By the way, it is time to abandon the miserable, old-fashioned box houses… Daily Telegraph, July 13, 1870 1

The act of revealing the traces (and the scars) of a site and the unmasking of cosmetic applications…suggest a heroic architecture of resistance. Alberto Pérez-Gómez 2

Hidden In Plain Sight: A Vernacular In The Old Sixth Ward By Marie Rodriguez and Ernesto Alfaro It is no secret that the of Houston, resilient and impetuous, was born, in 1836, out of pure speculation. It exists, to this day, much in the same manner: in a continuous state of a change. It has been this way, in no small part, due to the character of its inhabitants: men and women driving their built environment, continually replacing their urban fabric in the name of progress. Historical buildings have traditionally been a problem for the Bayou City, for its inhabitants have had no patience for them, and are inclined to tear down buildings deemed antiquated, if seen as an impediment to the next great technological or real-estate development. However, as the city pushes headlong into the 21 st century, historical preservation is fast becoming inevitable and Houstonians are beginning to understand and appreciate the value that historical buildings bring to their city, as artifacts of their own material culture.

In the process of historic preservation of residential buildings, the primary concerns have to do with the people who inhabited the house in question, and their relevance to the historical narrative of the city or region. Typically, issues related to the ideologies, social drives, and technology employed in the fabrication of a house assume a secondary role – sometimes avoided or disregarded altogether. This is unfortunate because narrative components such as these are intrinsic to understanding a house in an expanded context, and serve as the means by which the past can truly be understood. A close reading of a house – an architectural hermeneutics – can not only answer the primary questions ( how the house was built, why was it built and whom did it shelter), but also can shed light on the architectural intentions and “values articulated through the stories that ground acts and deeds in a particular culture.” 3

In the case of Houston, the early development of the city needs to be understood not only through the primary narratives of major civic architecture and prominent residences, but also through the stories and events that unfolded when the residential architecture of the working class first emerged. Residents in the late 19 th century proudly referred to their town as “Houston City,” an optimistic, yet perceptive projection of its impending growth. These early Houstonians believed they had stumbled across a place that would develop into a great metropolis- a city that would one day conquer the transportation of commodities and its own landscape - be it natural or artificial. History would prove them right as the city began to expand beyond its limits, repeatedly, due to its first development catalyst: . Another significant catalyst would soon be found in the railroad and its direct effect on the lands that it would divide, dissect and develop. One of the early examples of this is in Houston’s historic Old Sixth Ward (OSW),

1 Cited in Dorothy Knox Howe Houghton, et. al., Houston’s Forgotten Heritage, Landscapes, Houses, Interiors, 1824-1914 . (Houston, TX: Press. 1991): ?. 2 “Introduction” in Architecture, Ethics, and Technology . (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994): 10. 3 Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “The Ethical Image in Architecture” in Built Upon Love . (Boston: MIT Press, 2006): 205.

1

where open tracts of land of the W.R. Baker Addition were first altered into railway tracks, stockyards and neighborhoods. Throughout the city, shipping and railroad industries allowed for the physical development of industrial and commercial buildings, with planked roads to connect them all.4 Buffalo Bayou was harnessed and continually transformed to function more efficiently, acting as a business tool in the development of the city. It is logical, then, that the area known as NSBB 5 would be developed early on, as was the case with the W.R. Baker Addition, which came in to being in 1856 [Fig. 1]. Workers who were employed by railroad, industrial and nearby docks first populated this neighborhood. 6 Many of the original houses stand to this day. One of these is 2109 Kane.

