Its visual impact from the east is even more dramatic. The site was graded so that the building appears to rise "° on a promontory on axis with New Main Drive, which Fritz Hensel f Ifil L. s framed with live oaks. Stairs descend from the Administration Building to a symmetrical parterre at the level of New Main Drive. The interior Animal Industries Building of the building is as exuberantly colored and ornamented as a 1920s movie palace. Flanking the Administration Building are the 12 -story Eller Oceanography and Meteorology Building (1973, Preston M. Geren & Associates) and the Langford Architecture Center, home of the College of Environmental Design (1977, 1964, Harwood K. Smith & Partners). The most clever work of modern design in the east quadrangle is the undulating berms at its west end (1976, Myrick Newman Dahlberg, landscape architects), behind the Agricultural Building. These emphasize the flat sweep of the quadrangle lawn and ingeniously screen a parking lot that has held on at the center of the campus. Between existing buildings is the Library, Computing, and Study Complex, a huge but considerately scaled annex to the Evans Library ' ' ' CD- • _ - by Austin architects Graeber, Simmons & Cowan (1998). Kyle Field, Kyle Field ' 1 4 T A S A & M U N I V E R S I T Y ,s maevar.^R a Yp2�Ry� * e ;* -- ' i-. - j " tl , 4Alletta ' t .. 1 .. Sc i the university ' ry s footb (1985) all s by ta Ch dium umney J , is an ones extraor& Kdin ell ary of S lan an d A mar nton o. k. It i A orates Stotzer , on Par its low- est tier, the original stadium built between 1927 and 1929 to the designs of architects Henry N. June and Ernest Langford and engineer C. E. Sandstedt. The highrise upper decks, served by projecting curved ramps (Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, 1980), raise the profile of Kyle Field and give it its commanding presence in the landscape. Across Wellborn Road and the H &TC tracks from the central campus is A &M's West Campus, which has taken shape since the 1970s. It is not the architectural design of build- ings that makes the West Campus problemmatic but the lack of a campus plan. Buildings appear to be sited at random, as though this were an architectural parking lot. The major buildings on the West Campus include: the Recreational Sports Center and Natatorium (1995) by Marmon Mok of San Antonio, the Kleberg Center by 3D /International of Houston, the Heep Center for Soil and Crop Sciences and Entomology (1977) by Omniplan of Dallas, the Biochemistry/Biophysics Building (1989) by Harper, Kemp, Clutts & Parker of Dallas, the Horticulture/Forest Service Center Building (1984) by Fisher & Spillman of Dallas, the West Campus Library (1994) by Ray Bailey Architects of Houston, the E. L. Wehner Business Administration Building (1994) by Harper, Kemp, Clutts & Parker, the Reynolds Medical Building (1983) by Page Southerland Page of Austin, and the Medical Science Lib, i, a continuation of University Drive, is the Veterinary Medicine Small Animal Clinic (1981), also by Chumney, Jones & Kell. The architectural climax of the West Campus is the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum (1997), designed by CRSS of 1 W Houston and completed by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum after it , absorbed CRSS. Isolated in a landscape park, the museum and library seem to forecast the innocuous suburban future toward which ' College Station is striving. George Bush Presidential Library 9 ?' and Museum John K. Williams Administration Building and berms Neu) Main Drive looking from the University Administration Building movonnsmmmaimmmm T E V A S A & M 15 ,11111 111111111111111111111111 C O L L E G E S T A T I O N College Station was the name given to the H &TC train stop opposite the campus of Texas A &M College. Until the 1920s, faculty lived on the campus in an array of houses between the college station and the main building. The campus was in the open countryside and there was little surrounding settlement. In the early 1920s a group of faculty members developed a residential subdivision, College Park, south of the campus. It was joined by a second Southside subdivision in the early 1930s, a subdivision at East Gate and the new Highway 6 in the late 1930s, and institu- tional and commercial development at North Gate along N. College Main St. In 1938, College Station was incorporated as a city, inhabited almost entirely by A &M faculty members and staff. From 1942 until 1966, Ernest Langford, professor of architecture at A &M, head of the architecture department from 1929 until 1956, and general