Texas Company Building

The Texas Company building is significant not only for its unique architectural features but also for the substantial contributions of the Texas Company, now known worldwide as Texaco. The founder of the Texas Company, Joseph S. Cullinan, arrived in Texas in 1897 after thirteen years of employment with the Standard Oil Company of Pennsylvania. He arrived on site at Spindletop, near Beaumont, in January of 1901 a few days after the Lucas well struck oil and began a new era of Texas history. By January of the following year the Texas Fuel Company was in business and by March opened its first office in Beaumont. Texaco "anticipated two important developments that assured their success in the oil industry: First, that the opening of the southwestern oil fields would alter the geographical pattern of the industry, and second, that new uses for oil-primarily as engine fuel would come to dominate the market." The Texas Company moved to Houston in 1908 and continued to grow rapidly. Company assets rose from $3.5 million in 1903 to about $60 million in 1913.

The New York architectural firm Warren and Wetmore was commissioned to design an office building in Houston for the Texas Company in 1914. The building opened in 1915 and the same firm was commissioned to design an addition in 1936. The Guastavino Company, also of New York, designed the vaulted arcades of the original building and the 1959 Kenneth Franzheim-designed addition. The Texas Company building is nominated under Criterion A in the area of Commerce and under Criterion C in the area of Architecture, at the local level of significance.

The Texas Company

The oil industry in the United States was born in 1859 in northwestern Pennsylvania when Drake's well came in near present-day Oil City. Prior to this time, "rock oil" bubbled up in springs or seeped into salt wells around Oil Creek, in the isolated wooded hills of northwestern Pennsylvania. The bulk of this tiny supply was used to make medicine. Early speculators believed that the rock oil could be exploited in far larger quantities and processed into a fluid that could be burned in lamps or used to lubricate the moving parts of machinery.

Joseph Stephen Cullinan was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania on December 31, 1860, to John Francis and Mary Considine Cullinan, both natives of County Clare, Ireland who had immigrated with their separate families to the United States in the 1840s. He attended public school and at fourteen he found work in the nearby oil fields of western Pennsylvania as a messenger boy, oil-wagon teamster, pipeline laborer, and drilling crew member. In 1882 he became an employee of the National Transit Company of Oil City, Pennsylvania, Standard Oil's transportation affiliate. He advanced and in 1888 he was transferred to another Standard transportation affiliate, the Buckeye Pipe Line Company in Lima, Ohio where he was appointed superintendent of that company's natural gas and tankage departments. There he met and married Miss Lucy Halm, the daughter of a Lima merchant, on April 14, 1891. Four of the couple's five children were born in Washington, Pennsylvania: John Halm (1893), Craig Francis (1894), Nina Jane (1896), and Margaret Ann (1898). Their fifth child, Mary Catherine, was born in Corsicana, Texas in 1901.

In the late 19th century, the oil industry became the fastest-growing industry in the United States, dominated by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Cullinan joined that company in 1882. In 1895, after thirteen years with Standard, Cullinan organized a partnership called the J. S. Cullinan & Company in Corsicana, Texas, that had business ties with Standard. That company later became Magnolia Petroleum Company.

Cullinan became the largest operator in the Corsicana field erected a tank farm and bought oil from well owners. It was then sold to refiners and marketers, principally Standard, and transported in railroad tank cars. In 1898 Cullinan also built a refinery in Corsicana that processed oil to produce kerosene for lamps and industrial lubricating oils. Kerosene became immediately popular with American consumers due to the high price of whale oil and coal at the time. One of the by-products of the manufacturing process of oil to kerosene was gasoline, which was thought to be of little use and was usually thrown away.

On January 10, 1901, the Lucas well at Spindletop near Beaumont, Texas, marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry, affectionately known in Texas as the "awlbidness." Oil was struck and a geyser twice the height of the derrick spouted for 10 days before it was capped. Entrepreneurs descended upon the Beaumont area within days of the news and Cullinan arrived among them. "Eager to find similar deposits, investors spent billions of dollars throughout the Lone Star state in search of oil and natural gas. Their newfound inexpensive fuel revolutionized American industry and transportation... By 1902 there were more than 500 Texas corporations doing business in Beaumont. Many of the major oil companies were born at Spindletop or grew to major corporate size as a result of their involvement at Spindletop." The Texas Company was among them.