Michael Morrow and Taryn Kinney, of Kinney Morrow Architecture (KMA), purchased the house on Lot 9, Block 407 (2109) Kane street in the spring of 2004 [Fig. 2]. It was not a jewel of architectural design, but it was a compelling, compartmentalized, if internally rambling house, that with some amount of repair and dedication could turn into a cozy and comfortable residence. The pair quickly found themselves trying to decipher the piecemeal history of their new house and its due role within its historic neighborhood. Their process of discovery grew to collecting a variety of information, recorded legends, oral interviews, city maps and directories mentioning their property, with the intent of understanding their home’s interplay with its previous inhabitants and the OSW. Over the years the house had experienced a bevy of adaptive experiments with walls added and subtracted in a continual remaking of rooms, residual spaces and reinvention of their uses. This environment of constant cosmetic changes persisted due to the variety of tastes and needs of the previous inhabitants: the rooms were painted in entirely different and uncomplimentary colors; the cramped kitchen was festooned with stenciled trim and flower decorated wall tiles; there was carpet in the bathroom; and the entirety of the house exhibited pseudo-historical decorative touches that had no true connection to the house, neighborhood, or city [Fig. 3]. KMA quickly moved to edit at least a modicum of these excess elements. As they scraped the interior walls they found obscured walls of unknown use - doubled and overlapped upon each other, shiplap covered in numerous metal tacks, swaths of thin fabric netting, newspaper, wallpaper, and plasterboard, smothered windows, nested hallways, and thermal brick rubble from a vestigial chimney. They proceeded with caution once they reached the raw structure by creating several circular cuts along the walls of the corridor in order to understand what had occurred. This process resulted in a veritable diagnostic chart that revealed the existence of several competing structural members. Their curiosity was piqued. Why were there window frames within the walls? Why were there a variety of different wall treatments? Why were there shadow lines on the floor, indicative of walls that had been removed? All these questions strengthened the architects’ resolve to fully understand the conditions under which this house was built. These investigations brought to light the architectural inconsistencies within the house and its exchange of material culture and assembly. The result brought to the fore a rare breed of vernacular construction, in the heart of Houston, fully unearthed and restored as a

4 Houston City Directory , 1870-1871. (Houston: W. Murray, 1870): 92-93. 5 From the initials letters of North Side of Buffalo Bayou. This acronym was also employed in the area south side of the buffalo bayou, SSBB. 6 “W.R. Baker was a railroad investor who plotted the early additions to Houston in the early 1850’s near his railroad yards on the north side of Buffalo bayou and in the Fourth ward area.” Dorothy Knox Howe Houghton, et. al., Houston’s Forgotten Heritage, Landscapes, Houses, Interiors, 1824-1914 . (Houston, TX: Rice University Press. 1991): 114; “Several additions north of Buffalo Bayou were developed in the 1860s primarily with rent houses for railroad and dock workers.” Ibid., n.p. map: “Houston City Limits and Subdivisions.”

2

specimen of Texas architectural history. In the midst was a house ripe with a creolized vernacular style and a colorful registry of preceding inhabitants.

The house at 2109 Kane is commonly referred to as the Coulter-Sweeney house 7 and, at first glance, it exhibits a simple structure. Mrs. Mary E. Coulter, a widow, is one of the first known inhabitants of the house, which at the time, was located on the adjacent lot 8. 8 Her son, William J. Coulter, a druggist, had already arrived in Houston a year or more previously, and is listed as residing at the southwest corner of Henderson and Lubbock. 9 His mother’s house was a simple hall and parlor house, 10 probably built with East Texas lumber from the nearby Piney Woods. The Coulter’s W.R. Baker Addition neighborhood positioned them in close proximity to the railway yards and expanded their material choices and availability, in turn making certain building resources more economical. A sampling of the materials distributed and traded by the late 1800’s were old-growth lumber, window sashes, hand-carved doors, iron foundry-made hardware, tinning mill-made roof panels, pine tongue-and-groove floor boards with imported glass panes, and metal nails, filling Houston railway stations weekly. 11 This early version of the house, far different from what existed when KMA found it, is a direct expression of utility and clarity. It is fitting to assume, that the builder of this house had average construction skills and a limited budget. The result was a creolized three bay, box construction house 12 with a front porch that ran along its width. Around the time of its construction, the had voted to join the and Houston was experiencing rapid economic and demographic growth. This resulted in a construction boom, practically tripling the size of the city between the years 1870-1890. 13 At the end of the 19 th century, the art of building in America, and in this argument, Houston, was still in the process of maturing. In particular, residential architecture was at the cusp of transitioning to the balloon frame construction technique. 14 Board and batten construction was well established at this time and consisted of vertical boards nailed in place with vertical battens

