Making Houston Modern: The Life and Architecture of Howard Barnstone

Complex, controversial, and prolific, Howard Barnstone was a central figure in the world of twentieth-century modern architecture. Recognized as Houston’s foremost modern architect in the 1950s, Barnstone came to prominence for his designs with partner Preston M. Bolton, which transposed the rigorous and austere architectural practices of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to the hot, steamy coastal plain of Texas. Barnstone was a man of contradictions—charming and witty but also self-centered, caustic, and abusive—who shaped new settings that were imbued, at once, with spatial calm and emotional intensity.

Making Houston Modern explores the provocative architect’s life and work, not only through the lens of his architectural practice but also by delving into his personal life, class identity, and connections to the artists, critics, collectors, and museum directors who forged Houston’s distinctive culture in the postwar era. Edited by three renowned voices in the architecture world, this volume situates Barnstone within the contexts of American architecture, modernism, and Jewish culture to unravel the legacy of a charismatic personality whose imaginative work as an architect, author, teacher, and civic commentator helped redefine architecture in Texas.

Barrie Scardino Bradley is an independent scholar who has written on Texas architecture for the past forty years. She is the author of several books, including Improbable Metropolis: Houston’s Architectural and Urban History.

Stephen Fox is an architectural historian and a Fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas.

Michelangelo Sabatino is an architectural historian and preservationist. He is the former interim dean and inaugural John Vinci Distinguished Research Fellow, College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology.