Early Texas Architecture

Gordon Echols

• Publisher: TCU Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780875652238
• eBook ISBN: 9780875655192
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The new life in Texas was primitive and rigorous. In the words of one account, “Here women in drab calico (which sold for 50 cents a yard) stirred ‘hog and hominy’ with homemade wooden spoons and learned to use the long rifle. They lived in bare, sometimes windowless log cabins. Flour was $25 a barrel; it was said that ‘Texas is a heaven for men and dogs but hell for women and oxen.’”—Writers’ Program of the Works Projects Administration of Texas, The WPA Guide to Texas.

Texas—according to Gordon Echols—offers an unusual stage for the study of frontier building styles. In this volume, Echols examines dwellings ranging from primitive dugouts and dog-run log cabins to stylish Greek Revival and Victorian structures. In many cases they are different in form and function but all share something in common—they incorporate singular elements that make up the fabric of Texas life.

Three factors determine building style: geography and environment; ethnic diversity; and availability of construction materials. Texas geography ranges from the low Coastal Plains along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the pine woods of East Texas, the Blackland Prairie of the north central part of the state, and the arid high deserts of far West Texas. Frontier Texans came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including people of Euro-American stock (many of them of southern origin), as well as Mexicans, blacks, Germans, and Eastern Europeans. Though many buildings were constructed by master builders and craftsmen such as Abner Cook and Augustus Phelps, most were put up by pioneers who followed traditional construction methods brought from their homelands but used local materials: log, stone or adobe brick. Texas settlers from every culture brought tools, hardware, and the know-how needed to build homes in a harsh wilderness.

Gordon Echols traces the development of various styles from the most rudimentary and little-known rural dwellings to the sophisticated Greek Revival governor’s mansion in Austin and the Victorian buildings that were made possible by new wealth earned in trading cotton, cattle and petroleum.