7 “Tour Site 1, 2109 Kane Street, The Coulter-Sweeney House, Circa 1876” in Old Sixth Ward Protected Historic District’s 17 th Annual Victorian Home Tour . Pamphlet. The Old Sixth Ward Neighborhood Association, October 19, 2008: 2, 6. 8 Deed Sale record, Harris County, TX., Box 20, pg. 476, Lot 8, Block 407, NSBB, April 27, 1880. 2109 Kane occupies Lot 9. 9 Houston City Directory , 1877-78. (Houston: Mooney & Morrison Directory Co., 1877); 1879-1880. Houston City Directory , 1878-79. (Houston: Mooney & Morrison Directory Co., 1879): microfiche sheet 3 10 Hall and parlor as a program type is discussed later in this paper. 11 “HE&WT is bringing in big trains of lumber every week,” , 8, 17 Oct. 1880, 2, 7 Nov. 1880. Manufactured goods: 11 lumberyards listed, Houston City Directory (1870-1871): 92-93; less than100,000,000 board ft. cut in 1869, 300,000,000 board ft. cut in 1879, Robert S. Maxwell, Whistle in the Piney Woods . (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1998): 39; Window sash and blind factory established, Tri-Weekly Telegraph , 14, May 1862; “By 1850 a wide variety of materials was available to these builders.” Here is a listing of these materials: brass foundry by 1841; iron and steel nails available before the Civil War; advertisements for tin, sheet iron, and copper for sale. Knox Howe Houghton, et. al., Houston’s Forgotten Heritage, Landscapes, Houses, Interiors, 1824-1914 . (Houston, TX: Rice University Press. 1991): 73. 12 This construction type will be further discussed in detail in the following paragraphs. 13 Dorothy Knox Howe Houghton, et. al., Houston’s Forgotten Heritage, Landscapes, Houses, Interiors, 1824-1914 . (Houston, TX: Rice University Press. 1991): n.p., untitled population growth map. 14 c.f. Walker Field, “A Reexamination into the Invention of the Balloon Frame” in The Journal of the American Society of Architectural Historians , Vol. 2, No. 4 (Oct., 1942). This article creates the beginning arguments that place the development of balloon framing as a collaborative effort that involved several years, a diversity of builders and fertile testing grounds in newly developing American towns who tinkered with platform and braced construction techniques, to generate the tried and true technique of balloon framing.

3

covering their joints. This technique would be finished with a final layer of siding known as weather-boarding .15 Many variants of this building technique surfaced due to material resources, skills and geographic context. This was especially true in Texas, where a distinct form of board and batten thrived due to the abundance of old-growth wood, an unfettered and distinct landscape, along with an extreme climate.

The specific variant of this technique is called “box-and-strip” construction and is, specifically, a Texan term. 16 This construction type flourished among the working class and produced structures with a crisp and simple house form. The historian Gordon Echols provides a quick overview of how a box-and-strip structure is assembled:

Such construction is accomplished by nailing vertical siding to the floor sill plate and the ceiling header then covering the joints between the boards with narrow battens to keep out rain, dust and wind. The skin becomes the bearing wall and no studs are erected as a structural frame, thus conserving wall space. This single-board wall provides the finished surface of the outside and the inside of the building. 17

Its efficient use of material and facile construction technique made box-and-strip a popular construction type by both the rural and urban working class. Wood was plentiful in East Texas and quickly became the material that translated and expressed each builder’s traditions, rituals and character within its form bringing forth “a beauty of a fine form.” 18 During the stripping of the façade of 2109 Kane, Mr. Morrow and Ms. Kinney uncovered 12” wide straight-grain boards preserved under a layer of horizontal siding along the front façade [Fig. 3]. Further research revealed a description of the house in an 1880 sale of deed record:

That we John Sweeney joined by his wife Mattie C. Sweeney…have granted and released …unto said Mary E. Coulter…the following premises to wit forty feet front by one hundred feet back off of the N.W. corner of Lot No. 8 in Block No. 407 N.S.B.B. Houston, Harris County Texas, and also the box frame house containing three rooms and 40 feet in length by 15 feet in width. 19

