Farnsworth & Chambers Building
a.k.a. Gragg Building
2999 S. Wayside, Houston, TXThe Farnsworth & Chambers building, completed in 1956 by the eponymous company, was designed by MacKie & Kamrath, Houston's leading modernist followers of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural principles. The most significant part of the building's history is its use as the headquarters for NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston while the Clear Lake campus later named Johnson Space Center-was being designed and constructed.
The building is nominated to the National Register of Historic Places for its significance at the national level, as the headquarters building from 1962 to 1964 of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center during the Mercury program. The building is also nominated in the area of Architecture, as an example of the work of Mackie & Kamrath, Houston's modernist adherents to Frank Lloyd Wright's design ideology. As part of their larger canon of work that includes a range of design choices including Prairie Style, the Farnsworth & Chambers building best exhibits a regional adaptation of Wright's organic and Mayan-influenced projects, such as Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
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.