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Inside Texas
Culture, Identity, and Houses, 1878â"1920
By Cynthia A. Brandimarte TCU Press
Copyright © 1991 Cynthia A. Brandimarte
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87565-517-8
CHAPTER 1
"All That Stuff"
AN INTRODUCTION
In 1984 author-screenwriter Horton Foote called me to advise him on a set design for the movie 1918, a semiautobiographical film shot in Waxahachie about the 1918 influenza epidemic. Foote explained that many scenes would recreate his family's home. He said he had some of the original furniture, which he described as "white." I suspected he meant an enameled bedstead, and a colonial revival dresser and matching dressing table. Foote explained that the film company's art department—a Texas crew who embraced Hollywood's vision of their state—rejected the white furniture in favor of Victorian furnishings. Since he had no family photographs, Foote requested interior photographs I had collected that would approximate a Waxahachie interior in 1918. He believed my photographs and my research on house interiors would bolster his position against the art department so that he could use the very furniture that had been in the house.
The art department did not want the real thing—the sort of furniture widely available in Texas stores in the 1910–1920 decade. They overlooked the important details of the movie characters' lives—that they were young and newly married and had the need of all newlyweds to furnish their home. Instead, they wanted to perpetuate the Hollywood stereotype of Texans as somehow singular and anachronistic, unaware of fashion and styles. Their syllogism went something like this: "If Texans have bad taste—and they do—and if so-called Victorian taste equals bad taste—and it does—then Texans in 1918 decorated their houses in that manner." According to the movie's set designers, Texans were also behind the times, and although Victorian decoration was disappearing by 1918, newly married young Texans (and older ones) would be avid consumers of it. My search for early interior views gave me the opportunity to test the notion that Texas houses—like most things Texan—are unique and different and to debunk "the Hollywood art department fallacy."
Interior photographs contain much practical information not only for set designers but also for historic preservationists. Many people charged with historic house recreation either despair if their specific structure has no surviving photographic documentation or seize the first high-style East Coast interior photograph they can find and attempt to graft details upon a vernacular building in Texas. This is often understandable. But the published interior views always seem to be either too high-style or too low-style, too early or too late, too far west or too far east to have much to do with one's project. It is especially critical now to locate regional images as scholars increasingly recognize that people's creation of domestic environments depends in large part on factors relating to geography: climate, availability of goods, and ethnicity.
In nineteenth-century Texas, all three factors had an impact on household furnishings. Texas then as now had typically long and hot summers, and mild winters with occasional fierce blue northers. In West Texas, annual rainfall was sometimes less than ten inches, while in the eastern part of the state winds from the Gulf of Mexico brought frequent and heavy rains.
Soil and climate created conditions in which oak, hickory, and pine flourished in East Texas; oaks and mesquite grew intermittently in the central part of the state; and in West Texas, the land supported only grasses and shrubs, oaks, junipers, or cedars, and mesquite. In East Texas there was plentiful lumber; in southern and western areas, it was scarce (fig. 1.1).
At mid nineteenth century, transportation routes were starting to make available all kinds of goods, including household furnishings. Several ports connected settlers with markets in other parts of the country. Galveston was the most active; Matagorda, Indianola (destroyed by a storm in 1875, rebuilt, and again destroyed in 1886), and Port Lavaca were also busy ports. Prior to the 1880s, upon arrival in Galveston or other port cities, goods could be shipped—with considerable difficulty—over land routes or by riverboat to inland towns. Most of the major rivers—the Red, Sabine, Trinity, Brazos, Colorado, Nueces, and Rio Grande—were, at least in part, navigable and generally remained important transportation networks until the railroads eclipsed them in the 1880s.
By the late nineteenth century, land routes were extending water transportation networks beyond New Orleans and the Texas Gulf Coast, and railroads were rushing into the state with goods from Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Louisville, and other cities. Before the Civil War, there were fewer than 500 miles of intrastate tracks, and not before the early 1870s was the state linked with points outside its boundaries. But by the 1880s, incentives given to railroad companies helped to increase the number of miles to approximately 3,000 (fig. 1.2). And at the close of the decade, the number had almost tripled again. Railroads were providing relatively swift, inexpensive, and dependable transportation in Texas.
In 1880, 1.5 million people lived within the boundaries of Texas. Most people settled in the eastern half of the state. According to the 1880 federal census, 1,402,085 Texans lived in an area that the report broadly defined as "Southwest Central"; 154,821 clustered along the Gulf Coast; and only 34,843 lived in the vast "Western plains." Large numbers of Anglos, Tejanos (or Spanish-speaking Texans), Germans, and blacks, and fewer Scandinavian, Polish, and other western European immigrants constituted the population.
