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IE Ye ELAND • > W | I • HOUSTON !•' 10 Cite Fall 1984 ike cdif tkai Le4, bejj&ie u, &i j&Ue, v^gzs*- ewe cty ike p44A£4 t ezampled we kaue a a H H"A :-OK city. , ; -•- ^'. Houston's lack o) C: Hou7(ini|caV^uwfli)«iio(iPii(fiotW? 1*1 ' I rlirrl • 'mumttA IM>HH» WI#J •i-inir ' f'l'iin « «r* Umm . * 4 d < • • „ . f . 1 I . P l i t . h - " ' - in-vikiml In *lHf« n i i ' t ><i II.• (minli . umlnrti II x u i kdtn i* t-i Ln | •tot i a J w M l < i < i | i > T T J I * | M i -, •• , .t . I IE yE ELAND • > W | i • HOUSTON !•' N T C t \:,. Clockwise from upper left corner: Ford and Colley and Tamminaga, architects, Dominique de Menil and Philip JoblUOH, 1 949 altered; a modern office and industrial building (Houston Postal. Atrial view oj Gulf Freeway built in the Buffalo Speedway corridor (Houston looking tint from St. Emanuel Street, 1950 Metropolitan Refearch Center, Houston Public (Houston CAamberofCommerce). Welder Hall, Library). Houston grandes dames gathered University of St. Thomas, 19">l), Philip Johnson in a modern living room in the Pine Hill section Associates, architects, Bolton and Rarnstone, of River Oaks. Wilion, Morris, Crain and Mi wt iate architects. View of Commons, altered Anderson, architects (Photo by Beadle, courtesy (PbotO by Alexandre Georges). Meyerland House and GardenJ. The Museum o) Modern Company advertisement, 1958 (Houston Art's "Painting Toward Architecture" exhibi- Chamber of Commerce). Project: Montclair tion on display at the Contemporary A rt<A SJOt lo- Shopping Center, I950. Irving R. Klein and tion museum, 1949 (Courtesy Mat Kte and Associates and Victor D. Gruen and Associates, Kamrathj. Aerial view oj dmvntown Hot architects (Houston Chamber of Commerce). 1953 (Plxito by Jack F. lews). Instruments Building, 1957, O'Neil Cite Fall 1984 11 Peter C. Papademetriou In a pattern consistent since the late 19th Modernism, therefore, was a badge of century, Houston's urban form hasgrown progressive liberalism in Houston in the geometrically in the past four decades, 1950s. Its patrons devotedly nurtured its eclipsing that which came before it. manifestations as an architectural style. Houston in 1940 reflected a way of life Institutions took advantage of the pro- now radically altered. The assumptions gressive associations of modernism to inthe^C/i and aspirations of the past few decades assert the new-found prestige of newness: that have made this place what it is con- The nine-year-old University of St. trast to that which came before. Thomas had its campus built according to the designs of Philipjohnson and The If one idea characterizes this period of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston sought time, it is the idea of "being modern." The to counteract its stuffy and parochial city that lies before us is, for better or image by adding Mies van der Rohe's worse, one of the purest examples we Cullinan Hall as well as appointing a pro- have of a modern American city. Its gressive director in the person of James forms, both at the macroscale of the ur- ban fabric and the microscale of individual building types, exist as embodiments of 9n the 19804, we have teaAned thai the radical chanaei Qoma a modern idea. and wJwleheanied aMumpiion^ behind tho4e chana&i thai made- Modesm m JtoudJxm cM(uuton a tmdeAn cUy one a acHude-edaed iw&id — It might reasonably be said that Giant was a dmtide-edaed dwmd thai cuti itoih UMUJA.. the myth of Texas in the 1950s: a fascina- tion with size, power, and optimism created through the advent of technolog- Johnson Sweeney. There were instances such shopping centers as Palms Center, ical change. Bigness and a fai t h i n new tech- of private homes, in many cases reflect- the 60-acre Gulfgate, Meyerland Plaza, nologies permeated all facets of urban ing the purist style of Mies van der Rohe and Sharpstown Center followed in the life. Houston's emergence as an indus- and his followers, and occasionally such wake of Victor Gruen and Irving R. trial center of more than regional con- enclaves as Pine Hill in River Oaks (with Klein's unbuilt Montclair Center of 1950, sequence, the founding of the Texas houses by Hugo V. Neuhaus, Edward the first air-conditioned shopping mall Medical Center as a tool of economic Durrell Stone, O'Neil Ford, and Wilson, proposed in the United States. A series of development, and the eventual location Morris, Crain and Anderson) or Briar annexations by Houston also transpired, of the Manned Spacecraft Center outside Hollow (with houses by Ford, Wilson, the largest being in 1956 when incorpor- Houston in the early 1960s symbolized Morris, Crain and Anderson, as well as ated limits were nearly doubled. This the city's commitment to bigness and Bolton and Barnstone). However, mod- policy facilitated private development as entrepreneurial adventurousness. A cul- ernism in the 1950s did not propose a new subdivisions came under the jurisdic- ture of energy consumption became the coherent formal image addressing both tion of city services, thereby relieving symbol of progress and newness, its media ideas of urban fabric and a unity of developers. At the same time, the mid the technologies of petrochemical pro- formal expression between buildings that 1950s also saw the first of separate incor- duction, the evolution and expansion of might evoke a sense of neighborhood porations in what eventually would be- an automobile-based urban form, subur- identity. The freedom of expression in- come city limits: the "villages" of t1 " ban homes, air-conditioning, and a drive- herent in the symbolic use of the modern Memorial area. Here was a clear reat i.