The story of Frank Lloyd Wright in Texas is like an iceberg. Above the surface you see four projects built across the state, so the average Texan isn’t frequently exposed to his work. Look below the surface and you will find significant unbuilt designs and numerous Texas architects who were influenced by Wright. Therefore, Wright and his influence may be all around you.
Dallas is the location of the Kalita Humphreys Theater, the only theater he designed and built in his lifetime. “It is the most significant project he built in Texas,” according to Stephen Fox, architectural historian and lecturer at Rice University and the University of Houston.
Find Turtle Creek Boulevard between Lemmon Ave and Blackburn Street, look across the steep valley formed by Turtle Creek, and you’ll see the Humphreys. The exterior is “Guggenheim-esque,” an allusion to one of Wright’s most famous projects, New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. Inside it is cozy, with the main theater featuring a thrust-style stage with seating that is never more than 13 rows from the performers (opposite upper right).
The Humphreys opened in 1959 but recently Texas Monthly and the Dallas Morning News have reported that it has fallen into disrepair. Dallas arts, civic, and business leaders have been haggling over a restoration plan for years.
It is part of the Dallas Theater Center, which has grown around newer and larger downtown performance halls and is still used by area theater companies. So, the best way to see a Frank Lloyd Wright building may be attending a play.
In Amarillo, the Dorothy Ann and Sterling Kinney House (opposite upper left) has been restored and is slowly welcoming people. Originally sited on about five acres on Amarillo’s northwest side, the new owner, Robin Gilliland, has increased that space to more than 25 acres. She says that the Kinney’s traveled to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to meet Wright to convince him that Amarillo’s mesas and horizons were ideal for one of his projects. Wright used the home’s patio as the focal point of the project and all other aspects of the design radiated from that spot. The Wright home was an urban legend for years, but Gilliland is letting local groups and non-profits use the house for fundraising and public relations events. More and more folks know that a Frank Lloyd Wright house exists in Amarillo.
Dallas is also home to the Gillin House, a major private residence designed by Wright. And Houston boasts the Thaxton House, another private home designed by Wright on the city’s west side. These two properties offer drive-by viewing possibilities but not any way to tour the inside.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy maintains a comprehensive web site to track these Texas Wright projects and others around the world.
“It’s not what was built but what wasn’t built that is more important,” Fox says, while sharing a list of unbuilt projects. Two catch his eye.
First, the Stanley Marcus project. Yes, of Neiman-Marcus fame. In 1935, Wright designed a large, opulent home for Marcus, something befitting the retail mogul of Texas. Yet, it wasn’t built, perhaps the result of a clash of the titans – Wright and Marcus.
Second, imagine the world’s first atrium hotel, a 47-story skyscraper on the corner of Commerce and Ervay with a futuristic design that would fit in with Dallas 2024. That downtown block was owned by East Texas oilman Rogers Lacy. The project came to a halt when Lacy died unexpectedly in 1947. The hotel’s name? The Rogers Lacy Hotel.
“The Rogers Lacy design is the most extraordinary design Wright completed for any Texas project,
built or unbuilt,” Anthony Alofsin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin School of
Architecture, says.
“It was, as far as I know, a totally unique solution to the needs of hospitality design. Too bad it wasn’t built at the time,” Alofsin adds.
Other unbuilt Wright projects stretch across Texas, from a 1912 schoolhouse design in the small town of Crosbyton (east of Lubbock), the 1924 Edna Jones Gladney home in Fort Worth and a 1942 house plan for Lloyd Burlingham in the El Paso suburb of Sunland Park, NM. Unbuilt Wright projects are so intriguing that architect, amateur historian and CG artist David Romero is building those designs in the digital world.
“Without a doubt, there are at least two Texas designs I hope to recreate one day: the Rogers Lacy Hotel and Edna Jones Gladney home,” Romero writes from his office in Spain.
To see some of Romero’s renderings, like the Arizona Capitol and the Gordon Strong Automobile Objective, go to hookedonthepast.com.
Beyond Wright’s unbuilt projects, in a general way many Texas architects practicing in the mid-20th
century were influenced by Wright,” Alofsin says. He points to Karl Kamrath, of Houston’s MacKie
and Kamrath Architects, as the architect reflecting the greatest influence.
Kamrath received significant commissions in the Texas Medical Center and the University of Houston. Many are still there, such as the blandly named Science & Research 1 Building at the University of Houston. I was in and out of that building weekly during my tenure at the University of Houston, yet no one explained the link to Frank Lloyd Wright through the Houston-based Karl Kamrath.
Phillis Wheatley High School, the pride of Houston’s Fifth Ward, and the hunkering Schlumberger Administration Building on the Gulf Freeway, take on a new life thanks to the Kamrath, and therefore Frank Lloyd Wright connection.
Across town in River Oaks, Kamrath’s personal house, what some might describe as mid-century modern, is a masterpiece that owes much to Frank Lloyd Wright’s influence.
And other architects, such as Howard Meyer in Dallas, Harwell Hamilton Harris in Austin, Henry Trost in El Paso and George Willis in San Antonio, extend Wright’s influence in Texas below the surface.
Just look closely.