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Howard Barnstone 1923-1987

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Howard Barnstone 1923-1987 Howard Barnstone 1923-1987 Stephen Fox ne sometimes has the feeling that Howard Barnstone once remarked that at least half of the people who live the Menil House was a source of almost Oin Houston got here by accident. The pattern obsessive fascination to him and his recurs: a chance visit, an unanticipated students during its construction in 1949 invitation to remain on what seems to be and 1950. They would haunt the building a short-term basis, and then opportunities site after hours to inspect its progress, arise, connections arc made, and without drawn there out of reverence for (he first ever quite making the commitment to built example of modern architecture slay, it becomes "us" and "our" rather many of them had ever seen. The north than "they" and "their." This was a story side of the Menil House was all wall, the that Howard Barnstonc, who died on 29 south side all glass, the roof awesomely April at the age of 64, loved to tell. It was fiat and edged by that fabulous Miesian the summer of 1948. Having completed fascia, not merely a construction detail two years of architectural study at Yale, but an icon of modernity. Yet despite its preceded by two years' service in the U.S. impact, Barnstone initially resisted in his Navy, two years before that at Yale own architecture the influence of Ludwig College, and two earlier years at Amherst Mies van der Rohe, whose work was the College, he had come to Houston, the source of Philip Johnson's inspiration. young graduate and registered architect That llrst house in Beaumont, the (you could take the Connecticut licensing Hartman House (1949), and its exam in those days without serving an successors, the Herbert Blum House in apprenticeship as long as you had a Beaumont (1952), the Bloxsom House in professional degree), to visit a distant Houston (1952), and even Barnstone's relative. One afternoon this aunt drove earliest houses with Preston M. Bolton, him out to the University of Houston so his partner from 1952 until 1961. the that he might look around the architec- Hardison and Rottersmann houses (1953 ture department, begun the year before as and 1954), were "contemporary" rather a division of the College of Engineering. than "modern" in design, to employ the He met and conversed with one of the critical distinction of the period. But faculty members. W. H. Linnstaedter, Hugo V. Neuhaus. Jr.'s recommendation who concluded their chat by proposing that Mr. and Mrs. de Menil retain that Barnstone teach at Houston. Barnstone to correct some problems they Barnstone accepted, thinking it might be were experiencing with air-conditioning amusing to spend a couple of years in ducts and the awesomely flat roof brought Texas before he returned to Maine, the Barnsione into irresistible contact with state where he was born and where he the Johnson house. "I learned more in six intended to start a practice. The past months about detailing and water- eight years of his life had been divided proofing and, by osmosis, proportions into two-year segments; two years in than from four years of graduate studies Houston would round out the decade. in architecture at Yale." Barnstone later remarked of the experience.' He succumbed to the impact of Mies, Barnstone never made it back to Maine. hesitantly at first, in his and Bolton's He soon had a host of promising students house for his cousin Evelyn Rosenthal at the University of Houston - Burdette (1954) and then unabashedly in their Kecland, William R. Jenkins, Kenneth Lawrence Blum House in Beaumont Benlsen, Harwood Taylor - and his llrst (1954). the first of the canonical series of job, a small house in Beaumont. During Bolton and Barnstone houses: Gordon the spring semester of that academic year (1955). Moustier(l956), Farfel (1957), the American Institute of Architects held Hosen (1957), Smilhers (1958). Owsley its annual convention in Houston. Frank (1961). Cook (1959), Wintcrbolham Lloyd Wright came to accept the (I960), and Challinor (1961). institute's Gold Medal, and to bestow his opinions, the most memorable being his pronouncements on the Shamrock Hotel, These houses were conceived as which had its fabled opening the week structural cages, with the frames (almost after the AIA convention. It was that always of steel, although on occasion of spring as well that two other new wood) expressed externally. They Houstonians, the French immigrants exhibited geometric precision and, in the Dominique Schlumbcrger and Jean de contrast of their delicately modulated Menil, embarked on an architectural framing members and interstitial wall project that was to prove pivotal in panels (of brick - or wood Barnstone's life: commissioning Philip wcatherboarding - and glass), a sure Johnson, then director of the department sense of proportion. Ostensibly of architecture at The Museum of "Miesian," they betrayed a debt not only Modern Art, to design their house in to Philip Johnson (most evident in the Briarwood. Although it may well seem Farfel, Smithers, and Cook houses) but to that light years separated the Shamrock Charles Eamcs's Case Study House in Hotel and the Menil House, it was in the Santa Monica (1949), of which the space between them that the history of Gordon House, with its double-volume modern Houston was to be made, a living and dining room, was an history with which Barnstone's life was elaborated, more conventionally formal intertwined. rendition. Colin Rowe's suggestion of a Cite Fall 1987 19 £ ir**--i..j*> .