15 c.f. A.J. Downing, “On Materials and Modes of Construction,” in The Architecture of Country Houses . Part I, Sect. III. (New York: Dover Publications, 1969): 50. “There are two modes of constructing the exteriors of wooden houses, now generally practiced. The most common mode is that of covering the frame on the outside with boards or narrow siding in horizontal strips; the other is, to cover it with boards nailed on in vertical strips…” 16 Box-and-strip construction appeared in the Plains and Texas in the late 1800s. Its popularity grew when milled lumber became more readily available to rural towns along rail lines and urban like Houstonians via the ever-growing railway system. These direct rail connections, to the many milling towns surrounding Houston, directly fed into the city’s central station conveniently located near the 6 th ward. i.e., Leland M. Roth, American Architecture, A History . (Boulder: Westview Press, 2001): 560; Rachel Carey, The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture . (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1994):126; The Ranching Heritage Center, The Museum of Texas Tech University, Docent Guidebook . (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1976): 64-65, 70-71, 83, 89. 17 Gordon Echols, Early Texas Architecture . (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2000): 155. 18 A.J. Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses . (New York: Dover Publications, 1969): 23. Downing also reinforces the idea that an architect, in this case, a builder, could extract “from the inspiration of his own country-its manners, institutions, and climate” and create an individual design. 19 Deed Sale record, Harris County, Tx., Box 20, pg. 476, Lot 8, Block 407, NSBB, April 27, 1880. Note, also, that this is where the Sweeney name originates. The historical record indicates that the Sweeneys were original owners of the land and house, while Mary Coulter was, presumably, a tenant. This sale transfers ownership to Mrs. Coulter, and hence, the house is known by its compound “original” owners’ names.

4

This simple description testifies to its construction as “box-frame” a well-known type in the Eastern counties of England. The origins of this construction can be traced to an English timber framing method of construction. 20 Box-frame proliferated throughout the countryside in the form of cottages for laborers. When English immigrants arrived in America, they brought with them this construction knowledge, which was quickly adopted and recontextualized into a democratizing form: the box-frame would become a uniform scale that broke free from the “stratified society they had left.” 21 This type would eventually travel West and begin appearing throughout Texas, albeit in a modified form. Here, it would adopt a new name: box-and-strip construction, referring to the added detail of the battens that covered the joints between the vertical structural boards. It became a Houston vernacular construction type that would be used in several houses within the W.R. Baker Addition during the mid-1800s and one that is often mistaken for board and batten siding to the untrained eye [Fig. 4]. This construction type has been traditionally ascribed to only exist in the Plains of Texas, but it seems that savvy 19 th century Houstonians on a budget applied this construction technique due to its “maximum economy of materials.” 22 In the United States it would prove to be a technique that was short-lived for a number of reasons. 23 First, the pristine pineywoods of Texas would produce some of the finest wood with superior structural strength due to its old-growth characteristics. 24 However, as the building boom and logging-bonanza picked up its pace, these mature trees would be harvested at an unsustainable rate. Second, Houston grew at an alarming rate during the late 1800’s, and its residents began to adopt new types of construction and aesthetic forms, rapidly arriving from the East, by means of the now established railway system. Lastly, at the end of the nineteenth century, a city ordinance prohibited the construction of board and batten or box construction buildings, primarily due to the prevalence of schoolhouses built in this manner that suffered from fires. 25 Taking this into consideration, box-and-strip construction can be recognized as an example and contributor to the “the application of industrialization to architectural construction” and one of the “several national [construction] traditions” that presaged and eventually crystallized into the balloon frame. 26 For this reason, box-and-strip is historically significant as a

20 For an etymological listing of terms that trace box-and-strip construction to, its earliest iteration, cruck construction see Appendix A . 21 R.W. Brunskill, “Vernacular Architecture in North America: English Influence on the Northern half of the Colonies” in Illustrated Handbook of Vernacular . 3 rd ed. rev & expanded. (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1987): 186. 22 Quote comes from a passage that describes box construction as a Plains phenomenon, “Box construction was widely used for ranch building. To provide maximum economy of materials , the houses were built like boxes, with walls of one-by-twelve boards nailed to a floor platform of widely spaced two-by-sixes. Thin strips covered the joints between the boards…there was no wall framing. This technique was used extensively on the plains…” Robinson, Willard B., Gone from Texas, Our Last Architectural Heritage . (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981): 80. 23 “.. this form of box or plank construction was replaced by the balloon or platform framing.” Leeland M. Roth, “Glossary” in American Architecture, A History . (Cambridge: Westview Press, 2001): 560. 24 A primary description of long-leaf pine from East Texas, pineywoods: “It was two-thirds heart, fine timber, wasn’t a limb on it for fifty feet.”; “The reddish longleaf trunks were huge, often exceeding three feet in diameter…” Walter Cole, interv. 9 July 1992, cited in Thad Sitton & James H. Conrad, “Introduction,” in Nameless Towns, Texas Sawmill Communities 1880-1940. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998): 5-6. 25 ADD THIS REFERENCE 26 Walker Field, “A Reexamination into the Invention of the Balloon Frame” in The Journal of the American Society of Architectural Historians , Vol. 2, No. 4 (Oct., 1942): 25. “…[A] distinctively American style was the log cabin and the box-shaped frame house.” B.H. Carroll Jr. LL. B. M.A., ed. Standard

5

physical example in the history of residential construction. Quietly, and for reasons of pure happenstance (and not without some luck), the Coulter-Sweeney box-and-strip house persisted and outlived its contemporaries, and became a constituent of the OSW.