In March 1901, Joseph S. Cullinan and Arnold Schlaet, a New York investor, incorporated the Texas Fuel Company at Beaumont. Investors included the Hogg-Swayne syndicate, the head of which was James Stephen Hogg, a former Governor of Texas, and his associates. Other investors included John W. Gates and the Laphams of New York. The company primarily purchased and transported oil from Beaumont's Spindletop oilfield to northeast oil companies including Standard Oil."

The charter for the new corporation, the Texas Company, was obtained in April 1902 by the major investors of the Texas Fuel Company. On May 1st the Texas Fuel Company conveyed its assets to the newly chartered company and was shortly thereafter dissolved.

The Texas Company was initially capitalized at $3 million and almost immediately began expanding operations. It used subsidiary companies for oil production and began acquiring barges and rail tank cars. It quickly covered new fields with leases. High production levels at two fields just outside Houston, the Sour Lake oilfield (1903) and the Humble oilfield (1905) provided the company with a secure financial base. In 1905 the Texas Company linked the Sour Lake and Humble fields by pipeline to Port Arthur, ninety miles away. The Texas Company's first refinery was subsequently built in Port Arthur. That same year the company acquired an asphalt refinery in nearby Port Neches. In 1908 the company completed the ambitious venture of a pipeline from the Glenn Pool, in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), to its Southeast Texas refineries."

The co-founder of the company, Arnold Schlaet, was born in Germany in 1859 and came to the United States in 1875. As an employee of H. G. Lapham and Co., he managed that investment firm's interests in oil and carbon black. This led to a meeting with J. S. Cullinan when the oil boom struck Beaumont, Texas, in 1901. The two men were the prime movers in creating the Texas Company. Mr. Schlaet's chief contributions were in finance and sales in the eastern United States and in Europe."
The first offices of the Texas Company were in Beaumont in a three-room corrugated metal building near the Southern Pacific Depot. In the fall of 1902, the offices moved to the three-story brick Temperance Building also in Beaumont. Schlaet had a one-room office in the Maritime Building at 8 Bridge Street in New York. By the end of 1902, the company sold oil to northern refiners and to sugar plantations in Louisiana for use as fuel in grinding operations." Early sales for the company included crude oil and asphalt.

Texaco's management explored options for maximizing the useful and marketable byproducts of the refining of crude. In 1903, Texaco's largest-selling retail petroleum product was kerosene, used principally in lamps and cooking stoves. The crude the company was refining did not produce the best grade of kerosene; consequentially they explored other markets for their products. "Gas oil" was used to enrich artificial gas used for lighting and cooking in cities all over the US and Europe. This product began the Texas Company's export trade.

In 1907 Texaco began to import Oklahoma crude by pipeline to Texas. Oklahoma crude yielded twice as much kerosene and five times as much gasoline and made a better lamp oil than Texas crude. The company introduced its Familylite, a superior grade of illuminating oil, and began marketing it in the northeast where Standard Oil had cornered the market. This was especially true for retailers, mostly small businesses, who lacked large facilities for storing oil. Standard made its deliveries once a week and often the retailer ran out of the product near the end of the week.
Texaco began delivery to retainers twice a week and later every other day. By the time Standard Oil caught up, Familylite had caught on with consumers and was able to compete and grow the market in the northeast. The Port Arthur refinery also turned out a fair quantity of gasoline, most of it a low-grade product by present standards called Naphtha. Naphtha was used for cooking stoves, illuminating torches, and industrial engines, and as a solvent for paints. For the better grades of gasoline, there was not much of a market and none of the oil companies were paying close attention nor did they consider that the horseless carriage would replace the horse."

In 1905, Arnold Schlaet went to Europe and established the company's first sales agencies. In 1908, the new tanker Texas, one of the largest built at that time, went into regular service between Port Arthur and continental ports. By 1913. the Texaco star was visible at agencies in Europe, Latin America, Australia, Africa, and several countries in Asia. including China. Between 1903 and 1912, the Texas Company's gross production jumped from 3,800,000 to 8,000,000 barrels annually, and in 1912, it jumped again to 10,420,000 barrels, amounting to more than four percent of the country's entire production."

