PaperCity Magazine

April 2020- Houston

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111 surviving contemporaries who knew and remembers her brother-in-law. During our tour of the Moss House, she revealed personal details. Arthur was a sought-after bachelor and man about town for the majority of his life. He had a stream of girlfriends, any one of them appropriate, marriageable women for a debonair architect from a good family. Not until the 1970s, however, when he was middle-aged, did Arthur walk down the aisle. His choice of mate was unconventional and raised family eyebrows: a talented, beautiful, and charismatic real estate broker, Margaret Porter of San Antonio (a two-time divorcee with fi ve children), but the marriage did not last. Stacey recalled Arthur as "intense, brilliant," yet also practical; the home he built for Phil and Stacey stands like a fortress, undiminished by more than a half-century and rock solid. His nervous ticks for pent- up energy at the drafting table and job site included incessant smoking — as many as three packs a day, not untypical for the time; cancer would kill him prematurely. Besides architecture, his creative outlets were painting and drawing. Margaret, his widow, who outlived him to die in 2014, inherited Arthur's archive and canvases; unfortunately there's no trace of either since the architect's passing 25 years ago, a death so sudden that there was no time even for an obituary. The residence he remodeled and last lived in at the time of his death, 1005 River Glen Road, was later felled by a hurricane. TIKI-STYLE APARTMENT BUILDER In 1974, I moved from The Jamaican in the Galleria area to the Harwood Court garden apartments at 3262 West Main in the Greenway area. In my new neighborhood, I discovered another Moss building a few blocks away, the Triton 101. In the early 1960s, Arthur and his brother, Phil, started MLM Investment Company with associate Carl T. Long Jr. With Arthur as design partner, MLM built the Triton 101 garden apartment complex from 1964-1965 as a luxury investment property; the name refl ects the 101 units originally contained in the complex. The building, renamed Greenway Court Apartments, still stands at 3411 Cummins Lane. Unfortunately, if you go there today, the complex has been so severely altered that it looks nothing like the original except in some of the outdoor courtyards and a few surviving details within the two-story units. Back in the day, the swank Triton was home to not only the architect — he had the largest unit, says Stacey Moss — but Red Adair also lived there, with distinctive carpeting the color of fl ames. The original plan of the complex was a U-shape with an inboard, half- sunken parking garage running the length between Cummins and Timmons Lanes. Over the garage were two separate, parallel three-story A-frame buildings with split-level units, each building fronting one side of the pool court and one side of the garden court raised above ground level. These wings with dramatic pitched roofs manifest a Tiki style; their sea-wave shingles are similar to the Moss House. Each building bears the original full-height glass on the east walls facing the courtyard and high windows on the opposite walls. The single-story unit fronting onto Cummins Lane originally contained the offi ces and social room. Circulation was designed along walkways at the ground and/or upper levels fl anking the inside walls of the U. Although I can fi nd no supporting data, I suspect Moss may have designed The Jamaican apartments on contract for owner/architect Howard Harrington in 1963. At least Moss was infl uenced by the design, since The Jamaican and Triton 101 are very similar in plan, massing, and materials; The Jamaican, now demolished, could very well be the precursor to the Triton 101. Both employed the popular idiom of the day, the Tiki style, a stand-in for America's quest for the exotic, and appropriate for Houston with its sub-tropical climate. Whereas the A-frame was only used for the offi ce building at The Jamaican, at Triton 101, Moss employed the A-frame as the primary structure for the long outboard buildings. The inward sloping walls/roofs over the A-frame originally featured Moss' signature undulating sea- wave wood shingles and diamond shaped windows with sheet-metal hoods to protect the sloping windows from the rainwater like the Moss House, designed fi ve years earlier. When the complex was remodeled in the 1980s not only were the tops of the A-frame cut off, but the unique roll roof was replaced by conventional composition shingles. Also, the hooded windows were removed; in their place went conventional sliding glass doors and dormer elements with small balconies. The lower levels still retain the original high horizontal sliding windows for privacy. Gone forever, or largely masked except in the outdoor spaces, is the spirit of the Triton 101 — its coming touted in 1964 and 1965 Sunday Houston Chronicle real estate sections — which evoked in its design an embodiment of a large outrigger, so Thor Heyerdahl, translated into architecture. MORE MOSS TO BE REDISCOVERED Arthur Moss died November 20, 1995, leaving behind a unique legacy of buildings. There are probably other Arthur Moss-designed buildings in Houston that I am not aware of, but I suspect they have either been demolished or severely altered. There were several odd, architecturally unique apartment buildings that may have involved his hand but have been bulldozed — including one recently in the Upper Kirby area. It's rare to fi nd the creativity and invention of form and materiality within a functional plan as expressed in the work of Arthur Moss. So few of our truly American School buildings have survived the fashionable styles of commodity, and it would be unfortunate to lose any more. Arthur Moss' talent lives on in the house he designed for his younger brother and wife, Phil and Stacey Moss, in Briarbend, 1959, shown under construction. Diamond-shaped windows topped by metal hoods resembling eyebrows and an English roll roof lend a medieval-meets-Surreal air to the Moss House. (continued from page 68) TOP: COURTESY THE MOSS FAMILY ARCHIVES, HOUSTON 84

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