The Lower South—Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana—provided settlers to the eastern fifth of the state; northern sections—from the Central Texas prairies to the High Plains—were settled by many who had left the Upper South—Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. Europeans, especially Germans and Czechs, converged in the east-central area of the state, joined by settlers from both the Lower and the Upper South. Germans settled the Hill Country near the center of the state. Tejanos occupied the area along the Rio Grande from western to southern Texas.
In 1880 Texas had five major cities—Austin, Dallas, Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio—but most Texans lived in rural areas, earning a living in agriculture. A large number of people also worked as domestic servants, laborers, storekeepers and merchants, traders and dealers, railroad workers, and carpenters.
By the early decades of the twentieth century, much had changed. In 1900 the population was more than 3 million; by 1920, more than 4 million. Many more Texans were living in the major cities: Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio each had a population exceeding 50,000. In 1880 Texas had been less than 10 percent urban; forty years later it was more than 30 percent urban. Occupational distribution was also shifting. While many working Texans were still engaged in agriculture in 1920, others sought and found employment in the lumber and mineral industries.
Along with the increase in population and changes in the economic base came improved transportation systems. By 1920 the railroads had laid 16,000 miles of track throughout the state and spurred the development of inland cities (fig. 1.3). On the coast, the natural ports, inadequate even in the days of light sailing craft and small steamers, were being improved. By the early twentieth century, the ports of Freeport, Port Aransas, and Houston had been upgraded, and by the 1920s the state was moving toward a deep-water port system.
These statistics do not always conform to people's perceptions of Texas, however. For many people, Texas was exemplified then—and is now—by the dry, arid region of West Texas rather than the dense forests of East Texas, or conceived of as the extremes of desert and Dallas. Still others see only cowboys and ranchers, instead of farmers, sawmill operators, merchants, and railroad workers; and many think only of the large Tejano population, rather than the numerous Polish, Danish, and Germanic enclaves.
Decorative arts enthusiasts are just as prone to generalize. For some, both inside and outside the state, Texas furniture is too often equated with the masterful pieces of German cabinetmakers, rather than with the mantel clocks and rocking chairs from Sears, Roebuck. Some people consider briefly the anomaly of Galveston's exuberant late-nineteenth-century structures and then observe that many nineteenth-century Texans lived in dugouts or log cabins before moving into ranch houses filled with horn furniture. These stereotypes are somehow more appealing than truthful—Texans lived in rooms resembling New Jersey parlors and Indiana kitchens.
Between 1878 and 1920, many changes affected the appearance of home interiors. Growing cities meant urban Texans were closer to large stores and outlets offering all types of consumer goods; new money from cattle and oil meant the power to purchase fashionable household furnishings; increasing population and greater wealth meant urban markets for design professionals; and vastly improved coastal and inland transportation networks blurred state and regional barriers.
Photographs taken between 1878 and 1920 show that far from being insular, most Texans were well linked to mass markets and stayed reasonably current with decorating ideas and styles. By the 1870s, and probably earlier, like other Americans, they were part of an emerging consumer culture. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, Texans could buy a respectable array of fashionable goods that were beginning to be offered in general stores, furniture stores, china and jewelry stores, and department stores. Mail-order catalogues like those of Sears, Roebuck encouraged further variety of household goods in Texas homes and made possible a democracy of place.
Choices for the Texas consumer had expanded greatly from the 1820s when Stephen F. Austin advised his family to abandon their furniture and piano in preparation for travel to Texas: "let our motto therefore be economy and plain living." By the 1890s Texans were fashioning their home interiors in a manner far from plain, their ideas generated and supported both by experts who wrote columns and articles for various magazines that offered current fashion to women in the hinterlands and by local advisors, like paperhangers and furniture retailers. Texas consumers were confidently shopping in a varied marketplace and selecting diverse styles ranging from renaissance revival to Louis XVI.
Professional decorators were establishing offices and dispensing advice in urban centers. Some very prosperous Texans even went outside the state to enlist professional decorators. Within the state, a cadre of tastemakers began offering expertise through furniture or department stores in larger cities. There were also special decorating firms such as Doyle Decorating Studio in San Antonio, and individual craftsmen, such as Walther Tauscher of Dallas, who advertised their skills.
In part to meet the growing sophistication and prosperity of some residents, increasing numbers of architects were also making their expertise available to the new Texas market. In 1860 Texas had only eight architects. Twenty-six years later, the Texas State Association of Architects was formed. By 1920 Texas boasted 495 architects.
