John S. Chase: The Chase Residence by David Heymann and Stephen Fox

Abstract

Reviewed by: John S. Chase: The Chase Residence by David Heymann and Stephen Fox Kathryn E. Holliday John S. Chase: The Chase Residence. By David Heymann and Stephen Fox. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. Pp. 41. Illustrations, notes.) In his essay on the Houston architect John S. Chase, Stephen Fox begins by listing the many firsts in Chase's career, from his status as part of the first class of African American students at the University of Texas at Austin in 1950 and the first graduate of the university's architecture school in 1952 to his later becoming the first African American fellow of the American Institute of Architects from Texas. In his career of firsts, Chase paved the way for generations of Black architects who followed in his footsteps. His large and successful architectural office in Houston, first established [End Page 530] in the early 1950s, employed Black architects when other firms would not and built churches, schools, and medical clinics for Black clients. His influence on the architecture profession and on Black culture in Texas cannot be overestimated, and John S. Chase: The Chase Residence is a welcome testament to his importance. This slim but beautifully produced book is the first dedicated to Chase and his architecture, and it provides a valuable place holder for a longer biography to follow, currently being written by architectural historian Tara Dudley. Understanding the experience of lesser-known public figures like Chase creates a fuller history of modern Texas that accounts for the experience of Black professionals during the civil rights era. The book's focus is the Chase Residence, a house designed and built by Chase on a cul-de-sac on Oakdale Street, just steps away from Brays Bayou to the south and few blocks from Texas Southern University, the historically Black university where Chase taught until 1964. He designed the house to accommodate his family and to provide a place to entertain. The house was completed in 1958, and it focused on a generous central courtyard, open to the air with a fish pond at its center. Architect David Heymann's introductory essay provides a lucid analysis of the courtyard house type and how the Chase House fits into that larger tradition in Houston. The connection between indoor and outdoor space created by full-height windows facing the courtyard showed Chase's exploration of those avant-garde practices, but also provided space for his experiments with plants and allowed his children a safe place to play. In 1969, Chase altered the house and enclosed the open courtyard, making it a double-height atrium with skylights and planters filled with tall, upward-reaching tropical plants. An exposed, cantilevered staircase made the space even more dramatic. Drawings provided by Heymann's students vividly bring these spaces to life. Even more interesting than these architectural experiments is the way that the Chase family used the house as a platform for building community. The short descriptions of gatherings at the house, focused first on the courtyard and later in the atrium, make it clear that the Chase Residence functioned as a salon for leaders in Houston's Black community. Church ministers, elected officials, educators, and architects met and did business there, making the house a significant location that supported organizing and empowerment. When Chase began his architecture practice in Houston in the early 1950s, Heymann reports, he and his wife Drucie joined all the major African American churches and attended services at all of them every Sunday (2). Chase was an astute networker who after desegregation built a large, successful practice with headquarters in Austin, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. with "unerring public display of grace, modesty, charm, and determination" (23). The very deliberate design of an impressive and [End Page 531] sophisticated house that would allow him to build a network of supporters and potential clients in segregated Texas was a key to that success as well. Kathryn E. Holliday University of Texas at Arlington Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association