Manautou House
5 E. Elizabeth St., Brownsville, TXThe Manautou House is a rare Texan derivative of the architectural manner which came to be called the Prairie style. This was invented by the Chicago architect Frank Lloyd Wright around the turn of the century to provide an architecture liberated from the historical styles, and one which recognized in its massing and composition the character of the mid-American landscape in which it was conceived. Its somewhat delayed appearance in Brownsville, in the middle 1920s, is due to a chain of circumstances that linked the architect and builder of the house, E. Guy Holliday, to El Paso architecture during the 1920s, where the Prairie style achieved a brief florescence. The house was built for a successful Brownsville merchant, E. Manautou, whose family still resides there.
Local significance of the building:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.