Reviewed by: Opus in Brick and Stone: The Architectural and Planning Heritage of Texas Tech University by Brian H. Griggs Kathryn E. Holliday Opus in Brick and Stone: The Architectural and Planning Heritage of Texas Tech University. By Brian H. Griggs. ( Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2020. Pp. 352. Illustrations, appendices, notes, index.) Texas universities have long used their architecture to create a visually distinctive identity and to compete with each other through the grandeur and scale of campus facilities. Rice University's Collegiate Gothic, the University of Texas at Austin's Beaux-Arts ensembles, Trinity University's mid-century modern, and the University of Texas at El Paso's Bhutaneseinspired quads all create unified campus environments that contribute to clear visual narratives of the university's role in civic and educational culture. Texas Tech is no exception, and Brian Griggs's exhaustive exploration of its campus history focuses particularly on the Spanish Revival core of the campus, built gradually from the 1920s through the 1940s. Griggs is especially interested in the ways that the neo-plateresque Spanish Revival style, based directly on university architecture in Spain rather than the Spanish colonial architecture of Texas, was exploited by the university's architects and administrators to solidify the university's reputation and status in the competitive world of Texas higher education. When Texas Tech was founded in 1923, it did not immediately have the full support of the Texas Legislature. Because Texas A&M University already existed, many in the state believed there was no need for an additional agricultural college in Lubbock. Griggs takes a deep dive into the machinations of early supporters, including Amon Carter and John [End Page 92] Carpenter, who used their political and economic influence to found the university and insure its growth. The university's early architects, primarily William Ward Watkin of Houston and Wyatt Hedrick of Fort Worth, were savvy negotiators of this business and political climate and navigated the thorny problem of creating an image for Texas Tech from scratch on an apparently vacant, flat plain. The Administration Building, still standing today, is an excellent example of this early period, a relatively modest brick structure ornamented with beautifully crafted cast stone finials, scrolls, balusters, towers, and pediments typical of the style. Problems with funding, material, labor supply, and political chicanery are well-documented. Some of the more interesting aspects of Texas Tech's campus that make it distinctive receive less attention than its style. The campus was designed from the beginning to be sprawling, open, and navigated by car. Later advocacy resulted in a more pedestrian-friendly campus that pushed cars to the perimeter. Tech's early sponsors also visited technical campuses like the Polytechnic College of Pennsylvania and Lowell Technological Institute in Massachusetts to understand the needs of agricultural college buildings, particularly those dedicated to cotton and textile sciences. The campus's history of modernist architecture, especially the often-maligned brutalist tower of the Art and Architecture Complex, designed by Ford, Powell & Carson, receive relatively short shrift. These projects were certainly curtailed by funding and have been unpopular, but they also reflect the idealism of designers who believed that breaking with the past could provide freedom from its constraints. Griggs is a Texas Tech graduate, an architect who designs buildings for the campus today, and a passionate advocate for the campus's historic architecture and continuing the university's Spanish Revival style in its new buildings. His book is a product of both of those missions, providing an argument for how closely connected the Spanish Revival was to the ideals of the university's founders and early administrators. Architectural historians have increasingly interrogated these revivalist styles for their associations with Europhilia and whiteness during the era of Jim Crow. Debates during the 1930s over the inclusion of sculpted portraits of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis, for example, point to the inherently political nature of architecture on a public university campus. Both portraits, as Griggs clearly shows, were ultimately left out. Opus in Brick and Stone is lovingly documented, well-illustrated, and important reading for all Texas Tech graduates and students as well as anyone interested in the ways that campus architecture shapes...
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Nov 1, 2024
Devanshu Mudgal + 2
Open Access