As the house progressed into the 20 th century, its boundaries and form would experience significant change. As described earlier, the original house program exhibits what is known as a hall and parlor layout. At some point prior to the publication of the 1890 Sanborn map of Houston, another house, identical in size and program, was moved and attached to the original structure. These two “house-parts,” abutted and intertwined, were never tectonically sutured, merely connected via the enclosure – the roof and wall sheathing. What we can call “House-part B” was appended, facing east, onto the back of “House-part A,” which faced north, towards the street, which created an overall L-shaped plan [Fig. 6]. The incision of a small hallway and bathroom between one room in B and an adjacent one in A, defaced the original plans of both house-parts [Fig. 5], but was a necessary modification in the need to accommodate a larger family – or increase rentable area. At a later point – between 1907 and 1924, according to Sanborn maps – two additional house-parts were added. 27 The first, House-part C, is believed to be the original lean-to or detached kitchen, given the humble construction from which it is made, consisting of an adapted form of box-frame construction with horizontal planks added on the interior face. The second, House-part D, sprang up in the void of the L-shaped plan. The program here was variable, but at a certain point ossified into the contemporary kitchen and dining room, most likely during the post-war era. After this point, the house, its exterior perimeter finally fixed in place, experienced a series of rotating inhabitants, each contributing in some small way to the collective history of the house [Fig. 7]. Various interior decorative changes were applied, up until the point that Mr. Morrow and Ms. Kinney came across it during their house hunt.

KMA’s initial approach to the house was quite simple: remove the excess, reveal the obscured spaces, and add light and volume to the gloomy interior. Over the years, various windows had been covered up, painted over, and glued shut. The interior program was confused, rambling, and redundant, with corridors located next to each other, and walls indicative of at least two distinct tenant spaces. The renovation of the windows was straightforward enough, but the removal of excess walls began to create some problems, mostly because the duplicated load bearing walls of the separate House-parts became – slowly at first – evident to its new owners. The revelation of the separate houses was completed through multiple inspections of the floor and roof framing. In the crawlspace beneath the house, Mr. Morrow could clearly see the different orientations of the floor joists and beams from each house-part. What was also clear was how tenuously the house-parts were tethered to each other. No other experience made this more evident than the leveling of the house. As the workers began to raise the house, a major fissure tore down through the middle of the house – precisely at the point of convergence of A, B & D. The roof structure, which normally would ensure that all walls be held together, was not itself contiguous: that is to say, there were different roof structures that were simply sheathed and shingled together. It was because of the roof that the architects understood that what would have to happen was nothing less than a wholesale re-construction of the roof framing, along with the reinforcement of a significant portion of the exterior walls. This was also a major turning point in the overall renovation approach – from a simple “let’s add more light” to an all-out, bare- knuckled, re-organization of the house structure and program. The architects methodically threw themselves into the work. Over the course of two years, they designed and implemented

History of Houston, Texas; From a Study of the Original Sources . (Knoxville, TN: H.W. Crew & Co. 1912): 404. 27 1907 Sanborn map. 1924 Sanborn map.

