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Left to right: Binz Building. 1895, Lorehn and Friz, archi- tet a, demolished. Houston's first skyscraper. (The American Architect anil Building News, vol. 46, Pondren Library. Rice I 'ntverstt) i. First National Bank Building, 1905 and 1909. Sanguinet and Staats, architects. Viewo) tteei erection for 1909 addition (right) to 1905 original (left). Houston's first steel-framed skyscraper. {Houston Metropolitan Research n Center. Houston Public Library). Main Street looking south S<' ] »» 1,:; from Rusk Avenue. 1911. showing the S f Cartel Building : SKI i B '' B « teenier) and the Hotel Bender under construction (left). House • • 1 of Mrs. AC. Allen, in lower-right corner, demolished later ;*!it• ', i 3• B *> i i B I that year. (Houston Metropolitan Research Center. Houston i< Sisf! ' J! • • B j i ) « r Public Library) i- *4:Bi«Dr • UL i 1 n J S i i i m r CC E k J 3 mini l • • • '"nut • • • • • • • '--.j HE : « w
The skyscraper is a building type that underwent its As the names (Binz, Paul. Stewart. Scanlan, Setlegast. initial phases of development in New York and Chicago Carter. Bender. Rice. Cotton) of many of Houston's in (he last three decades of the 19th century Its distin- earliest skyscrapers attested, they were built in part to guishing characteristic was the height achieved by piling commemorate their owners. One entrepreneur, Jesse floors of habitable, rentable space on top of one another. Holman Jones, declined to comply with this practice. Two technological developments contributed especially Instead, he named his buildings after their major ten- Scraping to the formation of this building type: the steam- ants. Jones shrewdly understood the skyscraper to be an powered passenger elevator and structural framing in economic phenomenon. He built to make money and his high-Strength, low-density, non-combustible metals. projects were designed especially to achieve this pur- The passenger elevator made it possible to transport peo- pose. Jones was intimately involved in the design of his ple vertically beyond a height that stairs ceased to he buildings, which were planned to incorporate a number practical. "Skeletal" framing in steel (and eventually in of profitable uses, to be expandable, and to be con- the steel-reinforced concrete) made it possible to construct structed and maintained as efficiently as possible. With buildings higher than was practical with masonry bear- the exception of the Rice Hotel, all of Jones's early ing walls. Technical developments in foundation design. buildings were built with structural frames of reinforced artificial illumination, and mechanical ventilation addi- concrete, making them among the tallest concrete build- tionally contributed to the practicability of the tall build- ings in the United States during the early 1900s and. ing The construction of tall buildings was a response to more to the point perhaps, cheaper to erect than steel- Houston the burgeoning growth of American cities alter the Civil framed buildings.' War. accommodating greater numbers of people in exist- ing urban centers and providing space from which to The Soaring Twenties conduct efficiently the centralization of American busi- 1 Sanguinet and Staats's S.F. Carter Building, for only a ness enterprise. few months the tallest building in Texas, remained the Sky: tallest in Houston from 1911 until 1926. After 191 3 the Tall office buildings first began to be built in Texas pace of tall building in Houston slowed. During 1917 during the 1890s.' Fort Worth, Dallas, and San Anionio and 1918 it halted altogether and resumed only slowly in already had experienced tall office-building construc- the early 1920s. But as Houston expanded to become the tion by the time Houston's first skyscraper, the six-story largest city in Texas by 1930. another surge of tall build- Binz Building, was constructed at Main and Texas in ing construction dramatically changed the appearance of 1894- 1894-1895. Just before the Civil War two four-story the city. This was marked not only by a general increase buildings had been built in Houston: the Capitol Hotel in the height of tall buildings, but by striking composi- of 1883 w as five stories high and possessed a passenger tional and stylistic developments, and by the tendency to elevator, as did the five-story Kiam Building of 1894. define new suburban subcenters. far from downtown, Therefore, the Bin/ Building (demolished in 1950-1951 I with tall buildings. Dispensation for such developments did not dramatical!) alter the profile of Houston's sky- stemmed from a mythology of (he skyscraper that Rem line. But because of its height it caught local imagina- Koolhaas has described as "'delirious, "' This romantic 1976 tions. And when illustrated in The American Architect mythology designated the skyscraper as symbolic of a and Building News of 17 November 1894. the Binz new era. an icon of the glamor of an impending modern. Building became the first Houston building to be pub- urban civilization. Stephen Fox lished in an architectural journal. Despite these trends. Houston skyscrapers ol the 1920s Designed by Olle J. Lorehn, a young architect recently still adhered to the use of U- or L-shapcd plans, tripartite arrived in Houston, the Binz Building was decorated compositional divisions, and the custom ol architectur- Top to bottom: Main Street looking north from C 'tipilol Ave- ally ornamenting only the street sides of a building, nue. 191.1. showing the Rice Hotel (left), the Bim Building with Italian Renaissance ornament. Although it pos- (right), and the Scanlan Building (right background) sessed an interior frame of cast-iron and steel, its exte- irrespective of its height. The perpetuation of these ten- (Houston Metropolitan Research Center. Houston Publit Li- rior walls were of load-bearing brick. It was not until dencies derived in part from a much greater reliance OH brary}. View of Plaza Apartment Hotel (left) and adjacent after the turn-of-thc-century that 1 louston's first steel- local architects than in the previous decade. Sanguinet Reid House on Montrose Boulevard reproduced in the Report framed skyscraper was constructed, the eight-story First and Staats (whose Houston office became, in succes- of the Cily Planning Commission (1929) above the t option: National Bank Building of 1903-1905.' However, the sion. Sanguinet. Staats, Hedrick and Gottlieb, then "The result of no zoning. An expensive residence heavitj de- First National Bank Building retained its superiority for Hedrick and Gottlieb) and Alfred C. Finn (a former San- preciated by a large apartment." (Report of the City Planning even fewer years than had the Binz Building. guinet and Staats draftsman who became Jesse Jones's Commissions View looking north from Hermann Park toward architect > were Houston's chief skyscraper architects the Warwick (right) and The Museum of Pine Arts (left), 1927. Houston's First Skyline during the 1920s, with Joseph Finger and James Ruskin (Houston Metropolitan Re.uun h ( enter, Houston Public Bailey distant runners-up Sanguinet. Staats, Hedrick Library) Between 1908 and 1913 a construction boom endowed downtown Houston with a respectable skyline of build- and Gottlieb were the most accomplished. Their work ings ranging from seven to seventeen stories in height. was especially evident on the east side of downtown. These tall buildings adhered to the planimetric. volumet- where they participated with the entrepreneur Ross S. ric, and architectural conventions introduced in the Binz Sterling in defining a new corridor of high-rise develop- . Building. In plan, they comprised U or L shapes to facil- ment along Texas Avenue. Finn (and Jesse Jones) con- centrated on the Main Street corridor, which they .. itate illumination and ventilation. They were slab-sided, rising straight from the sidewalk to the overhanging cor- continued to expand up the street. i .i •*i nice. Elevations were divided into base, shaft, and attic H • •• i . zones with architectural decoration (usually of classical .. ii • •• - .... New downtown buildings typically ranged from 16 nuii I I fsii derivation) reserved only for the street sides; the party- stories to 22 stories in height, with two taller than 30 •tin II • •• H I wall sides were left unadorned. stories, while suburban skyscrapers rose from 8 stories I I • II to 11 stories high. Tall buildings constructed to house i i i In addition to offices, retail stores, hotels, and hospitals specialized professional or commercial tenants, a devel- I I came to occupy tall buildings, as did Hats. By 1913, opment of the '20s. resulted locally in the 16-story L Houston had three high-rise apartment buildings, the Cotton Exchange Building of 1923-1924 and the 21- Savoy Apartments, the now-demolished Rossonian. and story Medical Arts Building of 1924-1926. Houston's the Beaconsficld Apartments, the first