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Of Note
along an earlier transportation technology — the
St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway. Built in
1904, the railroad was also the reason that towns
were established to anchor large agricultural tract
developments fed by irrigation networks from the
Rio Grande. Business 83, until it was supplanted by
the U.S. 83 Expressway in the 1960s, was the vehicular backbone of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
Its surviving buildings and landscapes re昀氀ect the
contributions of 20th-century cash-crop agriculture to the regional economy and the emergence
of highway-related building types.
The tour’s 昀椀rst three stops were in Mission, just
west of McAllen. Founded in 1907, Mission was
identified with the cultivation of grapefruit and
citrus’s foremost regional promoter, real estate
developer John H. Shary. The tour began in the
mid-20th-century northside neighborhood of Shary
Heights, developed by Shary in 1945, where many
of the primarily one-story, brick-veneer, ranch-type
houses were designed by architects. Participants
visited one of the neighborhood’s rare two-story
houses, built in 1949 for a Mission banker and occupied since 1970 by three generations of the Dovalina family. Originally, deed restrictions in Shary
Heights barred sale to, or occupancy of property by,
“Latin Americans.” Logan Dovalina, whose parents
now own the house, spoke about his reaction to the
discovery that in 1945 his grandparents would have
been excluded from Shary Heights. It is because
of his advocacy and research that Shary Heights is
now a candidate for listing in the National Register
of Historic Places.
The Dovalina House was designed by Mission architect Warren C. Suter (1918-2010), who
designed several houses in Shary Heights. Chapter
member Manuel Hinojosa, FAIA, spoke about his
relationship with Suter, his mentor, and the architect’s wife, Dorothy Suter, Hinojosa’s high school
art teacher and the 昀椀rst to recognize and encourage
his talent. Hinojosa also spoke about what it felt
like to grow up in Mission in the 1960s, when class
and ethnic barriers were strictly observed.
The second Mission stop also involved a “rediscovered” architect, Anselmo M. Longoria (18941936). Longoria designed the most imposing work
of architecture built in Mission in the 1920s: Our
Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church. Located in
Mexiquito (Little Mexico), south of Business 83, Our
Lady of Guadalupe was Mission’s Spanish-language
parish. A. M. Longoria, who practiced in McAllen,
was one of only two Spanish-surnamed building
professionals in the Valley in the 1920s who identi昀椀ed
themselves as architects. Longoria’s great-grandson,
Dallas architect David Contreras, AIA, provided
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family records documenting Longoria’s buildings,
which include two commercial buildings still standing
along the Mexiquito stretch of Mission’s main street.
The third Mission stop was at a rural site on the
river: the 19th-century ranch chapel at La Lomita,
built by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Roman Catholic religious order historically associated with the Lower Rio Grande border.
Restored most recently in 2008 (and winning a 2010
Texas Society of Architects Design Award for architects Kell Muñoz), this humble vernacular structure
is the “mission” for which the city was named. Built
with walls of plastered rubblestone, the chapel is
an emotionally poignant link to the pre-highway,
pre-railroad landscape of the Valley, when the Rio
Grande was the region’s primary highway.
Following the railroad eastward along Business
83, the tour crossed beneath the U.S. 83 Expressway to enter the city of Pharr on McAllen’s east
edge. There, participants visited the Valley Fruit
Company complex, built in phases between 1947
and 1957 and designed by Pharr architect Gene
Devine (1914-1992). The largest and most architecturally ambitious of the fruit and vegetable
processing plants that once lined Business 83, the
Valley Fruit Co. is especially notable for its use of
widespan wood lamella roof vaults. Now listed in
the National Register, the complex is still in the
food business as the regional headquarters for the
nonpro昀椀t Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley.
In the afternoon, participants visited the Hotel
Cortez (now called Villa de Cortez), a four-story
downtown hotel constructed in 1928 where Business 83 intersects Weslaco’s main street. Designed
by San Antonio architect Paul G. Silber, the Spanish-style Cortez had been abandoned by 1998,
when Weslaco developer Larry Dittburner and
his wife, Patti, bought and rehabilitated it. Today,
the Cortez functions as a community event center,
with retail on the ground 昀氀oor, o昀케ces above, and
a church in the basement.
From Weslaco, the tour headed into the still
agricultural landscape of eastern Hidalgo County
and western Cameron County for a stop at the
grandest house in La Feria. Built in 1923 by a
Kansas City developer, Al Parker, it is a showplace
where Parker sought to entice Midwesterners into
buying their own piece of the exotic tropical paradise he was selling. The house’s second owner, Harlingen media tycoon McHenry Tichenor, turned
the exotic tropical paradise landscape trope into
reality by replacing Parker’s extensive front yard
orchard (killed by a freeze) with a magnificent
grove of Washingtonia palm trees, which frame
the intensely white house with their massed trunks.
The tour concluded with another neighborhood
stop: La Hacienda Casitas on the western fringe of
Harlingen. Completed in 2014, La Hacienda is a
six-acre a昀昀ordable housing community of 56 freestanding houses constructed on the site of one of the
motel complexes that once lined Business 83. (Chapter member Michael E. Allex, AIA, wrote about
the project in the May/June 2014 issue of Texas
Architect, and it won a TxA Design Award in 2014.)
Jesse Miller, who had worked for the nonpro昀椀t architecture practice buildingcommunityWORKSHOP
when it designed La Hacienda, led a walking tour
through the neighborhood, describing the issues that
the developer, the Community Development Corporation of Brownsville, and architect had to resolve to
get it built. Visitors noted how carefully tended the
whole neighborhood was and the excellent condition
of the nearly 10-year-old houses.
What the AIA-LRGV’s trip down Business 83
demonstrated was the wisdom and practicality of
reusing existing architectural resources. Not only
is this more environmentally responsible and economical, it also invests landscapes with a palpable
sense of historical depth and community identity.
Sessions at the conference reinforced this message
with presentations by Logan Dovalina on landmarking Shary Heights and Manuel Hinojosa on
the architecture of education in the Valley. Architects discussing issues related to their practices
— TxA President-Elect Derwin Broughton, AIA;
Mark Schatz, FAIA, of Houston; Katia Zapata
and Roberto Núñez of Monterrey, and Marianella
Quiroga Franklin, Assoc. AIA, of the University
of Texas Rio Grande Valley — demonstrated how
architects can pro昀椀tably learn from each other’s
experiences. Conference keynoter Michael Ford,
AIA, NOMA, of Detroit (and now Dallas) delivered a lively presentation on Hip Hop Architecture,
his e昀昀ort to connect underrepresented youth with
design culture.
Attendees saluted retired AIA-LRGV executive
director Carmen Perez Garcia, Hon. AIA, and
her husband, Rolando “O” Garcia, FAIA, who
launched the concept of a local chapter conference
in 1993, adding the tour component in 2003. As
with state and national conferences, the Building
Communities Conference gives architects from
the geographically sprawling Valley chapter the
opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and to
learn from and re昀氀ect on the design cultures of
their border home.
Stephen Fox is an architectural historian and a Fellow
of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas.