->n in, dispersed service network. style failed, in other words, to produce a to the unpredictability of the new energy clear sense of wholeness at the urban patterns: zoned communities maintain- level. This contrasted with previous de- ing a definite environmental character. ^he peedom &fr e&pAeidicm whenenl in the iytnbolic udeol cades, particularly the 1910s and 1920s, Hunters Creek was the first in 1954, in which a combination of Beaux-Arts followed by Hilshire. Spring Valley, classicism and City Beautiful planning Hedwig, Bunker Hill, and Piney Point, them&detn ttule failed ta produce a clea/i ienie o^a concepts had defined distinct zones. The all of which were surrounded by Houston Museum of Fine Arts was one product of annexation in 1957. this, as were Hermann Park and South ujJtoieneM at the unban level. Change also was manifested in social and Main Street, with its rotary intersection The image of a downtown - the central demographic tensions. Legally enforced at the foot of Montrose Boulevard and its business district also changed in this racial desegregation brought with it the tree-lined parkway esplanade. period, for there were few new significant redefinition of neighborhood structure. additions to the skyline. Instead, decen- Houston's middle-class Jewish commu- In contrast, the principle of "function- tralization diffused development, setting nity redistributed itself from Riverside alism" produced no clear formal image the stage for the Houston of the 1970s Terrace to the new Meyerlandarea, con- as the City Beautiful gave way to the City and 1980s. This would become the poly- tributing to the development of the Efficient. Beginning in 1940, Houston nucleated urban network, a series of city's southwest section and, in turn, obtained a Department of City Planning high-density centers spread at intervals opening opportunities for middle-class as an agency of government. Its director, across the landscape, created by distribu blacks who could afford to leave the Ralph Elhfrii. attempted to rationalize tion available through the emerging free- Third, Fourth, and Fifth wards. In the suburban growth, providing standards way system. case of San Felipe Courts, built in 1942 for subdivision development and the in the Fourth Ward as public defense location of schools, neighborhood parks, Architecture itself reflected the diffusion housing, the resident population ex- and bayou parkways. The principal me and spread that gradually became the panded to fill what became Allen Park- dium for channeling growth was the Imageoi today's Houston. Architect. raJ way Village. Both change* reflected the Major Street and Thoroughfare Plan, form responded to postwar changes n. increased presence of a hlack population adopted as public policy in 1942. By the International Stvle: a reduced, ph\ I in the city's landscape. However, reac- 195(1 a pattern of efficient arterial streets ically and visually light vocabulary ol tionary elements mounted a strong sta nd began to appear and. on top of these great transparency whose demat< during this period, particularly evident (literally), the first of Houston's fn ized qualities echoed the elusivt-nt-ss .OIL. :n the COnduCl of the HoiiMnti puhht ways, the Gull Fret-way. begun in 1946 amorphousnessoi tht city developingall school hoatd and the zoning bailies ol and completed in August 1952. Here, around. 1948 and 1962. Suggestion-* ol govern- however, were not tentepts of formal ment intervention and socialistic ten- composition related to a u h lectural During the 1950s, Houston emerged in a dencies took advantage of Cold Wat groupings the axiai boulevards of pre- new form Its optimistic, modern as- tensions in an inherently conservative vious generations but a m-n geometry sumptions lit at the heart of the very :~ political climate. Yet the militante and created bv engineering, whose monu issues that confront the city in the 1980s. extremism of this conservatism were in mental scale, while* rLtltiin.ng the face of Suburbanization as the substance of ur- part the product of rapid growth in an the entirecity, was unrelated to anything banity has raised the question of quality expansive, opportunistic area.
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