The Country Houses of John F. Staub by Staub, John F.; Fox, Stephen (Text by) - 2007

College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Cloth, xvii, 388 pages, illustrations (some colour); 32 cm. Sara and John Lindsey Series in the Arts and Humanities, Volume 11. Color photography by Richard Cheek. Firm binding, clean inside copy. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. OVERSIZE! No priority/international, except by arrangement. Richly illustrated with colour plates. "In the early 1920s, architect John F. Staub, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, who had studied at MIT and worked in New York, came to the burgeoning city of Houston as an assistant to nationally prominent architect Harrie T. Lindeberg. Staub was charged with administering construction of three houses designed by Lindeberg for members of the city's rapidly emerging elite. He would go on to establish one of the most influential architectural practices in Houston, where he would remain until his death in 1981. This ambitious study of Staub's work by architectural historian Stephen Fox goes beyond a description of Staub's houses. Fox analyzes the roles of space, structure, and decoration in creating, defining, and maintaining social class structures and expectations and shows how Staub was able to incorporate these elements and understandings into the elegant buildings he designed for his clients. In the process, he contributes greatly to a fuller understanding of Houston's emergence as a premier American city." - Publisher. CONTENTS: John F. Staub, Houston, and the social construction of upper-class identity; Broadacres; River Oaks; Small houses; Grand houses; Country retreats;Typification, consensus, and the River Oaks house; Regionalism; The contemporary and the Palladian; Architecture, social construction, and the country houses of John F. Staub.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Folio.