Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1534561
62 to spur industrial growth, they struck oil. In 1901, when the giant Spindletop field was discovered outside Beaumont, Cullinan quickly formed what would become one of the 20th century's major vertically integrated oil companies: the Texas Company, Texaco. In 1905, Cullinan transferred the Texas Company's headquarters from Beaumont to Houston. Seven years later, he was forced out of the company by New York investors who objected to his management style. Rather than leave Texas, Cullinan became an independent oilman and built a house in Houston for his family. His correspondence reveals that he first examined existing Houston neighborhoods but was not satisfied with them. In May 1914, while traveling by train between Kansas City and Dallas, Cullinan met St. Louis-based landscape architect and city planner George E. Kessler. Kessler must have been a persuasive salesman for the benefits of city planning because the moment Cullinan returned to Houston, he began lobbying Mayor Ben Campbell to hire Kessler. By April 1915, Kessler was preparing a master plan for the development of Hermann Park as well as a plan to transform Main Street Road into Main Boulevard for Houston's Board of Park Commissioners. In February 1916, Cullinan bought a 36-acre tract that faced Main Boulevard in order to develop his own neighborhood. That September, he retained Kessler to work with Houston engineer H.A. Kipp on a site plan for the subdivision, which Cullinan named Shadyside. Kessler had already recommended that Cullinan hire St. Louis architect James P. Jamieson to design his family's home. Constructed from 1917 to 1918, the Cullinan House was immense: three stories with a triple-gabled façade facing Main and a narrower two- gabled façade facing Remington Lane in Shadyside. In addition to the residence, there were two substantial outbuildings: a two- story garage and a two-story stable and carriage house. (At the time of Cullinan's death in 1937, his carriages were still in the stable.) Scruggs- Vandervoort-Barney of St. Louis furnished and decorated the interiors; Kessler designed the landscape. The grounds contained cutting and vegetable gardens, a greenhouse, and a tennis court. The Cullinan House was designed in a transitional style that applied classical detail to a medieval brick English manor, as Cullinan had requested an English-type design. Its scale was redolent of the private streets of St. Louis, where enormous homes line boulevards anchored at each end by ceremonial gate piers and street gates. Rising in isolation and facing Kessler's Parisian- style traffic circle where the Mecom Fountain is now located, the Cullinan House stood out in its lightly wooded landscape setting. Following Cullinan's death, his children sold the house to its next celebrated owners: former Governor William P. Hobby, publisher of the Houston Post, and his wife and business partner, Oveta Culp Hobby. During the years they lived there, Mrs. Hobby, who had been commanding officer of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II, served in the Eisenhower administration as the first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare from 1953 to 1955. After the governor's death in 1964, she chaired the Hobby family's communications empire. I n 1 9 6 6 , S h a d y s i d e residents split on whether or not to seek renewal of the subdivision's deed restrictions, which mandated single- family residential use as the only permissible use o f p r o p e r t y. Litigation ensured, and in 1969, just weeks before the deed restrictions expired, the Texas State Supreme Court deemed them permanent. From 1972 to 1973, the Houston Post Co., legal owner of the Cullinan House, had it demolished. The property sat vacant for 25 years before a pair of homes was built on the site. The Cullinan House was 55 years old when it was demolished. Glennlee, 7500 Kelving Drive, 1938 Although his celebrity only lasted a brief span of years in the postwar 1940s and '50s, independent oilman Glenn H. McCarthy lived up to the popular image of the archetypal Texan oil operator: aggressive, expansive, larger-than-life. While Jesse H. Jones was postwar Houston's elder statesman, Hugh Roy Cullen its foremost philanthropist, and Oveta Hobby its leading lady, McCarthy stood out because of his bravado and style. Journalists couldn't get enough, and McCarthy never disappointed. He was best known for building the Shamrock Hotel, which opened with a raucous celebration on St. Patrick's Day 1949 that turned into Houston's first national media sensation, but McCarthy had a less-heralded side: He Alice Hogg in her perfume room at the Proctor-Hogg- McDermott-Stude House, 1946 Greenhouse of J. S. Cullinan House, 2 Remington Lane, 1918 – 1973. Photo taken 1972. Backyard of Claud B. Hamill House, 2124 River Oaks Boulevard, 1939 – 2023. Photo taken 2022. FROM THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDSALL P. BRISCOE BY STEPHEN FOX (TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS, © 2023). PHOTO BY DMITRI KESSEL RICK GARDNER JOHNNY THAN