Richly illustrated with rare period photographs, Houston s Hermann Park: A Century of Community provides a vivid history of Houston s oldest and most important urban park. Author and historian Barrie Scardino Bradley sets Hermann Park in both a local and a national context as this grand park celebrates its centennial at the culmination of a remarkable twenty-year rejuvenation. As Bradley shows, Houston s development as a major American city may be traced in the outlines of the park s history. During the early nineteenth century, Houston leaders were most interested in commercial development...

This ambitious book tells a richly detailed story of Houston home life and culture from the settlement of Harrisburg and Houston in the 1820s and 1830s to World War I, when rapid economic development and modernization began to spell demolition for many notable nineteenth-century houses and public buildings. The authors discuss landscape and horticulture, the development of domestic architecture, the evolution of home interiors, and domestic life, and its influence on the social and cultural fabric of the city.

Of all the books about Galveston, one of the best continues to be architect Howard Barnstone s The Galveston That Was, published many years ago. This poignant and vivid record of the great mansions and public buildings of the historic island city by the late Houston architect is credited as being a catalyst in the preservation and restoration movement in Galveston. Houston Chronicle This beautiful picture book about nineteenth-century Galveston architecture is also a book about how Galveston s historic buildings were saved. Historic Preservation The compelling power of The Galveston That Was...

In 1865, Heinrich Portscheller emigrated to Mexico from his native Germany, perhaps motivated by a desire to avoid compulsory military service in the Austro-Prussian War. The scion of a well-known family of masons and master builders, he had the misfortune to disembark at Veracruz during the Franco-Mexican War. Portscheller and his traveling companion were impressed into the imperialist forces and sent to northern Mexico. Sometime following the Battle of Santa Gertrudis in1866, Portscheller deserted the army and eventually made a place for himself in Roma, a small town in Starr County, Texas....

In this expansive and vigorous survey of the Houston art scene of the 1970s and 1980s, author Pete Gershon describes the city's emergence as a locus for the arts, fuelled by a boom in oil prices and by the arrival of several catalyzing figures, including museum director James Harithas and sculptor James Surls.