eminence grise, was mayor of College Station. North Gate is the commercial and institutional area on University Drive opposite the A &M campus. In the 1920s, it was where different religious organizations began to build chapels ministering to students, some quite substantial in size. The earliest of these chapels no longer exists: the Spanish style St. Mary's Catholic Chapel (1926), designed by the El Paso architects Trost & Trost at 607 University and N. Nagle. Immediately behind the site of the Trost chapel lies St. Mary's Student Center (1954) at 103 N. Nagle St. and N. Church Ave. Designed by William E. Nash with Harry S. Ransom, this unassuming modern building is house -like in scale. Closed on its street sides, it opens to a rear garden orig- inally planned by Robert F. White. Its days may be numbered. 16 C O L L E G E S T A T I O N The most architecturally Hensel with a dense preserve of post oak woodland marking $ • _ ° sensational house of wor- the boundary between College Station and Bryan. +�N1 ship in North Gate is Our Savior's Lutheran East Gate lies on the side of the A &M campus bordering Our Savior's Lutheran Church Church (1956) at 309 Texas Ave. This had been the back door to the college until the Tauber St. and Cross by Texas Ave. highway opened in 1936. Walton Drive, a continua - A&M architecture instructor and CRS partner -to -be Frank D. tion of the imposing New Main Drive into the campus, leads to Lawyer, with Ernest Langford. Bravura structural and glazing the subdivision of College Hills Estates, developed by John details complement the sweep of its ascending roof. Note the C. Culpepper beginning in 1938. Although its houses are not CRS -like use of hard red paving brick. Much more subdued in remarkable, College Hills features the generous Thomas Park treatment is the University Lutheran Chapel (1965) at 315 esplanade between Puryear Drive and James Parkway. N. College Main St. and Cross by A &M instructor Rocky Reflecting his market base, Culpepper named many of the Thorpe. Tucked inconspicuously into the mixed landscape of streets of College Hills for senior members of the A &M facul- North Gate is the post oak woodland garden at 314 Spruce ty, among them the dean of engineering and future college and N. College Main, cultivated by Robert F. White (1964). president Frank C. Bolton, father of Houston architect Preston Ernest Langford designed the sedate, classically detailed M. Bolton. Backing up to College Hills Estates is the College A&M Church of Christ (1933) at 301 N. College Main St. Station City Hall, Police, and Fire Building (1970, C. R. with Milton Foy Martin of Houston. At 203 N. College Main Watson Associates; 1984, Russell Stogsdill) at 1101 Texas and N. Church is the Baptist Student Center (1950) by Ave. and Francis St. Norton & Mayfield, one of several Baptist student Just south of the Texas - George Bush Drive intersection, Park centers designed across Place South intersects Texas. Hidden on Park Place, behind the Texas at that time by commercial strip along Texas, is one of College Station's small Henry D. Mayfield. African American enclaves, which originated as a rural subdi- n vision of the Kapchinski family farm. Off Anderson St. at Wolf i Unfortunately, the most Run Lane is the Wolfpen Village subdivision begun by Robert A &M Church of Christ architecturally distinctive D. Martell in 1971. It is the townhouse enclave of College commercial building on Station. Row houses, many designed by College Station archi- University, the stream- tects J. W. Wood Associates, are faced with Mexican brick, lined ex- Campus the material of choice in College Station since the 1970s. '! Theater (c. 1941) at 217 University and N. Boyett, At George Bush Dr. and Holick, the one building that survives has been defaced. from A&M Consolidated Senior High School by Caudill, William M. Sparks's Rowlett, Scott & Associates is visible: the 600 -seat Aggieland Pharmacy Building Aggieland Pharmacy Auditorium (1954), its fly - Building (c. 1938) at ing saucer -like roof sup - 401 -405 University and N. College Main has been a focus of ported on exposed lami- the City of College Station's program in the late 1990s to reha- nated timber arches. Also bilitate North Gate. The block of College Main just off gone are all components University was the first part of North Gate to be intensively of the original commercialized. San Antonio architect Henry Steinbomer was Consolidated School Auditorium responsible for the dignified neo- Gothic A &M Methodist (1940) by Clarence J. Church (1946, 1951) at 417 University Dr. and