The company moved its headquarters from Beaumont to Houston in 1908 and with that move, Cullinan established Houston as the focal point of the oil industry in the Southwest." Houston telephone directories confirm the Texas Company had an office in Houston in 1907 in the Stewart Title building at 1202 Congress Avenue. By 1910, the company had moved to the Jones Building at 712 Main Street. The building, a development of businessman Jesse H. Jones, was its namesake's first high-rise office building on Main Street. By 1911 the Jones Building was renamed the Texas Building after its main tenant. The building's name changed again after the departure of the Texas Company and was known as Jesse Jones' Bankers Mortgage Company which was later incorporated into Bankers Mortgage Building. Construction began in 1914 on the Texas Company's own thirteen-story building at the northwest corner of San Jacinto and Rusk.

In 1913, J. S. Cullinan resigned from Texaco after he lost control of the stock in a proxy fight with eastern investors. Cullinan was succeeded by Elgood C. Lufkin as president and top-level management relocated to its New York offices that same year. Cullinan remained active in the oil industry after his resignation and eventually founded ten oil companies that involved exploration, production, refining, and marketing of Texas petroleum. He served as president of the Houston Chamber of Commerce from 1913 to 1919 and supported the development of the Houston Ship Channel. During World War I he served as a special advisor to the Food Administration under Herbert Hoover. He was a patron of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Houston Negro Hospital to which he donated over $524,000. Cullinan died of pneumonia while visiting his friend Herbert Hoover in Palo Alto, California, on March 11, 1937. His daughter Nina J. Cullinan (1899-1983) continued his tradition of philanthropy in Houston through her support of the arts and the creation of new park spaces in the city.

The Gasoline Era, 1914-1933

During this period, Texaco made numerous technical and scientific advances, and saw the growth in the production and sale of gasoline and lubricating oils, and in refining, transporting, and marketing petroleum products." In the six years from 1914 to the end of 1920, the Company almost quadrupled its assets based on the demands of the war and the rise of the automobile. World War I brought an increase in demand for petroleum products; the automobile became a necessity in modern American life and the rise of aviation during the war each contributed to the increased demand for gasoline. In 1915 the production of gasoline in the United States as a whole surpassed that of kerosene, until then the mainstay of the industry. In 1919 there were 8,132,000 passenger cars registered in the United States, a nine-fold increase since 1912.

In 1915 the Texas Legislature passed a measure, popularly known as the Texas Company Bill, which gave oil companies permission to engage, both within and without the State of Texas, in all phases of oil operations, except production. In 1917, permission to engage in oil and gas production was added to the list, and the Producers Oil Company, by then a subsidiary of the Texas Company, was absorbed by the parent corporation.

The need for a higher yield of gasoline from each barrel of crude led to the development of the Holmes-Manley process, named for the two scientists who developed the process. This was the first continuous thermal cracking process and was placed into service in 1920 and significantly increased the yield per barrel. The Texas Company patented the process and sold licenses to the industry.

By the late 1920s, the Texas Company operated refineries in six Texas cities, and within a few years the company had added operating plants in Illinois, Wyoming, Colorado, Kentucky, California, and Montana and refineries in Bordeaux, France; Terdonck, Belgium; and Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. With the acquisition of California Petroleum Corporation in 1928, the Texas Company became the first oil company to market refined products in all forty-eight states. From 1929 to 1934, the company operated at a loss and shut down some refineries, but recovered rapidly. In 1936 the Texas Company established exploration and production interests in the Middle East through a joint venture with Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron).

The company supported the World War II effort by supplying aviation gasoline, ordinary gasoline, lubricating products, and fuel oils. The company also produced 100-octane gasoline for warplanes. Texaco's ocean-going tankers were put to use for the war and Texaco joined seven other major oil companies in the formation of the non-profit organization, War Emergency Tankers, Inc., in order to assist in operating oil tankers owned by the federal government. Due to the vulnerability of oil tankers at sea during the war, plans were made to get crude petroleum to the east via pipeline.

These plans evolved into the "Big Inch" and "Little Inch," two separate pipelines Texaco designed and constructed that connected the East Texas oil fields with the eastern refining centers. "Big Inch" was a 1,254-mile long, 24-inch crude pipeline that transported 300,000 barrels of crude daily from East Texas to Pennsylvania. "Big Inch" arrived in Philadelphia in August of 1943 and also had pipeline extensions to New York and Philadelphia. The "Little Inch" arrived in Linden, New Jersey in March of 1944 and was 1,714 miles long including its 239 miles of feeder and distributor pipe, and could deliver 235,000 barrels a day.

