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Chapter Three: The Kessler Plan: 1915–1923
- Texas A&M University Press
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Arthur Comey, Maxcy and Comey were not considered after Cullinan began his campaign for Kessler. Although he had been in Houston only ten years, Cullinan’s wealth and power, and the respect he garnered locally were considerable, and Kessler ultimately was hired. Cullinan and Shadyside Joseph Stephen Cullinan (1860–1937), one of eight children, was born in Pennsylvania to Irish immigrant parents. He began working in oil- fields there at the age of fourteen, and, from 1882 to 1895, he worked for Standard Oil, which he left to form his own business, Petroleum Ironworks. After oil was discovered in Corsicana, Texas, in 1894, Cullinan served as a consultant to those involved in the Corsicana fields and eventually moved his family to Corsicana. There he constructed the first refinery west of the Mississippi River in 1899. He moved his operations to Beaumont in 1901 after the Spindletop discovery and founded the Texas Company (Texaco) there in 1902. After he moved the Texas Company to Houston in 1905, several other companies followed over the next decade, and by 1913 twelve oil companies were headquartered in Houston; Humble Oil Company (Exxon) followed in 1917.6 Cullinan’s impact on his adopted city was profound not only because his decision to move his company to Houston helped establish it as the oil capital, but he also became a key supporter of the development of the Houston Ship Channel and was president of the Chamber of Commerce from 1913 to 1919, the period during which many planning decisions concerning the future of Houston were made, including the development of Hermann Park.7 Cullinan is remembered in Houston for his many accomplishments, but his daughter Nina recalled his great patriotism. B efore George Hermann died, and even before he publicly donated the site for Hermann Park, Houston oilman J. S. Cullinan was lobbying for a particular landscape architect to plan the park. In April 1914, on a train trip from Kansas City to Dallas, Cullinan met and was impressed with the renowned St. Louis landscape architect George Edward Kessler. At that time they discussed the need for planning in Houston. Cullinan then orchestrated a carefully thought out plan to convince Mayor Campbell and the park commissioners to retain Kessler. On May 23, 1914, Cullinan wrote to Kessler noting that he had been in discussions with “some of our people, including Mayor Campbell ” concerning the need for local city planning. In that letter he more or less dismissed the 1913 Comey Plan by saying “a report was made by some engineer [Comey] to the previous administration,” but, Cullinan stressed, no commitments had yet been made by Campbell to hire anyone to work on the new park.2 Cullinan cleverly copied some very powerful Houstonians on this letter and subsequent correspondence with both Kessler and Campbell, creating allies in his efforts to have Kessler hired by the City of Houston.3 The fact that Kessler was working in the rival cities of Fort Worth and Dallas also probably helped tip the scale in his favor. By January 1915 the Board of Park Commissioners had made arrangements with Kessler to come to Houston.4 Cullinan had succeeded in convincing the mayor and Board of Park Commissioners (Parker, Wilson, and Sterling Meyer, who replaced Hermann) to retain “the exceptionally well qualified” Kessler. Cullinan’s willingness to personally pay some of Kessler’s initial expenses did not hurt either.5 Although it would have been easier and a more obvious choice to have John Maxcy prepare a new plan including all of the park area or recall CHAPTER THREE The Kessler Plan 1915–1923 Kessler demonstrated a pronounced facility for reconciling the requirements of ceremoniousness and informality in his design.1 —Stephen Fox, 1983 30 Chapter Three completed, but in February 1916 Cullinan purchased the property from the Hermann Estate.10 He named his subdivision Shadyside and retained George Kessler to create twenty-four large lots along two boulevards, Longfellow Lane and Remington Lane. Cullinan offered these lots to his friends and business associates, who bought them and built large country houses in a range of eclectic architectural styles. Cullinan’s own house, the first constructed in Shadyside (1916–1919, demolished 1973), was designed by the St. Louis architect James P. Jamieson as an English country house.11 The Rice Institute Hermann need not have been concerned about the quality of the neighborhood near his proposed park. With the Rice Institute, Hermann Park, and then Shadyside, the South End...