Tauber. Finney and Ernest Langford at George Bush and Timber. Like the High School, the The northernmost point in North Gate is Hensel Park off S. Consolidated School was published in the national architectur- College. This 30 acre park, which belongs to Texas A &M, com- al press; it was one of the earliest schools in Texas planned memorates pioneer landscape architecture professor Fritz according to modernist principles. C O L L E G E S T A T I O N 17 Timber Lane leads through Newton. Adjoining is Canterbury House (1975) by David G. r t another Bill Fitch -built sub- Woodcock with M. 0. Lawrence. St. Thomas Chapel was sub - t AL. division. The east side of sequently joined on the Southside by the B'nai Brith Hillel the 300 and 400 blocks are Foundation (1958) at 800 George Bush Dr. and E. Dexter lined with Fitch's variations Drive, designed by Houston architects Lenard Gabert & W. on the favored Bryan- Jackson Wisdom. Giesecke House College Station '50s mod- ern house type. Park Place The oldest neighborhood in College Station is College Park, S. leads to the Southside subdivision of Oakwood Addition developed in 1923 by Floyd B. Clark, professor of economics at (1932), developed by H. E. Burgess. Clearly predating the A &M, and his associates in the Southside Development 1930s is the Giesecke House (1891) at 1102 Park Place S. Company: Charles W. Burchard, professor of chemistry, Daniel and Lee, the second oldest building in College Station and Scoates, professor of agricultural engineering, and M. M. once home to architect F. E. Giesecke. After the A &M adminis- Daugherty. The centerpiece of College Park is the picturesque tration decided to remove all houses from the campus in 1939, Brison Park, bounded by East and West Dexter Drives and many of the wooden cottages that had lined the perimeter of named for F. R. Brison, professor of horticulture. This was Simpson Drill Field and the zone where the Memorial Student planned by landscape architect Fritz Hensel, who also designed Center was built were moved into Oakwood Addition and the the subdivision. Among neighboring College Park. (Professor and Mrs. Paul Van Riper the house sites that slope have been able to identify 41 of these houses in College toward the park are those Station, Bryan, and Brazos County.) This house, which original- of Professor Clark at ly stood on the site of the Memorial Student Center, has been 305 E. Dexter (1924), rehabilitated by architect Gerald Maffei. Its grounds have been Professor Brison at 600 brilliantly landscaped by artist Joan Maffei. Brison Park W. Dexter, and the first At 300 Lee Ave. formerly f "'` Ernest Langford House stood the first work of -' _ (1929) at 602 W. Dexter. modern architecture in At 606 Jersey Drive, on College Station, the small the north side of the park, Clarence J. Finney is the compact modern House (1936), which Richard E. Vrooman Warner House A &M architecture profes- Schember Hous House (1955) by architec- sor Jack Finney designed ture professor Dik -k" _r ±k° and built for himself. Vrooman. There are two other small modern houses of note in Influenced by the Usonian College Park: the Vick E. Schember House (c. 1953) at 511 - houses of Frank Lloyd Ayrshire St. and Bell by William E. Nash with Harry S. Ransom • Wright, Finney planned and the L Brooks Martin House (1950) at 504 Park Place S. his flat- roofed wood and Walsh by L. Brooks Martin. Note that on the west side of Couch House house for maximum pene- Brison Park, the streets are named for different breeds of cat - tration by the prevailing tle. College Park launched southeast breeze. Similar considerations are visible in the C. y Professor Clark on a E. Warner House at 211 Lee (c. 1936), with its south side long career as one of screened porch. Developer Hershel E. Burgess lived at 112 College Station's fore Lee in a restrained neo- Georgian house designed by Ernest most residential real Langford (1935). At 202 Pershing and Suffolk is the most strik- estate developers. ing house in Oakwood, the Monterey style J. R. Couch House (1940). Professor Langford was also architect for the suburban- unitarian - universalist Fellowship At 305 Wellborn Rd. is rustic St. Thomas Chapel (1938), the Episcopal student the ex -A &M Christian chapel, at 906 George Bush Dr. between Pershing and Church (now the Unitarian - Universalist Fellowship, c. 1949) by Newton, which is now attached to the larger St. Thomas A &M architecture professor Ben H. Evans, which is sited in a Episcopal Church (1995) by Austin architect Chartier C. shady grove. Its angled louvered wings (1981) are by College 1 8 C O L L E G E S T A T I O N Station architect Rodney C. Hill. Around the corner, above House (1957) is at 1200 Rother's Bookstore in the Southside Community Center at Langford; it has been 340 George Bush Dr. and Montclair (c. 1938), is the second- altered. The David D. floor office space where Bill Caudill and John M. Rowlett set Yarbrough House (c. up what would become Caudill Rowlett Scott in 1947. 