National Register Listing

Ideson, Julia, Building

500 McKinney St., Houston, TX

The Julia Ideson Building is significant in four different, yet related areas. First of all, the building was part of pre-depression Houston city planning which never resulted in any other examples in the downtown area. It represents city planning in Houston prior to the Second World War and before its emergence as a metropolis. Secondly, it is distinctive in its architectural design. Built by the noted architect Ralph Adams Cram, it was, a style prominent in early twentieth-century American and Texas history, but is now represented by only a few remaining examples. Thirdly, since the Ideson Building's construction, its interior has been decorated with eight P.W.A. Murals, a type of art both attractive and part of our heritage. Fourthly and finally, the building is significant because the Houston Public Library has designated it as the home of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, a prototype of research institutions for the study of the urban experience and for the dissemination of that knowledge.

In the 1920's a prosperous Houston began a city planning program. The Houston City Planning Commission was appointed in 1922 and had four major duties to perform. It was to recommend plans for major streets to accommodate the rapidly growing traffic; to plan for a civic center area; to plan for beautification of the natural scenic area; and to establish zoning.

Historically, these efforts were a hold-over from the Progressive ethic of the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson days when planning and efficiency were the central concerns of national and local leadership in an effort to come to grips with the modern world.
Between 1922 and 1925 the Commission brought in a field of experts to assist in their work. In regard to the civic center area, the city hired consultants and made surveys of the downtown region with an eye on the layout and construction of an efficient, attractive complex.

Mr. S. Herbert Hare, the landscape architect from the Kansas City consulting firm of Hare and Hare, prepared the plans for the center. He located an area very close to the business district, and readily accessible from all sections of the city.

The Commission and its consultant planned a several-block area for civic purposes; bounded on the Northeast by Rusk Avenue, on the East by Smith Street, on the Southwest by Lamar, and on the West by the Bayou. It was designed to consist of five major buildings; the library, the post office, a criminal court building, the main court- house, and a large city and county building. A two-block-long reflection pool was to be in the center of this quadrangle.

By 1925, when these plans were made, only the new library building was under construction. It was to be the first in the beautification of the city, and the Commission agreed that all the other buildings would be of the same architectural style.

With the crash of 1929 and the depression, however, the dreams of the City Planning Commission were stymied. They completed only one building; that is, the Julia Ideson Building. It opened in 1926 and now survives as the only example of that pre-depression, Progressive spirit.

The principle architect hired by the city to design the Ideson Building is the second point of significance. Dr. Ralph Adams Cram, of Cram and Ferguson of Boston, assisted by such architects as William Ward Watkin, designed the building in the Spanish Renaissance style. Cram was a noted author on architectural design and was especially famous for his part in the Late Gothic Revival in America just after the turn of the century.

This famous architect had rebuilt the United States Military Academy at West- Point, along with several of the more prominent East Coast cathedrals. Especially worthy of mention are St. Thomas' and St. John the Divine in New York. One of his foremost contributions to American architecture was in educational buildings. Dr. Cram was supervising architect at Princeton until 1931 when he designed its Graduate School. He furthermore set the pace in education by stamping his mark on the construction of Exeter Academy, Sweet Briar College, the University of Richmond, Wellesley College, and Wheaton College just to name a few.

In the 1920s Houston imported Cram to design its own building for public education; that is, the Public Library. Dr. Cram had already been busy in the city building Rice Institute.
Cram decided that the Spanish Renaissance would be the best style for the Houston library because it best suited the needs and heritage of the Southwest. As he designed the building, its overall style combined the European Old World and Southwestern regional flavor with the decorations peculiar to its Houston, Texas location. The Ideson Building is perhaps one of Ralph Adams Cram's more distinctive, eclectic creations in the Southwest.
P.W.A. Murals of the 1930's period have since been added to the interior of Dr. Cram's structure. These paintings lend it an even greater local flavor. Angela McDonnell, Ruth Uhler, and Mrs. D.B. Cherry, three women artists, painted a total of eight murals on the first and second floors. These depict our Iberian heritage, our Southern United States heritage, and our nineteenth-century Texas History. Such works of art add significance to the Julia Ideson Building because of the distinct, New Deal spirit. These examples should be preserved.

Fourthly and lastly, the future use of the building lends it a great deal of significance. The city and the Public Library determined to continue the building's use as a purveyor of knowledge by designating it as the home of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center. HMRC had its origins in 1974 as a two-year cooperative effort of the major universities of the Houston area funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The purpose of this project was to locate and preserve historical records relating to the development of the Houston area. At the end of the two-year existence of the program, the Houston Public Library assumed its products, and in the summer, of 1976, organized a new division within its system to continue the work.

The Research Center is dedicated to providing its resources not only to specialized scholars but to anyone interested in learning about the Houston Urban experience. Thus, the Julia Ideson Building will continue its original devotion to the education of the general public.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1977.