two se\en stones, only neo-Gothic skyscraper, both by Sanguinet, Staats. the third eight stories. These were all located on major Hedrick and Gottlieb." In the near-downtown area tall- thoroughfares but in suburban neighborhoods rather than building construction remained an acceptable way to in- downtown. Beginning with the Binz Building, tall build- duce change in existing land use, site coverage, and 13 ings were used to transform Houston neighborhoods and height patterns. But the two tall residential hotels built • •: I .. forcibly absorb them into the expanding commercial dis- near The Museum of Fine Arts in the middle 1920s, 2'^- '.. trict. When the 16-story S.F. Carter Building (the tallest milcs south of downtown, drew criticism for encroach- .. of Houston's pre-World War I skyscrapers, although the ing on newly-developed neighborhoods of single-family *.- Rice Hotel of 1913 had 17 floors) and the 10-slory Hotel housing. The Report of the Cily Planning Commission. . . Bender were built at either end of the 800 block of Main published in 1929. singled out Joseph Finger's 8-story Street between 1910 and 1911, a two-story wooden Plaza Apartment Hotel on Montrose (1924-1926) as an house, set in its own little garden, was left sandwiched example of the environmental consequences of Hous- W^M.MHMWS in between. ton's lack of height control and zoning ordinances. The design of Houston's first generation of skyscrapers It was just such legal strictures that led to the shaping of was dominated by out-of-town architects. Houston a distinctive formal type for the 1920s skyscraper The clients seemed not lo trust the ability of local firms to New York Zoning Law of 1916 established formulas for take on this building type. Two firms — Sanguinet and height control, mandating that as a building rose, it step Staats of Fort Worth and Mauran, Russell and Garden of back in plateau-like stages Irom the street line, The St. Louis (Mauran. Russell and Crowell after 1911) — result was a tiered profile that architects often capped were especially prolific, with Sanguinet and Staats open- n uh an elaborate city crown terminus — the "'setback," ing a Houston branch office in 1903 to handle its local which hy the middle 1920s had become the architectural commissions. D.H. Burnham and Company of Chicago, symbol of the minlem skyscraper. Jarvis Hunt of Chicago, and Warren and Wetmorc of zv New York designed one tall building apiece in Houston The first two setback skyscrapers to be built locally for local entrepreneurs or for national corporations re- were the 32 story NielsEsperson Building of 1924-1927 quiring regional headquarters buildings. by the Chicago architect John Eberson, and the 22-story K— * Cite Spring-Summer 1984 I I
Left to fight: Nieh Espei ton Building, 1927, John Eberson, architect. {American Architect, vol. 132, Fondren Library, Rn I t niversit) t View oj the Guff Building (right), ih< 5 f Carter (Set ond National Bank) Building (left foreground), and the Niels Esperson Building (left background), 1930. (Hous- ttm Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library). 9 Humble Tower, 1936. John I-'. Staub and Kenneth Franzheim, architects. The first Houston skyscraper u> he built with
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Petroleum Building of 1925-1927 by the New York more up-to-date reference. Holahird and Root's modern- standing, but the Shamrock still preserved a distinction architect Alfred C. Bossom. The tsperson Building was istic Racine Countv Courthouse in Racine. Wisconsin of between its front facade and its massive rearele^a an ebutliant production that terminated in 8 Steel-framed, 1932. tion. which abutted the one- and two-story houses of terra-cotta clad tholos memorializing the eponymous Braes wood. Niels Esperson. The massing and decoration of the American skyscrapers of the first hall of the 20th Petroleum Building derived from Bossom's proposition century did not retted architecturally the technological Although Kenneth Franzheim replaced Alfred C. Finn as thai the Meso-American stepped pyramids of Central developments that made their construction, mainte- Houston's principal skyscraper architect during the late America represented the most valid precedent for shap- nance, and inhabitation possible. Houston was no ex- 1940s, his firm's work began to display a loss of direc- ing the modern American setback. The last two sk\ • ception. The introduction of air-conditioning in the earls tion thereafter. For in attempting to come to terms with scrapers to be completed in Houston before the 1930s, although widely heralded, did not exercise an) modern (rather than modernistic) architecture. Franz- Depression, the 37-story Gulf Building in 1927-1929 radical effect on the design of tall buildings. The nine- heim's buildings became less convincing urbanisdcalh and (he 2 I -story Sterling Building of 1929-19.31, incor- story Humble (now Main) Building of 1919-1921,b) and only marginally more up-to-date. The urbane formu- porated what, in the late '20s. became the canonic mod- the New York architects Clinton and Russell, became in las prevailed at ihe aggressively green 2l-s(or\ lexas • em style of the setback sk\ scraper. Art Dccc. By allying 1932 the first local office building to be equipped with a National Hank Building of 1952-1955 and the 24-Story flat, km-relief decoration concentrated near the ground central air-conditioning system. Its annex, the 17-slory Bank of the Southwest Building of 1953-1956. but the with sculptural massing that emphasized vertical ascent. Humble Tower of 1934-1936 by John F. Staub and Ken- ' magic was gone. 1 he old formulas no longer worked. An Dtco eclipsed both the use of classical decor and neth Franzheim, was the first local tall building to be And despite the fact that the Bank of the Southwest neo-Goihic detail for the exteriors of tall buildings built with central air-conditioning, a fact acknowledged Building was faced with Houston's lust all-aluminum only by the handsome neoclassical penthouse w ith curtain-wall, that its underground passageways to the Jesse Jones's Gulf Building, at 450 feet the tallest of which Franzheim capped the building to conceal the sj S Commerce Building and the fen-Ten Garage inaugu- Houston's 1920s skyscrapers and, for one year, the tall- rated the downtown tunnel system, and that Florence est west of the Mississippi, summed up the extravagant Knoll designed its immense banking hall (which con- skyscraper euphoria of the late 1920s. Although the tained a mural by Rulino Tamayo), the impact ot the design — a collaboration of Alfred C. Finn with the A new was still too weak to compensate for the exhaustion New York architects Kenneth Franzheim and JJ.E.R. of the old. Franzhemi's last tall building in Houston was Carpenter — was based on Eliel Saarincn's Chicago a tactful, appropriate, but no longer assured 16-story an- Tribune Building protect of 1922. its stepped profile nex of 1958-1960 to Warren and Wetmorc's grandilo- evoked Manhattan, skyscraper capital of the world, and quent Texas Company Building of 1915. promised to transform Houston magically into the New York of the South. The Gulf Building also exemplified what might be called the urbane skyscraper ot the '2(K Ihe Forward Look: M o d e rn Architecture A r r i v e * Its six-Story base, which extended from Main Street During the 1950s most new office construction occurred through the block to Travis, contained the spectaltj store outside the central business district, which underwent a of Sakowitz Brothers, several small shops, a compact period ol stagnation that for a lime provoked considera- elevator lobby, and the majestic banking hall of the ble alarm. The modernist counterparts ol Pranzheim's National Bank of Commerce. The setback lower of the buildings typically were small, occupying less than full- Gulf Building was free-standing, square in plan, and View of preliminary scheme for McCarthy Center, 1945. He- block siles, and theretme conforming i h \ necessit) obtained foui architectural facades rather than two. Atop drick and Lindsley, an hitet ti I he i entrai building became rather lhan design I to the urbane tradition: U or L plans, its four-story crown were mounted an observation the Shamrock Hotel, completed in 1949 IHouston Metropoli- small lobbies, retail shops and services on the ground and the Jesse I I . Jones Aeronautical Beacon. At night tan Resean h < enter, Houston Public Library I floor entered directly from ihe street, even the despised distinction between " f r o n t " and " h a c k . " As an ideal the towers ol the G u l f and Niels Esperson buildings tern's cooling tower. The most visible architectural coo- form the preferred alternative to the setback was the were brilliantly illuminated, highlighting their role as the cession to technological development among Houston slab, with blank end walls bracketing long expanses ol