After the war, the company continued to expand and diversify worldwide with product lines in petroleum-based fuels and lubricants. In May 1959, the Texas Company changed its name to Texaco, Incorporated, after the shortened cable address first used by the St. Louis asphalt salesman that had helped to develop its strong brand identity. That same year the sixteen-story Kenneth Franzheim-designed addition to the Houston headquarters was built on the corner of Fannin and Rusk.

Evolution of the neighborhood

Prior to becoming the new regional headquarters for the Texas Company, the area surrounding Block 79 of the South Side of Buffalo Bayou plat was a late 19th and early 20th-century residential neighborhood with a mix of modest frame houses and large Victorian-era mansions. Commercial and institutional concerns began locating into the residential neighborhood in the late 19th century and by the late 1920s had transformed the area into the heart of Houston's downtown business district.

Sanborn maps from 1885, 1890, 1907, 1924, and 1950 show the beginnings of the 19th-century neighborhood with modest one-story frame dwellings, the infiltration of larger apartment buildings, churches, and institutions, and finally the transition to a commercial area. On the 1885 map, only the north half of Block 79 is drawn and shows two modest one-story frame houses with rear ells and front porches that face the Capitol. The two blocks to the north and northeast (Blocks 70 and 71) were more densely developed. These blocks had a mixture of one- and two-story frame houses, small frame stores (one of which sold ice cream), a fire hose reel house, and various sheds and outbuildings nestled on the interior of the block.

By 1907 the southeast quadrant of Block 79 was vacant and commercial and institutional concerns began to make a presence in the neighborhood. The 1924 Sanborn map shows the footprint of the original 1915 Texas Company building. The main entrance is in the central bay of the east façade facing San Jacinto. This entrance leads to the elevator lobby. There are two staircases, one along the north wall near the front of the building and a second along the west wall near the Rusk façade. The map notes indicate the buildings as "fireproof construction, built in 1915, steel frame reinforced concrete floors and roof with tile and brick exterior walls, tile wall first floor only, stone facing exterior and a stone and concrete awning." The map also shows a two-story rear section along the north façade with gable roofs and three wire-glass roof penthouses. These are extant but have been modified. On this same map, there is a three-story masonry C-plan building to the west on the site of the 1959 addition. This building is labeled, "The Texas Co., Annex Offices." The remainder of the block is densely developed and includes the Haverty Furniture Co., the Hotel Burnett, and several one-story masonry commercial structures along Capitol.
The 1950 Sanborn map shows the 1936 addition. The stairs along the east wall of the original building were removed and relocated in the addition. The entry remains in the center of the east façade and the stairs along the west wall of the original building remain. There is no entrance to the street from the 1936 addition.

Architects associated with the Texas Company Building

The New York architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore received the commission for the Texas Company building in 1913, apparently under the aegis of the Gates family of Chicago, major stockholders in the Texas Company." Architects Whitney Warren (1864-1942) and Charles D. Wetmore (1867-1941) formed their partnership in New York in 1896. Whitney Warren was born and educated in New York and at age eighteen studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and stayed in France for a decade. Upon his return to New York, he established the partnership with Wetmore who graduated from Harvard in 1889 and studied architecture in New York." The firm's first important commission, the Grand Central Terminal in New York, was followed by Stations on other Railroad Lines, such as the Michigan Central, Canadian Northern, and Erie Roads, and in New York a new Office Building for the New York Central, the Chelsea Piers, Steinway Building, and Aeolian Hall." "Early in the 1900s Warren & Wetmore established a reputation in hotel work. Among the firm's successfully executed designs were the old Belmont, the Ambassador, Ritz Carlton, the Commodore, the Vanderbilt (1912), and the Biltmore, all in New York, the Ritz Carlton in Atlantic City, the Belmont, Providence, R.I., Royal Hamilton Hotel in Honolulu, and the Broadmore [Broadmoor] in Colorado Springs, and the reconstruction of the Louvain Library in Belgium, destroyed by the Germans during World War I. Warren & Wetmore also designed the 1911 Houston Belt and Terminal Station (later Union Station), which was rehabilitated and incorporated as an entry to the Ballpark at Union Station in the late 1990s. Warren and Wetmore also designed the house at 17 Courtlandt Place (NR. RTHL 1994) for T. J. Donoghue, a vice-president of the Texas Company.

Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908) was a Spanish architect and builder. Born in Valencia, he studied architecture in Barcelona where he established his reputation for fireproof construction and built factories, warehouses, and apartment houses in the Barcelona area. In 1881, he emigrated to the U.S. with his son, Rafael Jr. (1872-1950), and settled in New York City, where they gained success as contractors and builders with their patented tile vaulting system. In July of 1989. they established The Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company, and in 1897, the R. Guastavino Company. In 1908, at the time of his father's death, Rafael Jr. assumed control of the Company. At the height of its expansion, the firm maintained offices in New York, Boston, Providence, Chicago, and Milwaukee, and a manufacturing plant in Woburn, Mass. In 1943, Rafael Jr. sold the company to Malcolm S. Blodgett, who had succeeded his father William E. Blodgett, the treasurer and business partner of the Guastavinos. The Company's last project was in 1962. During its existence, their unique vaulting system was used in more than 1,000 buildings, many of them landmarks, in the U.S. and as far away as India, including the Army War College and the National Shrine of Immaculate Conception, Washington, DC; Boston Public Library, Boston, MA; Baltimore Union Station, Baltimore, MD; Nebraska State Capitol, Lincoln, NE; Grand Central Terminal and Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, NY; G. W. Vanderbilt residence, Biltmore, NC; and B'nai Israel Synagogue and Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA.

Kenneth Franzheim (1890-1959), architect of the 1959 addition to the Texas Company Building, was originally from West Virginia and first came to Texas to serve in the US Army Air Corps at Ellington Field from 1917-1919. He worked as an architect in Chicago, Boston, and New York and designed numerous large commercial buildings and airports. In 1928 he was retained by Jesse H. Jones collaborated with Alfred C. Finn on the design of the 37-story Gulf Building in Houston (1929, NR 1998), and to design a temporary coliseum for the Democratic National Convention in Houston. Franzheim moved his architectural practice to Houston in 1937 where he worked on many of Houston's early to mid-century commercial buildings. His Houston resume includes the seventeen-story Humble Tower (1936, with John Staub). the second Hermann Hospital and Hermann Professional Building in the Texas Medical Center (1949, with Hedrick and Lindsley); the eighteen-story Prudential Building (1952) and the twenty-one-story Texas National Bank Building (1955). Franzheim was also responsible for the twenty-one-story National Bank of Commerce Building in San Antonio (1957, with Atlee B. and Robert M. Ayres). Franzheim's best-known Houston building was Foley's Department Store (1947, 1957), for which he won an Award of Merit from the American Institute of Architects in 1950.

With the construction of the addition in 1959, the main entrance was relocated to 1111 Rusk, and the original entrance on San Jacinto was closed. The company remained in the building until 1987 when they moved to Heritage Plaza at 1111 Bagby on the western edge of downtown Houston. The buildings at San Jacinto and Rusk have remained vacant since that time.

Summary

The Texas Company Building is emblematic of Houston's growing importance as a commercial center of the state and Gulf Coast. Commissioned by one of the largest and most influential oil companies in the state of Texas and the nation, the Texas Company Building illustrates the profound impact of commerce and new wealth on the city's skyline during the boom years of the 1910s, as well as the company's and city's sustained growth through the 1950s, as illustrated by the 1936 and 1959 additions. Because of its historical association with the growth of Houston's commercial importance, the building is eligible for listing at the local level of significance. Designed by the noted New York firm Warren and Wetmore, with complimentary additions by that firm and by Houston architect Kenneth Franzheim, the building demonstrates the early twentieth-century tension between the "modern" and the "classical," and also serves as an excellent (and rare) postwar attempt to sensitively expand an earlier landmark using modern methods and materials without detracting from the original. As such, it is eligible for listing under Criterion C in the area of Architecture. Although the interior has been lost, it retains sufficient integrity on its exterior to convey its historical significance.

The current owner is developing plans to rehabilitate the Texas Company buildings into a luxury hotel utilizing the Investment Tax Credit program. Part 1 of the Federal Tax Credit application was approved in August 2002. Construction is anticipated to begin in December 2002 and the hotel is scheduled to open in 2004.