In Texas as elsewhere, a variety of styles of architecture and furnishings was embraced by householders during the period 1878–1920. The styles overlap and lack a clear beginning and end. In exterior architecture, the Italian villa or Italianate, second empire, romanesque revival, stick, shingle, Queen Anne, Eastlake, and chateau styles allowed expression of the late-nineteenth-century aesthetic. At the turn of the century, architects also worked in the vocabularies of beaux arts classicism, Jacobean revival, and Georgian revival. And by the early twentieth century, the prairie style of midwestern architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the mission revival and bungalow styles met a ready reception.
Interior furnishings had similar changes and a weltering variety. Few rooms and even fewer houses were fitted with furniture in a single style. Most turn-of-the-century Americans lived with an eclectic assemblage of furnishings—as we do today. Many styles lingered well after new ones appeared and still found a ready market. Some styles were updated by the attachment of elements from the new style. Conversely, some new styles were modified to make them more affordable to various socioeconomic levels. At the same time, the definition of stylishness was ever changing at the upper income level. Finally, there was neither a clear end of one style nor a clear beginning of another, nor was stylistic purity ever more than a chimera.
By 1850 householders in Texas could select furniture in the Grecian, Gothic, Elizabethan, and rococo-revival styles. But relatively few examples of these midcentury styles are found in Texas houses photographed between 1878 and 1920. Furnishings in these styles generally predate the period, and they are most visible in the households of older couples in established cities. Too, these midcentury styles were primarily manufactured outside the state during the era that transportation networks in Texas, and Anglo populations were limited. Accordingly these styles arrived in the state in relatively small numbers. There were fewer examples of them originally in Texas, and therefore fewer survive to appear in rooms photographed later.
Late-nineteenth-century furniture styles found in abundance in Texas homes photographed between 1878 and 1920 include the renaissance and French-revival styles, as well as Eastlake. Neo-Grec and modern Gothic (also known as art furniture or Eastlake furniture) captured part of the late-nineteenth-century furnishings market. Americans' tastes in household decoration also turned to exotic peoples and cultures—Oriental, Egyptian, and Moorish.
By the end of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth, few Americans could afford to follow the advice of Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr., in The Decoration of Houses (1897) to acquire expensive furniture based on French designs from Louis XIV through Louis XVI. More popular were other options available by then: arts and crafts-inspired mission, art nouveau, and colonial revival furniture.
These various furniture styles mirrored cultural changes taking place in the United States. In 1878, Victorianism—defined as an Anglo-American, transatlantic, bourgeois culture of industrializing Western civilization—was the dominant culture, one that placed value on rational order, competition, and modernization and one that was decidedly future oriented, didactic, serious, and concerned about religious tradition. While we can generalize that Victorians tended to be middle-class, Anglo- American, and Protestant, certainly not all were. For our purposes, however, we can observe that many late-nineteenth-century Americans lived in or aspired to live in homes that were rich in detail and elaboration and characterized by "visual complexity and intricacy." By 1920, many Americans lived in bungalows that looked far simpler.
* * *
Intrigued but exasperated viewers of photographs in this study have often asked, "Why did Victorians have all that stuff?" Many are convinced that those who decorated their homes during these years dedicated themselves to a conscious assault on tasteful sensibilities of the generations following them (fig. 1.4). Indeed, it is fair to ask in a non-judgemental tone, "Why did householders use such volumes of decorative accessories?"
Art historians observe that the late-nineteenth-century aesthetic system both in this country and abroad turned on the axis of "picturesqueness" and its concomitant qualities: variety, movement, irregularity, intricacy, and roughness. Variety, for example, was achieved by multiple shapes and silhouettes. Roofs sprouted chimneys, towers, and gables; inside, rooms were divided in round, rectangular, and octagonal shapes and filled with a variety of exotic items. Movement was a consciously achieved effect of advancing and receding; in rooms, it was expressed in color and placement of objects. An attempt to avoid monotony and achieve visual surprise, irregularity was often conveyed by asymmetry, while juxtapositions of the natural and the artificial enhanced intricacy—cut flowers were placed among paper, embroidered, stenciled, or enameled flowers in many parlors. Allied with intricacy was contrast between original form and materials and social function, such as the use of cattle horns for furniture components. Finally, roughness appeared in objects conveying rusticity—rustic chairs, plant stands, picture frames, and easels—and in objects that signified "wild" or "savage," such as those using Native American motifs.
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Excerpted from Inside Texas by Cynthia A. Brandimarte. Copyright © 1991 Cynthia A. Brandimarte. Excerpted by permission of TCU Press.
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