twin studtkriine of the Houston skyline. skyscrapers involved the automobile. A limited number gridded glass, aluminum, and porcelain-enameled of buildings three dow ntown and the two hotels near curtain-wall, " f l o a t i n g " above ranks of exposed struc- Downs and Lips The Museum of Pine Arts — contained built-in parking tural columns at the ground-floor level. The image, de- The Great Depression abruptly hailed Houston's raep space or minuscule (but stylistically harmonious) park- rived from Le Corbusier's tall-building designs of the for the sky, quashing such "delirious'' proposals as a ing garages. late 1920s and 1930s, filtered through his design for the 20-story City Hall of 1929 modelled on the Los Angeles Secretariat of the United Nations in New York ol 1947 City Hall, a 2l-stor> First Christian Church skyscraper It was Kenneth Franzheim. having moved his office (as executed by Harrison and Ahramowitz in 1950) and of 1929. and a deluxe, IX-story cooperative apartment from New- York to Houston in 1937. who embraced Lever House, also in New York of 1950-1952. designed tower of 1931. to have been built alongside the residen- both the car and cool air in one of his most urbane build- by the f i r m o l Skidmore. Owings and Merrill. Paradoxi- tial enclave of Shadyside. The only one of these exotic ings, the now-demolished Oil and Gas Building of 1937- cally, America's " m o d e r n " tall buddings of the 1950s visions to be built was Joseph Finger and Alfred C. 1939. The small, seven-story, L-shaped building con- were as dependent on the late 1920s as were their old- Finn's Jefferson Davis Hospital on Allen Parkway tained a double-level attached garage, a Conoco service fashioned modernistic competitors. (designed 1931, built 1936-1938) This was a free- station (Continental Oil was the chief tenant I. aground- standing. 12-story, cruciform-planned, setback skj floor shopping arcade, street trees along three sides ot scraper architecturally finished on all sides, a belated the building, a setback level with extensive terraces oc- Hermon Lloyd and W.B. Morgan produced Houston's tribute to the 1920s' propensity for skyscraper public- cupied by the Ramada Club, and a crowning modernistic first modern skyscraper, the 21-Story Melrose Building buildings. penthouse concealing the air-conditioning equipment, Of 1949-1953, approaching the Corbusian model more close)) though with Ihe May I air. a 16-Story apartment Although the Depression proved to be a temporary Tht Knd of an Kra building of 1953-1956 near ihe Prudential Building. The setback, none of the tall buildings built between 1934 \ postwar building boom thai ran its course between Lever House parti (a horizontal!) aligned slab floating and 1942 competed in height with those of the '20s 1945 and 1951 concluded, rather lhan superseded, the on Structural columns, atop which a vertically aligned Most were additions or annexes to existing tall build- "delirious'' era of the skyscraper that began in the slab was positionedi was omnipresent locally. But it lent ings, the highest new buildings being the ten-storv Fed- 1920s. It was the last gasp of the urbane, setback sk\ itself to considerable variation, ranging from the doctri- eral Office Building of 1936-1938. the ten-story Cit) scraper tradition in Houston its monuments were the naire (Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's firsl Houston Hall of 1937-1939, and the ten-storj Y M C A Building of 23-story Chy 'now Southern) National Bank Building ol building, the 18-Story Medical Towers of 1954-1957 in 1938-1941. While Kenneth Franzheim's Y M C A re- 1945-1947 bv Alfred C Finn, the IX-stor\. 1,001-rOOffl uptown Houston, for which Golemon and Rolfe were ar- tained a somewhat 1920s-ish flavor with its picturesque Shamrock Hotel of 1945-1949 by Hedrick and Lindsley, chitects of record.'to ihe clunk) (Wirt/. Calhoun, tck massing and Renaissance detail, the Federal Of- the 16-Stor) Hermann Professional Building of I • Tungate and Jackson's 16-siory Memorial Professional fice Building, designed by Louis A. Simon. Supervising |94o by Kenneth Franzheim and Hedrick and Lindsley. Building of 1955-1958. now demolished, faced with a Architect of the Treasury, and Joseph Finger's City Hall and the lK-sn>r\ Prudential Building ol 1950-1952 by garish turquoise-and-gold anodized aluminum curtain- were more typical of the 1930s. The City Hall was a Kenneth Franzheim. wall), to the chunky (the 11-Story