1960) at 1213 Winding Road was designed by Weick House 0' r Following E. Dexter south A &M architecture .; to Holleman Drive, then instructor and former CRS - , e:': .:;-. li ';I if east to Winding Road, employee Yarbrough with "a - „ . ,W ' x } sa__, brings one to The Knoll. paneled walls of black r 4 ,... This was developed by F. glazed brick. At 1211 B. Clark in 1947. The Winding Road is the Caudill House 9 _ I Knoll was conceived as Dean W. W. Armistead the modern architecture House (c. 1955). L. Brooks Yarbrough House enclave of College Station. Although it never quite attained Martin designed the the design stature envisioned for it, The Knoll is a showcase of altered, split -level College Station modernism of the 1950s. Its single, loop street Professor Arthur G. descends at 1206 Orr Dr. where the architectural highlight of Edmonds House (1949) lir the neighborhood, the second William W. Caudill House at 1205 Winding Road. (1953, Caudill, Rowlett, Scott & Associates), is located. Turned Professor Clark named on its site to open to the downward slope, the brick and glass several of the streets on Caudill House and its companion rear studio building commu- The Knoll and its exten- nicate the enthusiasm for going modern that was so appealing sion, The South Knoll, for Armistead House 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ' in the 1950s. The Frank architects who built their houses on The Knoll: Langford, - -` D. Lawyer House (1954) Caudill, and Franklin Lawyer. Langford St. leads past the ) at 1214 Orr by architect Longley House at 1215 (c. 1970), an unexpected bit of old Lawyer is closed on its Santa Fe. At 1220 Boswell St. is E. Earl Merrill's South Knoll _'""` _ long street side by a wall Elementary School (1967), a testament to his apprenticeship - -. of cement panels and with CRS. Lawyer House high -set clerestory win- dows. Note how stands Southside developed in spatial layers: the interwar layer of post oak woodland landscaping separate the house sites on between George Bush and Holleman Dr. was followed by the The Knoll. postwar layer between Holleman and Southwest Parkway. The 1960s and '70s layer is between Southwest Parkway and West Around the corner at 1104 Loop 2818. Along 2818, churches stand out as the most visible 4 Langford St., as the loop works of architecture in the exploded landscape of sprawl, road begins to rise, is a especially Peace Lutheran Church (1981) by Rodney C. Hill 4 corrugated cement pan- at 2201 Rio Grande Blvd. eled house designed by and West Loop 2818 and Ben H. Evans for his the flamboyantly -f " Y Y Post- Evans House family (c. 1957). The modern Friends United Evans House has suffered Church of Christ (1984) from extensive additions, but the spatial counterpoint between by Clovis Heimsath the house and its open carport is still apparent. Theo R. Associates of Austin at Holleman designed his family's house (1961) at 1110 1300 West Loop 2818. St. Francis Episcopal Church Langford. At 1115 Langford and Winding Road is the Fred Weick House (1949) by Caudill, Rowlett, Scott & Associates. New College Station lies south of Deacon Drive. Along Rock Faced with limestone, it is an expansive version of the College Prairie Road, St. Francis Episcopal Church at 1101 (1987, Station modern house type. The second Ernest Langford Holster & Associates) and the College Station Medical C O L L E G E S T A T r O NI 19 r, p Center Hospital (1987, Page Southerland Page) at 1604 Rock Prairie are the architectural stand a outs. On the east side of the East Bypass. Rock Prairie leads to Stonebrook Dr. and to Wilshire Court. At 1307 Wilshire Court is the Julius M. Gribou House (1997) by A &M architecture department head Zweig House Julius Gribou. The northbound frontage road leads to Sebesta, Foxfire, Frost, and eventually to 2509 Fitzgerald Circle, where the dramatic, triangular Peter J. Zweig House (1977), designed as an environmentally respon- sive house by Houston architect Zweig while teaching at A &M, is located. At 2541 East Bypass is St. Thomas Aquinas t l l l l l l l l t 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 11111111111111 „ Catholic Church (1989), ` with its spatially remark - . °, "'� -- -1 able interior, by College Station architects Holster I & Associates with A &M architecture professor Tin House David C. Ekroth. An homage to Gerry Maffei's Tin House is the Ohm Galvalume- surfaced, shed -like Tin House at 2504 Raintree Dr. (1997), designed and built by Foley's A &M architecture stu- dents Charley Hatfield and Matthew De Wolf. Since opening in the late 1970s, the Highway 6 Bypass has stimulated sprawling suburban Scott & White Clinic development. College Station's shopping mall, Post Oak Mall, was built at the Harvey Road intersection (1982); its primary architectural component is Foley's by Houston architects Lloyd Jones Brewer & Associates. At 1602 University Dr. E. and the Bypass is the College Station branch of the Scott & White Clinic of Temple (1996) Page Southerland Page. 20 C O L L E G E E S T A T I O N Acknowledgments Jay Baker Baylor University Library Robert P. Boyce Texas Collection Preston M. Bolton Ellen Kuniyuki Brown, Archivist Mrs. J. Russell Bradley Bryan Public Library Thomas A. Bullock Brazos County Clerk's Office Mrs. Roland Chatham Brazos County Historical Commission Thomas Colbert http: / /http.tamu.edu:8000 /— d0b1745 /bchc.html C. Gale Cook City of College Station Parks & Recreation Department Margaret Culbertson College Station Historical Preservation Committee Jean E. Qonaho http: / /www.ci. college - station.tx.us /pard /misc /history/ The Rev. Kathleen Ellis Dallas Public Library John Gaston Fairey Texas /Dallas History Archives Division David Gerling Carol Roark, archivist John Only Greer Houston Public Library Julius M. Gribou Houston Metropolitan Research Center Frank Hartman Steven Strom, architectural archivist Mrs. T. R. Holleman Texas and Local History James E. Holster & Associates Carol Johnson W. Graham Horseley Donna Dixon D. Jean Krchnak Ellen Hanlon William B. Lancaster Will Howard Keith Langford Douglas Weiskopf Charles E. Lawrence Rice University School of Architecture Joanne Seale Lawson Lars Lerup, dean Frank D. Lawyer Rice Design Alliance Shon Link Linda L. Sylvan, executive director Joan Maffei Texas A&M University Mrs. L. Brooks Martin College of Architecture, Department of Architecture H. Davis Mayfield III Julius M. Gribou, department head Steven A. Moore College of Architecture Technical Reference Center Deborah Morris Paula M. Bender, coordinator of learning services Frances Munsey R. Bryan Stewart, senior library specialist William E. Nash CRS Center Spencer Parsons Robert E. Johnson, executive director Fred Patterson Cushing Library Paul E. Pate Donald H. Dyal, Ph.D., director William M. Pena David Chapman, Ph.D., archivist John Astin Perkins Facilities Planning and Construction, Administration Division Harry S. Ransom Tony Heger St. Andrew's Episcopal Church Melody Meyer Barrie Scardino University of Texas at Austin Carl M. Schoenfeld Alexander Architectural Archive Patsy Swank Beth J. Dodd, director Nancy Volkman ( Richard E. Vrooman Mark Wamble Frank D. Welch David G. Woodcock John Zemanek Lois Brock Adriance, Descendants of Moses Austin, 1793 -1983, Waco: Texian Press, 1984 r Lynn Balliew, College Station, Texas, 1938 1988 College Station: Intaglio Press, 1987 Deborah L a Y 9 9 9 Jody Bates, "The 1950s a Golden Decade for Architecture in B -CS Area," Bryan- College Station Eagle, undated clipping Kathleen Davis, St. Andrew's, Bryan: The First 125 Years, Bryan: St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 1992 Henry C. Dethloff, A Centennial History of Texas A &M University, 1876 -1976, 2 volumes, College Station. Texas A &M University Press, 1975 John S. Garner, "Architecture at A &M: The Past One Hundred Years," Texas Architect 27(March -April 1977), 33 -36 John S. Garner, "The Saga of a Railroad Town: Calvert, Texas )1868- 19181," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 85(October 1981), 139 -160 Marlene Elizabeth Heck, Hardy Heck Moore, Historic Resources of Bryan, Texas, 1986 Ernest Langford, The First Fifty Years of Architectural Education at the A &M College of Texas, College Station: 1957 Ernest Langford, "Here We'll Build the College," 2 volume manuscript, 1963 Michael McCullar, Restoring Texas: Raiford Stripling's Life and Architecture, College Station: Texas A &M University Press, 1985 Sunny Nash, Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's, College Station: Texas A &M University Press, 1996 David G. Woodcock, "Historic Architecture: Brazos County Historic Architecture," in Glenna Fourman Brundige, editor, Brazos County History: Rich Past- Bright Future, Bryan: Family History Foundation, 1986, pp. 357 -415