In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

---------------------------~--------------------------From Art Galleries to Sears, Roebuck CLASS Jl nHOTOGRAPHS in this chapter illustrate that a ~ householder's socioeconomic level was a critical variable in the decoration of domestic interiors. Many interior views show extremes - high or low income levels - which represent the range of choices people had based on their financial resources. Between these extremes , middle-class families, equally influenced by the size of their pocketbooks, identified status with their new economic circumstances as they outfitted their homes to demonstrate their inclusion in the monied ranks. Arranged for comparison and contrast, the images here date from 1892 to 1915 and explore the similarities and differences among Texas interiors. Nineteenth-century Americans had a great range in the quality of goods available to them. Prosperous city dwell8 .1 (facing page). Art gallery, William L. Crawford house, 3709 Ross Avenue, Dallas, ca. 1905 (Dallas Historical Society). ers in Houston, for example, might have access to furnishings and art objects from Europe, either because they purchased them while traveling abroad or because design professionals they hired - architects and decorators - or furniture stores they patronized had access to such furnishings . Less expensive goods from midwestern and local furniture manufacturers were available to many more Texans . And mail-order catalogues offered low-price household goods to the widest audience. Even among these numerous sources, there were choices to be made. Furniture manufacturers carried different lines of goods of varying quality and cost. Even catalogue items could be "customized." For example, in 1897, Sears, Roebuck sold a four-piece upholstered parlor suite with prices varying according to the fabric used: $23.00 for cotton tapestry; $25.50 for crushed plush; $29.50 for silk brocatelle; and $34.00 for silk damask. 1 Families who occupied the high end of the socioeco- Inside Texas 168 nomic scale were more likely to identify consciously with their class. The William L. Crawfords were such a family. Their home featured an art gallery, which occupied the second story of the house on Dallas' fashionable Ross Avenue (fig. 8. I). The room shows that the Crawfords did not identify with other Texans so much as with other Americans who had the money to devote such a conspicuously large space solely to leisure and "culture getting" (as opposed to "money getting"). The room does not resemble other rooms in Texas houses photographed circa 1905. Instead it shares similarities with "picture-galleries" shown in Artistic Houses and approximates those spaces in the homes of wealthy Americans Mrs. A. T. Stewart and John T. Martin, for example . Published nearly two decades before, Artistic Houses highlighted the homes ofJ. Pierpont Morgan and W. H. Vanderbilt, among others.2 Born in Kentucky in 1839, William Crawford served in the Civil War, becoming lieutenant colonel and commanding the Nineteenth Texas Infantry. After the war, he "began the study of law at home in a log cabin and on Saturday he would go to town to be examined in his progress." Crawford and his brother began a law practice inJefferson, Texas, and by 1880, they had moved to Dallas forming the firm of Crawford & Crawford, which did "the biggest commercial business of any law firm in the city. ,,3 In 1 896, after his first wife died, Crawford married the widow, Katherine Lester Lamar, originally of Oxford, Mississippi. The second Mrs. Crawford had led a charmed life. As the wife of L. Q. C. Lamar, Jr., and daughterin -law of L. Q. C. Lamar, secretary of the interior during Grover Cleveland's administration, she had lived in Washington , D.C., and traveled throughout Europe, studying art in Paris.4 Soon after the Crawfords' marriage, the couple installed this gallery "of over three-hundred splendid canvasses, and a collection of statuary and antiques." European artists like Anthony Van Dyck and Rudolph Christian Schade were represented in their collection, as were Texas artists Julian Onderdonk and Hale Bolton.5 The setting for the art collection was a long gallery with a beamed ceiling, a central skylight, and Ionic columns lining the length of the room. Visitors could admire the painting highlighted at one end of the room, sit and contemplate the "sweetness and light" ofthe overall grouping, or enjoy a private viewing in the small spaces created along the right side of the gallery. Ten years later and 300 miles west northwest of Dallas, in Crosbyton, Pink and Bessie Parrish pose with their children at their dining table (fig. 8.2). They lived in one of the many C. B...

Share