World Trade Center of blocky. stepped mass accentuated by a smooth limestone 1959-1962 b) Wilson. M o m s . Grain and Anderson, skin, vertical channels containing the window bays, and The mosi interesting were (he latter three, for they where the parti was adhered to. but the proportions were panels and screens of "modernistic" ornament, the ' JOs defined an extension of the museum-area subcenter in somewhat off). In recognition ot Houston priorities, ihe successor to '20s ArtDico. Finger exchanged the pre "uptown'" Houston, adjacent to the new 1\-established Floating horizontal bases of the Medical Towers and the vimis decade's model (the Los Angeles City Hall) for a Medical Center Glenn II McCarthy, who built Memorial Professional Building were filled with parked the Shamrock, envisioned it as the centerpiece ot cars. Disregarding the Lever House formula was the Oil and Gas Building, 1939, Kenneth Franzheim, an Intra. nth) Center, a suburban skyscraper CIT) based on five-story Gibraltar Building of 1957-1950 h> Greacen demolished. (Photo b) EUtood \l Payne, Architectural Re- and Brogniez and J V. Neuhaus III. Sheathed on three ol conf, vol 87, roiidren Lihr,n . Rice I niversits > the model of Rockefeller Center in New York of 1930 1940 Franzheim mixed modernistic details and massing its tour sides entirety in heat-absorbing solar gray glass. with historical ornament at the Hermann Professional Houston's first all-glass curtain-wall was indebted none- Building, as had Hedrick and l.indslev Hi the Shamrock. theless to Lc Corbusier, who had proposed such an all- Historical quotations were dispensed with at the Pru- glass curtain-wall with his mur iteutraltsam of 1929 dential Building mow the Cnivcrsily of Texas Health Science (enter), » hicfl occupied a 27'^-acre site con- The changes that these modern buildings made to the taining gardens, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and appearance of Houston in the 1950s were slight. In parking lots. Instead. Franzheim composed it as a series contrast to Dallas, where Harrison and Abramowitz's *liuin" ol stepped slabs, also on the Rockefeller Center model. Republic National Bank Building (1954). William B. The Prudential's architecture was stodgy but it met the labler's Statler Hilton Hotel (1955). and Welton Becket Uiii, ground confidently and put on a good show up top. and Associates' Southland Center 11958) were the big- where the company's name and insignia, the Rock ol gest and most conspicuous of a group of modern towers Gibraltar, were featured in spectacular, Texas-sized exhibiting the forward look in '50s modern architecture, fl"li neon displays. The Prudential Building was the first lall Houston's skyline still peaked at the Gulf and NieK oil ice building lo be constructed outside dow mown Fsperson buildings. There were no concentrations of Houston. All three of these uptown buildings were free- new tall buildings. Most were dispersed along the Main 12 Cite Spring-Summer 1984
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Left to right: Night view of Gibraltar Building, I960, taste. Collectively, these buildings, isolated in their pla- seemed to be the avoidance of repetition Philip Johnson Greacen andBrogniez ami J X. Neuhans, ill, architects. zas, tended to erode rather than relieve the Inline of and John Burgee's Pennzoil Place (1970-1976) and Posl {Photo by Harper Leiper, An-, and Architecture, vol. 77. Fon-downtown Houston, which, under the impact of retail Oak Central (1973-1976). bolh with S.I. Morris Associ- dren Library, Rue University). View of original scheme for flight and the economics of speculation, slowly came ates tor Hines. resolved that problem decisively and CuUen Center, 1960, Wehoa Becket and Associates, archi unraveled. For although implicitly dependent on the ex- opened the present era in Houston's skyscraper history. tects. (Arts and Architecture, vol. 77, Fondren Library, Rice Universal! Tennessee (now 'lentiecoi Building, 1963, Skid- isting fabric to provide a dense, contrasting "city- Pennzoil, although clad in a Seagram-like curtain-wall, won-. Owingi (oidMerrill, architects. Surrounding it are the scape," new high-rises tended lo go up amidst blocks of broke every rule that made I )ne Shell Pla/a the perfect Oil ami Go.', is uil,ii tin (lower left I. the Medical Professional land cleared of earlier development for asphalt-topped office building. Every rule but one. that is. It was im- Building (middle