Texas Towns and the Art of Architecture: A Photographer's Journey (review)

2007Book Reviews223 and U.S. Rep. Maury Maverick of San Antonio lobbied the federal government to authorize national park status in 1 935. After Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps helped to set in place park structures (campgrounds, cabins, and trails), and Roger Toll (well-known National Park Service superintendent) made exuberant recommendations to die Department ofdie Interior, die campaign to make Big Bend a national park gained steam. Texas historians Walter Prescott Webb andj. Evetts Haley bodi participated in programs to publicize and promote the park. OnJune 1 2, 1944, "Big Bend National Park [became] Texas's gift to the nation" (p. 89). Austin-based author Patoski and photographer Parent have worked together numerous times, including creating two other books in the Texas Landscape Series : Texas Coast and Texas Mountains. BigBend National Park, die third book in this series, serves as a gift and guide to travelers, historians, geologists, geographers, and naturalists. Texas Christian UniversityJahue Anderson Texas Towns and the Art ofArchitecture: A Photographer'sJourney. By Richard Payne, foreword by Stephen Fox. (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2006. Map, photographs, bibliography. ISBN 08761 12181. $49.95, cloth.) Small-town Texas, it seems, endures despite the odds, and as a cultural survivor, complete with memories of promises delayed or even betrayed, it is often revered, memorialized, analyzed, and even eulogized. All those elements are evident in the work of architect and photographer Richard Payne, who has traveled the state for years seeking out the bits and pieces of the past's cultural landscape that somehow still touch our lives, even when dominant aspects have too often turned to the big box structures of expediency. The product ofa small Texas town, Payne knows how to seek out the beauty, drama, poignancy, tragedy, exuberance, and even irony of architecture, in its broadest definition, that somehow engages searchers, regardless of their backgrounds . Hisjourney is an evolutionary one that winds from the historical heyday ofsmall towns to the edge of existence in some cases and then back again, all the time sharing the hope that shaped the towns in the beginning. This is a positive story of survival and of passing the baton to future generations. The reality is, as Payne implies in his words and photographs, that even where historic architecture is viably preserved, the evolution continues. And so the downtown hardware store that is no longer commercially competitive gives way to antique dealers, and the department store on the square where I once worked after school becomes an annex for the courthouse. Within that evolution, though, are also the gaps brought about by either lost buildings or lost potential for those that remain. Richard Payne understands the art of architecture, and he sets his camera and focuses his lens from an architect's perspective. The result is evident in each carefully crafted photograph, from the lonely drama of the Teague Hotel (p. 43) and the stark evolution of a McGregor streetscape (p. 47) to the bold beauty of the 224Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober Shackelford County Courdiouse (p. 87), the late night charm ofa Ballinger corner (p. 62), and die timidity ofagricultural ghosts in tiny Penelope (p. 96). Students ofarchitectural history will appreciate Payne's contextual analysis, but they should also understand his frame of reference. He pays respect to the work of accomplished architects, and Texas has had its share who left their marks even in small towns, but much of the fabric of diose towns was more often the work of local builders, who copied or vernacularized popular design idioms of dieir era, without much philosophical thought to design over function. One hesitates to point out limitations ofa personaljourney, but it is evident there are significant regional gaps in the range ofPayne's work. Only five towns represent far west Texas and the Panhandle, widi a void between Fort Stockton and Clarendon ; only two are included in die vast area south ofGoliad; and missing entirely are die unique setdements of the Rio Grande, all the way from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico. Also largely underrepresented, except for recendy restored courtiiouses, are die successes ofsmall-town preservation efforts, from Main Street programs and adaptive reuse to die new heritage...