Architecture in Texas 1895–1945 by Jay C. Henry (review)

56 ARRIS Volume 5 1994 Book Reviews f. Riely Gordon, Ellis County Courthouse, Waxahachie, Texas, 1896. Exterior (Architecture in Texas 1895-1945). Jay C. Henry, Architecture in Texas 1895-1945, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993, 382 pp. (380 b&w photos, 17line drawings). In his preface, Jay C. Henry remarks that, upon his arrival in 1972, he found Texas "too big to be evaded or conveniently ignored." He could have said this about the architecture of the state as well as the geography, for the two are certainly linked, as anyone who knows Texas can attest. Architecture in Texas is the chronological successor to Drury Blakely Alexander and Todd Webb's Texas Homes of the Nineteenth Century (1966) and Willard B. Robinson and Todd Webb's Texas Public Buildings of the Nineteenth Century (1974). These books make excellent use of Webb's fine photographs, with complementary texts by Alexander and Robinson. Architecture in Texas 1895-1945 reflects just how much further scholarship on the state's architectural history has come, moving beyond the survey character of the two earlier and still indispensable volumes for a more in-depth exploration of the architecture of the first half of this century. Given the enormous quantity of material encompassed by the title's dates, simply winnowing down the number of buildings that could be illustrated and discussed presented the author with an enormous challenge. Henry's methodology, reflected in the chapter titles, is primarily stylistic, as opposed to a study of building types that cuts across theboundaries ofchangeable stylistic labels. The opening chapter, "Survival ofPastTraditions," provides a brief overview of the continued popularity into this century of theRichardsonian Romanesque and Shingle styles, among others. In his discussion of J. Riely Gordon, the most influential Texas proponent of the Richardsonian Romanesque, especially through his superb county courthouse designs of the 1890s, Henry cites the Nolte National Bank (1898) in Seguin as the earliest example of the mingling of Richardsonian Romanesque and Mission or Spanish detailing in Texas. However, Kenneth A. Breisch points out earlier combinations of these idioms by Gordon in his Spirit of H. H. Richardson on the Midland Prairies. Henry's explanation for the persistence of the Shingle Style is also unconvincing as he compares major works by McKim, Mead and White to what amount to builders' houses in Dallas and Seguin, and fails to provide construction dates for two of his examples. In five of the remaining six chapters, Henry views the architecture ofTexasfrom 1904to 1945according to stylistic categories, the exception being the chapter on residential architecture. He divides his attention between the two major architectural camps of the period, the progressive or modern and the traditional or eclectic, and assigns the eclectic designers to academic and regional subgroups. This approach is the source of some confusion when one encounters major firms such as Atlee Ayres, Sanguinet and Staats, and Lang and Witchell inboth categories. With respect to Ayres, itis evident thathe was not as comfortable with progressive design as he was with eclectic, and it is likely that George Willis, a draftsman in Frank Lloyd Wright's office for four years before working for Ayres, was actually responsible for the works Henry cites as progressive. Curiously, Henry mentions Willis in connection with the Milam Building (1928) in San Antonio, but does not comment on its very un-Wrightian character. His stylistic labeling can be puzzling at times: he cites the Milam Building as "Modernistic" because ofits massing, but calls the Smith-Young Tower (1929), also in San Antonio and by brothers Atlee and Robert Ayres, "Academic Eclectic" because of its neo-Gothic ornamentation, while noting that its massing indicates a "Modernistic" tendency. He also fails to note that the Smith-Young Tower was perhaps the only building by a Texas firm to have been rendered by the noted draftsman Hugh Ferriss. Henryillustratesthe greatwealthofTexas architecture of the period by choosing buildings from across the state, including such little-known works as the extravagant neoGothic State National Bank Building (1926) in Corsicana, and the Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railroad Depot (1926) in Quanah, one of the more effective examples of the Mission Revival in Texas. Unfortunately, there are a number of major omissions...