left), and the Southwest lower (middle right), parking lots, awaiting the day when tall office buildings mensely successful financially. That was the point of the all demolished. t Houston Metropolitan Research Center. would be buill upon them as well. Instead of "cleaning tall building in the first place, and in Houston it still is Houston Public Library), One Shell Plaza, 1970 (center), and up" downtown Houston, these lithe, graceful, modern 7Wo Shell Plaza, 197/ (left background). Skidmore, Owingi lowers participated in its cleaning-oul." N.iti-s and Merrill ami Wilson, Morris. Crain and Anderson, or, hi- teats, i Photo by Ezra Stoller. Skidmore. Owingi and Merrill) 1 On the history of the skyscraper, see: Francisco Mujicu. History The Rise of Suburban Skylines of ihe Skyscraper, New York. DeCnpo Press. W ) , first pub- Complementing the reshaping of the downtown skyline lished 1929: Alfred C Bossom, Building to the Skies The Ro- was a suburban high-rise boom that began in the middle mance of the Skyscraper. London. The Studio Limited, 1934; Street corridor. Even in uptown Houston the skyline was 1960s. Emerging as nodes ol tall-building development Carl W Condil, American Building Art. The Twentieth Century. dominated by Franxheim's and lledncks postwar were Sharpstown Center in Frank W. Sharp's 6.500-acre New York, Oxford University Press, I960; Winston Wcisman. 1 "A New View ,tt Skyscraper History," in Rdgar Kaufmann. Jr.. setbacks. Sharpstown. 9 - miles southwest ol downtown. Green editor, TheMseofan American Architecture, New York. The way (now Greenway Plaza), at the western terminus of Metropolitan Museum ol An and Praeger Publishers. 197(1. 113- The Tower in the Plaza the Richmond Avenue "Office City" corridor, and the IW), Piiul Goldbergci, The Skvst roper. New York, Alfred A I his trend reversed suddenly in the late 1950s. Between Post Oak-Westheimer intersection, 5'A miles west of Knopl. I982; Jeffrey Karl Ochsncr. -'Tall Buildings: Houston as 1958 and I960, the 32-StOty First City National Bank downtown. Predicated upon access by private automo- aCase in Point." Texas Architect vol 12, May June ptx;. .'X. Building by the New York office of Skidmore. Owings bile, each of these sites adjoined a part of the regional 45: and John Pastier, "The Cardboard Skyscrapers ol Texas, and Merrill with Wilson, Morris, Crain and Anderson I leeway network then under construction. Each was con- 1911-1932,"' Texas Architect, vol. J2, May June 1982, S5-57, (1958-1961). the 44-story llumhle (now Exxon) Build- ceived as an internally -focused development, marrying 2 Wilhinl H Robinson and Todd Webb, Texas I'uMi, Buildingsoj ing by the Los Angeles architects Wellon Becket and the planning and design techniques ol modern architec- ih, Nineteenth Century. Austin, Univetsii) of Texas Press tot the Associates with Golemon and Rolfe and George Pierce ture and urbanism to the economics of speculative real Anion Carter Museum of Western An. 1974. IM-II.V estate development. 3 Designed by Sauguincl and Staats and expanded in 1908-1909 Abel B. Pierce < 1958-1963), the 33-story Tennessee n d again in 1922-1925, (he first Nalional Bank Building ma) (now Tenneco) Building by the San Francisco office of have been Ihe firsi sieel framed skyscraper in Items, inasmuch as Skidmore. Owings and Merrill (1960-1963), Cullen Of these, the two most cohesive were Greenway, a 41- Dallas s lust steel - framed skyscraper, the 14-story Praetorian Center, a 6-block urban renewal-style planned develop- acre office and residential park begun in 1963 but sold Building by C Vt Bulger and Sou. «as nol built until I91N ment by Wellon Becket and Associates (1960-1963). the in 1967 to Kenneth Schnilzer's Century Properties, and 4 Condit. American Building An, 136-159. Jones i lusi downtown 28-story Sheraton-Lincoln Hotel (1960-1962). and the the Galleria Post Oak at Post Oak and VV'eslheinier on a building was tlu- rune siorv. concrete framed Bristol Hotel Annex 21-story Southwest lower (1960-1963. now demol- site purchased in 1964 by Gerald D. Hines Interests. of 1908-1909 (demolished 1953) This was followed by a series ished), both by Kenneth Benlsen Associates, were an- Schnit/er doubled the size of Greenway Plaza by ni other concrete-framed buildings ihe tea-star) Chronicle and nounced. These buildings provided downtown Houston buy ing-out an entire restricted subdivision that adjoined len-story Texas Company (now Bankers Mortgage) buildings