6

renovations to all major systems: structural, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, as well as the enclosure and interior finishes. In the case of the structure, the goal was to preserve the overall form as much as possible, removing and replacing compromised structural component, where required, but sometimes framing so as to reinforce the “racked” condition: because there were four different houses, there were four different settling patterns, which did not necessarily coincide with each other. The renovation to the program was equally extreme, with the decision made to restore the house(s) to as close to the original program as possible. In the case of House- part A, the hall and parlor layout is updated to suit contemporary needs: as the visitor enters the house, an open volume, divided by an oversized industrial shelf that acts like a screen, receives its visitors and harkens to its original three-room plan. Where once the hall existed, originally an all- purpose room, a modern living room now offers a site for a variety of activities. What once was the parlor , or the utilitarian room, is now an office. With its vaulted ceiling and exposed beams, House-part A has become the public domain of the residence. House-parts B and C, oriented perpendicularly, have now become the private components, containing the master bedroom suite, bedroom, and public restroom. The long lost porch of B was restructured to function as an internal passageway that connects the four house-parts. KMA activated the corridor with a permanent display of 11”-wide old-growth boards chosen for their aged patina as a reminder of the material culture of the house. The old lean-to, House-part C, was re-purposed and restructured entirely, given the original inferior construction, in order to become the master bedroom. The last part, D, the infill addition, has now become the kitchen and dining room. With its vaulted ceiling punctuated by a series of skylights, this room has become the unifying space of the house, both physically and visually - the hinge by which the house can be understood in its entirety. 28 A special mention needs to be made about the interior cladding of the public spaces, House-parts A & D. Mr. Morrow clad these two rooms with the wide shiplap salvaged during the demolition of the interior walls, which had been originally added to the house, most likely during the addition of House-part D. 29 Hanging these horizontally on the entirety of the interior surfaces, Mr. Morrow employed an inordinate degree of precision [Fig. 8] The result, with the wood whitewashed, is a space that is light and welcoming, with sight lines through the length and breadth of the house, its public spaces clearly denoted by means of the vaulted ceilings and white wood cladding. The rooms of the private program, with their low ceilings, gypsum board walls, and intimate scale, provide a significant contrast, such that there is no question about their function. With the overall aim of simplifying the house, KMA has restored the program of the house to that of its roots – all four of them. At the same time, they have maintained and reinforced the historical trace of the house – its four-part footprint.

At the turn of the 20 th century, the city of Houston was too busy expanding to observe and preserve its immediate past. At this time, the city found itself growing at a rapid pace, where transportation, industry and population tripled within the city limits creating a critical frenzy for land in and around . Many well-built and once lavish homesteads on Quality Hill, Courthouse Square and portions of South End quickly disappeared, making way for commercial and retail architecture. The sudden growth did not allow for urban planning in the sense we understand today. Rather, it was an ad-hoc kind of development, one that would cause Frank Lloyd Wright, on his visit to the Bayou City, to comment that it was a city rife with “architecture [that] catches a venereal disease.” 30 It would be more accurate to say that it was a

28 c.f. Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier, Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge . (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). 29 Shiplap was first introduced as a building material in Houston during the 1920’s and 30’s. 30 Frank Lloyd Wright cited in Douglas Millburn, The Last American City, An Intrepid Walker’s Guide to Houston . (Houston: The Texas Chapbook Press, 1979): 125.

7

viral development – unchecked, expanding ever outward, without regard for older aspects of the built environment. This is why historic buildings in Houston have traditionally had a grim fate. Yet at times of slow growth and financial turmoil, the city has found the occasion to look back at their surviving examples of historic architecture. The formation of The Heritage Society, in 1954, and the Preservation Alliance, in 1978, created an awareness and appreciation for Houston’s extant architectural artifacts. Examples of their efforts can be seen in the conservation of the ’s Julia Idelson Texas Room, in 2010, the City of Houston Courthouse, projected completion in 2012, and the Old Sixth Ward neighborhood, in 2007. Yet, these preservation efforts are only successful with the involvement of concerned Houstonians who are willing to show their support. This was especially true in the case of the Old Sixth Ward, which won its designation as a protected Historic District in Houston due in part to its politically active neighborhood association and residents. Mr. Morrow and Ms. Kinney were two of these residents, and they found themselves in a scramble to protect their residence from a probable building variance that would change the density and scale of neighboring lots. Mr. Morrow and Ms. Kinney quickly reacted and became part of a neighborhood-wide collective that politically petitioned the City Council for historic protection. The value of the Old Sixth Ward is that it is a manifestation of Houston’s fruition as a city. The history of the development of this neighborhood can be found in the individual houses that contribute as repositories that collectively produce Houston’s narrative. The Coulter-Sweeney residence never housed an individual or family prominent in the development of the city. But its very presence is a testament to a uniquely Texan vernacular architecture and as such, is a physical specimen of Texas material culture. For this reason, it should be a historically recognized structure, a repository of early Houston knowledge in its material manifestation – its wood was likely cut from old growth trees from the nearby Piney Woods, which were in turn planed into extra-wide planks at one of the early Houston sawmills, and it was constructed using an early frontier technology of economy and speed. It is an extant and pristinely restored example of box construction – not just in the Old Sixth Ward, but, anywhere in Houston. KMA approached this house in a manner that respected the historical layers of the house, and in this sense, incorporated an ethos of preservation into their design work. This is commendable, because rather than tearing it down, or disfiguring the house, they used the material and programmatic information found within the house to guide their design process. This is a model of an ethical practice of architecture: where the work of design is informed by a hermeneutics of place, an inherently sustainable approach to construction, and a pedagogical component where the building can contribute positively to its environment by the techne contained within its material presence. In this light, the argument is possible that the work of historical preservation is inherently an ethical practice, because it entails all three of these aspects. To preserve a building is inherently a sustainable practice that provides tactile knowledge to present and future generations and is the result of close study and analysis of the context of the building. For the architectural critic Alberto Perez-Gómez, “[t]he issue of ethics in architectural production touches upon the relationships between thinking and acting …as interrelations of a much more complex nature.” 31 Indeed, it is the proximity of KMA to this project, their historical and site research, their co-existence with the house during its re-construction, that allowed them to operate and produce an architectural practice steeped in what Perez-Gómez would call poesis . By this, I mean that their work provided a design solution that dismantles “the language of science and technology through a poetic vision.” 32 This is not to say that it is a practice without rationale; on the contrary, KMA simply allowed for additional content to inform their design