* m VsUi. <& IT.. • •»• Maher House, 1964, Howard Barnstone and Partners, architects Rosenthal House, 1954, Bolton and Barnstone, architects Palladian permutation proved especially conduct.' Henry-Russell Hitchcock, who, appealing to Barnstone. who used the when in 1959 he admired Bolton and term to characterize the Moustier. Owsley. Barnstone's "distinctly personal" Winterbotham. and Challinor houses. development of the "now classic model" in their Gordon House, then proceeded to Yet identification of influences can be cite the Greek Revival movement as the misleading if il causes one to overlook last episode in architectural history in the most startling aspect of Bolton and which "individuality in the handling of a Burnstone's work: the wide range of their stringent and widely accepted mode of often idiosyncratic adaptation of design counted for so much," implicitly conventional domestic programs to the acknowledged the invidious distinction requirements of the regular Micsian being claimed in Houston: authentic container, Their internal planning confrontation with the conditions of the diagrams were exceedingly quirky, present and the sanction of history/ possessing none of the measure and clarity of Philip Johnson's domestic The discipline of Mies, even that of the plans, although their aim was the same: Miesian image, imposed a semblance of to create those high, static, limpid consistency on this period, not only in volumes thai seemed, paradoxically, to Barnstone's architecture but, as Hewitt expand to infinity, thanks to the hypnotic discerned, on vanguard architecture in effect of walls of glass. In Bolton and Houston. After I960 this consistency Barn stone's houses, these spaces were evaporated. Barnstone wrote of Mies and likely to be experienced along with much Wright as "the Academy" and of the more compact enclosures, sometimes inexorability of change: air-conditioning - rather constricted in feeling, but more freed architecture from climatic often intimate, a sensation that Barnstone responsibility; the car was the new datum Winterbotham House, 1960, Bolton and Barnstone, architects became adept at producing. of urban and architectural order.* Mark A. Hewitt has written about this During the 1960s the two trends most episode in Houston's architectural history readily visible in the work of Howard ("Neoclassicism and Modern Architec- Barnstone and Partners (as his practice ture - Houston Style," Cite. Fall 1984), was known from 1961 to 1966, following discreetly anonymous street elevations. the opposite of the Miesian houses. Built and more recently il has been the dissolution of Bolton and Barnstone) of reinforced concrete, they emphasized, acknowledged in critiques of Renzo and of Howard Barnstone and Eugene Ai Howard Barnstone and Partners' even exaggerated, particularities of Piano and Richard Fitzgerald and Aubry (his partnership from 1966 to 1969 Vassar Place Apartments (1965) these program and construction. Here the big- Partners' Menil Collection museum, most with Eugene Aubry, a former student attributes informed the design of a small scaled structural pieces dominated, rather insistently by Reyner Banham. who who began working for him in 1959) apartment enclave. Barnstone took full than framed, in-filled bays of concrete positioned Houston alongside Chicago were constructional expression and a nco- advantage of a strategically located and block (or brick) and glass. Barnstone and Los Angeles as a place where a vernacular. Both can be seen in the work configured site to create a complex later was prone to recount - without distinctive lotal school of steel-framed of the architect who supplanted Mies as sequence of inwardly focused interior and amusement the time that Louis I. Kahn modern architecture developed in the the new cultural hero of the architectural : exterior spaces. Barnstone and Aubry's (who had begun leaching at Yale when 1950s. What is most intriguing about vanguard, Paul Rudolph. Less obvious Levin House in Galveston (1968) and Barnstone was a student) showed up this episode - and especially Barnstone's were a concerted exploration of spatial Kempncr House (1969) were further unannounced at his office to give him a part in it - is how it differed from the I1T variety and intimacy, and the extensions of this idea, as were Guinan critique of the "brutality" of the Center school of Chicago and the Case Study domestication of the automobile. Hall at the University of St.
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