Stephen Fox at Los Laureles Ranch House at Mittie Cultural Park in Brownsville, Texas
When I first became interested in the old buildings of Brownsville I read several articles on the historical heritage of architecture in the Rio Grande Valley by this man - Stephen Fox of Brownsville, Texas who now teaches at Rice University and is a leading expert in his field. It was like meeting a rock star.
---> Scholarly Interest Report on Mr Fox <---
Texas Historical Commission event draws from around the Valley
A daylong symposium on historic preservation in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley drew more than 100 people to the Texas Southmost College ITEC Center on Friday.
The audience included property owners and preservationists, real estate professionals, educators and students, architects and designers, local government and economic development officials, business owners, museum curators, private citizens and others from across the Valley and even the state.
Central to the event, the first of its kind in Brownsville, was a discussion of a new 25-percent Texas Historic Preservation Tax Credit, which preservationists hope boosts efforts to save historic but neglected buildings. The tax credit went into effect in January.
Valerie Magolan, tax credit program specialist with the Texas Historical Commission, and Sara Ludueña, South Texas project review for the THC, led the tax-credit session, providing information on state and federal tax credit programs and how together they can offer significant incentives for the rehabilitation of historic properties.
The two also discussed details about eligibility, historic nominations and designations, architectural guidelines and project planning.
The symposium’s first presentation was from Stephen Fox, an architectural historian and lecturer at the Rice University School of Architecture, who gave an eye-opening overview of historic architecture along the Lower Rio Grande border.
He noted that Brownsville was one of the state’s largest cities only two years after being founded in 1848, and had the first operating bank in Texas before the Civil War. It was a metropolitan city as evidenced by buildings such as New Orleans-style merchant houses, and the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, built in 1856, Fox said.
He said Brownsville shared a strong historical architecture connection with New Orleans and Matamoros. After World War I, developers built California mission-style structures here as a way to market the “MagicValley” to Midwestern farmers by creating a “myth of romantic Spanish identity,” Fox said.
A more complete version of this story is available at www.myBrownsvilleHerald.com
Can't wait for this place to be done... - Eddie
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