The Country Houses of John F. Staub by Stephen Fox (review)

The Country Houses of John F. Staub. By Stephen Fox, color photography by Richard Cheek. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Pp. 408. Illustrations, color photographs, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-158544 -595-0. $75.00, cloth.) In The Country Houses of John F. Staub, Stephen Fox presents a beautiful portrait of the work of this talented architect and his often neglected period of architecture. Staub, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, graduated with a master’s degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1916 and worked for the New York country house architect Harrie T. Lindeberg until 1923. He emerged at a time when the profession was still dominated by academic classicism. Influenced by the ideas taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, architects such as Lindeberg took their aesthetic inspiration from Ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance while pursuing modern functionality. His classicism served Staub well after he arrived in Houston in 1923, at Lindeberg’s behest, to design several houses. At the time, developers were beginning to plat posh suburbs around the city to house its rapidly growing elite, who were getting rich on oil and a thriving port. Staub decided to settle in Texas and used his education and experience to design classically inspired houses and gardens that transformed the dull plains around Houston into stunning patrician wonderlands. Fox writes, “The guiding thesis of this book is that not ‘the styles are a lie’ but that they were only part of the crucial architectural task in which John Staub, his eclectic peers and their predecessors were involved: the social construction through architecture of upper-class-ness” (p. 1). In other words, Staub used his talents to create houses and grounds that blended “restraint and dignity,” and “monumentality and intimacy” with carefully sequenced views and meticulously scaled historical elements to help sustain and reinforce the position of Houston’s growing upper class. Staub’s houses, with their precise proportion and detail, historical references and fine materials, seemed to transcend the less than sublime sources of the wealth that created them. Designing mansions reminiscent of French Renaissance chateaus, such as the Neal house (1931; p. 153), and Georgian plantation houses, such as the John P. King house (1928; p. 144), Staub created architecture that helped Texas’s elite present an image of continuity and coherent legitimacy in a young and unstable capitalist democracy. Although the Bauhaus modernists overshadowed and marginalized Staub and his ilk in the 1940s, he continued to design residences until his retirement in 1961. Near the end of his career, Staub became influenced by modern architecture in houses such as the James R. Elkins house (1947–1948), which has art deco elements, and the James A. Elkins house (1958–1961), which has both art deco and Bauhaus-inspired features; however, he never joined the ideological ranks of the modernists. Unlike modernists such as Walter Gropius or Mies van der Rohe, Staub never sought to create a new, utilitarian, socialist-inspired architectural aesthetic based on structure and functionalism. Even in his late works, he continued to skillfully and artistically employ elitist motifs, such as rich colors and textures, Georgian symmetry, arched fanlights, and applied, classically inspired ornaments that the modernists rejected, and although he left an impres2009 Book Reviews 309 *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 309 sive portfolio of significant built works, his legacy became largely overshadowed by the rise of modernism. This book, with its awesome illustrations and intelligent, well-written text, will help revive the memory of this talented and prolific twentieth-century architect. Fox provides concise yet detailed descriptions and analyses of Staub’s significant houses, their grounds and neighborhoods. The Country Houses of John F. Staub acts both as an inspiring chronicle of Staub’s work and a diligent examination of academic classicism as seen in the elite suburban “country houses” built in America from the 1920s to the 1950s. Texas State University–San Marcos Peter Dedek Jerry Bywaters: Interpreter of the Southwest. Edited by Sam Deshong Ratcliffe, introduction by William H. Gerdts. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Pp. 120. Illustrations, color plates, index. ISBN 978-1-58544-591-2. $30.00, cloth...