Texas

The Hilton hospitality empire started in Texas. Conrad Nicholson Hilton (1887–1979) was born in San Antonio, New Mexico, and worked in his father’s general store, where rooms in the back were rented to railroad travelers. He returned to New Mexico after serving with the U.S. Army in France during World War I and decided to pursue a career in banking. In 1919, he traveled to Cisco, Texas, in pursuit of a bank purchase opportunity.

Since no standards existed in the mid-nineteenth century for military buildings for frontier forts and officers were not educated in planning at military schools, commanders drew upon their knowledge of traditional military hierarchies and organization and their memories of forts where they had previously served. As a result, frontier forts in Texas were structured in nearly the exact form of eastern forts, but without fortifications.

The beginning of the twentieth century was a time of significant settlement and development in a large portion of Texas that is included in this volume, although these observations apply to the entire state. During this period, two courthouse design models replaced the earlier, cross-axial plan types.First, a Beaux-Arts-inspired, academic classicism became popular for the state’s courthouses.

In an effort to promote travel and tourism in the Southwest, the Santa Fe Railway contracted with the Fred Harvey Company to supply Harvey House dining services along its routes at principal watering stops.

Books, catalogs, and magazines influenced the design of many distinctive Texas houses built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Architects had published books for centuries in order to build their reputations and entice clients.

The frontier forts the U.S. Army built in Texas between 1849 and 1870 helped secure the frontier for settlement and, through their architecture and planning, served as outposts of order and tradition in an unfamiliar landscape. At the end of the Mexican War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) required the United States to protect Mexico from hostile Native Americans.

Throughout the Plains, the grain cooperative functions as a mutual savings bank into which members deposit grain rather than money to be held until they choose to sell. The Dumas Cooperative in Moore County is an example of this operation, posting daily prices for grain, at which the member may choose to sell back to the Co-op. The Co-op then locates a market and distributes the grain.

Mexican artisan Dionicio Rodríguez (1891–1955) is known as the most “naturalistic” exponent of the technique known as faux bois false wood or trabajo rústico rustic work of the 1920s–1940s. Faux bois had its beginnings in 1849 with the invention of reinforced concrete by Joseph Monier, a French gardener. He created concrete plant containers reinforced with wire and the genre soon spread throughout Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and Central and South America.