16th Annual Heritage Homes Tour
May 17, 2008
Take a Nostalgic Trip to Austin in the 1950s
By Sydney Rubin
President-elect Dwight Eisenhower had just returned from Korea. A first-class stamp was 3 cents. America had just seen its first magazine-style TV show, something called “The Today Show” starring Dave Garroway. And “Singin’ in the Rain” was playing at the Paramount Theatre across the street from Scarbrough’s Department Store.
It was 1952, and all over Austin homes were being built in the outlying suburbs of Barton Hills, Highland Hills and Tarrytown for a new generation of middle-class Austinites, not long back from the war and ready to start families, who wanted something totally modern, something cool, something ring-a-ding glamorous. But because this was Austin, they also wanted houses that were casual, comfortable and suited to our laid-back lifestyle.
What they got was low-slung, mid-century blend of a machine-age aesthetic and Hill Country style expressed in cedar, site-quarried stone and glass window walls carefully positioned against the harsh Texas sun. They got rooflines that were flat, gently pitched or jutting wing-like into the sky, and carports and clean, crisp lines. And, sometimes, they even got that great new invention, air conditioning.
In Austin, as elsewhere in the nation, the need for housing exploded and a new generation of architects, motivated by a bold new vision of the home of the future, created large expanses of glass and concrete, built-in furniture, minimal partitions, rooms that flowed easily into gardens and patios and a belief in high quality design for the average man.
A few hundred of these homes remain in Austin today, a testament to a time of great hope, a time when kids still played in their front yards on spring afternoons and neighbors pulled grills and lawn chairs into cul-de-sacs on summer evenings to share burgers, beer and laughter.
The Heritage Society of Austin pays homage to the city’s modernist roots and honors some of Austin’s premier mid-century architects during the Mid-Century Modern-themed Heritage Homes Tour on May 17th. This 16th annual tour has been revised to include both a daytime driving tour from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 pm then a Twilight Tour beginning at 6:30 which will conclude at a Mid-Century Modern bash starting at 8:00 at the final featured home.
The daytime driving tour takes visitors through six of the city’s best mid-century residences, including a 1956 home in Tarrytown built along the lake by Austin’s preeminent mid-century architectural firm of Fehr & Granger, and to the personal residence of architect Charles Granger on West 16th Street.
Granger was Austin’s link to California’s mid-century aesthetic. A graduate of the University of Texas School of Architecture, Granger worked for several years in the Los Angeles architectural office of Richard Neutra, one of modernism’s most important forces. He later was awarded a fellowship to attend Cranbrook Academy in 1944, where he received his master’s degree in architecture and urban design working alongside such design legends as Charles and Ray Eames. Granger worked as a designer in the office of Eliel Saarinen before returning to Austin where he brought his refined modernist aesthetic and years of experience to a partnership with Austin native Arthur Fehr, and the two proceeded to build some of the finest examples of American modern architecture the city had ever seen.
Throughout the day and on various stops of the tour, architects and docents will share their insights and thoughts on mid-century interiors, history and design.
The evening tour begins at 6:30 p.m. with a visit to one of the more modest mid-century masterpieces of Austin architect-builder A.D. Stenger. The house built in 1952 in Barton Hills is part of a small cluster of Stenger homes in a six-block area built in a contemporary style that attracted artists, musicians, reporters and writers like John Henry Faulk, for whom Stenger built a house nearby. The evening tour also includes a home in Westlake built for a Colonel and his family in 1959, complete with a bomb shelter that the current homeowner discovered mostly untouched since the 1960s. The fall-out shelter, complete with fold-down tables, bunk beds and underground kitchen and toilet, was still stocked with cans of food and survival gear.
From 8:00 to 11 p.m., Robert Nash hosts an end-of-tour Mid-Century Modern Cocktail Party in his Westlake home, a night of “booze, broads and the bright lights” of Austin worthy of the Rat Pack. Guests are encouraged to break out their Fabulous Fifties attire and come enjoy Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Junior and Dean Martin on the hi-fi with live music between Rat Pack sets.
Day Tour: $15 member/$22 non-member/$15 children
Moonlight & Martinis: Twilight Tour & Party: $75 guest
Consignment Locations:
(Available Late April)
All images courtesy Shoehorn Design.