31 Alberto Perez-Gómez, “Introduction,” Architecture, Ethics, and Technology , (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994): 11. 32 Ibid. p. 7.

8

direction, and in doing so, opened their work to a truly ethical understanding of the house.

The historic relationship between Houston residents and its architecture is mostly one of quick-exchange without enduring correlations, a symptom of the unchecked development of the city. This has resulted in funereal remnants of architectural artifacts, such as the Coulter-Sweeney house, that are hard to piece together and even harder to distinguish outside of its cultural narrative. The Coulter-Sweeney house, now the Kinney-Morrow residence, is an example of Houston’s architectural ritual of creating and destroying, at a fever pitch, with clues only to be found in its material culture, construction type, and form. House-part A was built during the foundation of an industrial center with its proliferation of building materials produced and made readily available, by American and European immigrants with idiosyncratic skills and traditions, and human desire. At the juncture of these events we find an architectural product that coalesced, mutated and transcended its origins. The transition into its evolved context can be found in the present “artifact” of 2109 Kane. The short-lived building material of old-growth milled wood planks is found preserved on the façade of house-part A, a translated hybrid form of box frame construction. House-part B was built several years after house-part A and represents another iteration of material culture, an example of Houston’s emergent residential architecture of the 19 th century workers. The utility and efficiency of form was the priority of the program in both House-parts A & B and completely saturated House-part C. The last, House-part D, collected and recast the rambling activities that shuttled through the other house-parts. This last element defines the space of reconciliation, the field of delay that the inhabitant is afforded in order to clearly see the house as a whole. It solicits the spectator/inhabitant of D to participate in an active pedagogy of its architectural becoming. Marcel Duchamp employed a similar process of revelation in Tu m’, in which the spectator moves around the painting in order to understand the work. 33 Likewise, KMA’s design revisions appear to the visitor in palpable fashion from the vantage point of House-part D.

This house is, in short, a five act metaphor for the city of which it is a part: at first, efficiently erected, with pragmatic concerns overriding any aesthetic ones; then, a doubling of its size, with a no-nonsense response to sprawling growth. In its third act, the house, having reached, more or less, its reasonable outer limit, begins to evolve internally, without any programmatic guidelines other than to provide solutions to its problems at hand. Some ad-hoc elements appear, but the basic form of the house is already there. In the fourth, its residents become nervous about its appearance and beautification begins to gain ground – but it is a challenge to improve upon so many years of living without rules, unless a wholesale attempt at correcting the house, in toto , is undertaken. This is where the fifth act emerges – the KMA act. With energy and resolve in abundance, and indeed, a design approach only capable of coming into being in the 21 st century, the architects dissected every bone of this house and appreciated it for what it had become, and gave it the necessary integrity to continue into the future. Anyone else would have torn this house down. After all, no one famous lived here. No Victorian filigree or Craftsman detail ever adorned its façades. But its preservation means the recovery of a genuine Texas cultural artifact in the heart of Houston, and as a “traceable variation” of European architectural tradition, is a worthy contribution to American architectural history, as well. 34

33 c.f. Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier, Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge . (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000): 327-328. 34 Michael Steinitz, “Rethinking Geographical Approaches to the Common House: The Evidence from Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture III, ed. Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), 17.

9