Orange Show, The

Jefferson Davis McKissack began construction of the Orange Show in 1968 as a tribute to the orange, a fruit he believed to be the perfect source of energy for human beings. The Orange Show was completed in 1979. The property is an especially noteworthy example of a folk art environment incorporating discarded and recycled materials and is nominated to the National Register at the state level of significance in the area of Art for its association with McKissack, and also at the state level of significance, in the area of Art as one of Texas' most important folk art environments. The Orange Show has achieved significance within the past fifty years because it is exceptionally significant as an intact and well-preserved large-scale folk art environment. The period of significance is 1968-1979, the years McKissack was intimately involved with the site's creation and its operation as a public attraction.

Jeff McKissack bought the lot on which he built the Orange Show on December 12, 1955. In January 1952 he acquired a lot at 2406 Munger, where he built a concrete masonry unit house for himself that was demolished after his death in 1980. The construction of Houston's first freeway, the Gulf Freeway (Interstate 45) between Houston and Galveston in 1946-52, affected the Telephone Road Place subdivision, where the Orange Show lies, by severing the southern sector of the neighborhood from the older, northern portion. Construction of the first phase of the freeway, which was completed in 1948, affected land use adjacent to the three-block wide, two-block long subdivision as well. In 1950-53 the Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation, the de Menil's company, constructed its headquarters and research center on a thirty-six-acre tract at 5000 Gulf Freeway that forms the west edge of the subdivision. The east edge was developed in 1953-54 with the multi-acre trucking terminal yard of Yellow Transit Freight Lines at 5300 Gulf Freeway, isolating the narrow subdivision between the freeway and these large, fenced, non-residential tracts. McKissack began construction at 2401 Munger Street in 1956 when he secured a building permit for a beauty salon. The first time 2401 Munger Street is listed in the Houston City Directory is the 1963 edition when it was the site of the American Tree Nursery and Worm Ranch, which McKissack operated until 1968. McKissack designed and constructed the high planters that now surround the Orange Show for the nursery so that customers would not have to bend low. Eventually, he modified his permit by writing on the bottom: "Had a permit to build a beauty salon and many closed down. Had a better idea----THE ORANGE SHOW." On May 5, 1969, he obtained a Certificate of Operation under "The Orange Show." In William Martin's 1977 Texas Monthly interview, McKissack stated that he began working in earnest on the Orange Show in 1968, the year after he retired from the U.S. Post Office, but that it took him two years to formulate the conceptual design of the complex. McKissack said of his creation, "I love it...I started working it in 1968 and I work on it every day. Every time I do something, I feel like I am creating. Everything you see is based on my creativity. You could take a hundred thousand architects and a hundred thousand engineers and all of them put together couldn't put together - couldn't conceive of- a show like this." In the same article, the author describes the complex as "nearly completed." McKissack opened the Orange Show on May 9, 1979.

After McKissack's death in January 1980, Marilyn Oshman Lubetkin organized the Orange Show Foundation, which solicited funds to buy the Orange Show from McKissack's nephew Alex Hurst, conserve the site, and open it to the public. Between September 1981 and September 1982, extensive conservation work was carried out under the direction of Barry Moore, FAIA, and Patrick Moore, AIA of Barry Moore Architects of Houston as mentioned in Section 7. This work included documentation, investigation, and analysis of the entire site with a priority list for stabilization and repair.

Operation of the Orange Show is now under the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art which in addition to The Show, has other programs that celebrate outsider art in Houston, Texas, and nation-wide. Programs and events include "Eyeopener Tours" that offer guests tours of folk art sites and environments locally and nation-wide, and the annual Art Car Parade, a showcase of decorated cars that parade through the city each spring.

Contrary to McKissack's belief that the site was strong and in turn supported the strength of the orange, the site is fragile in nature, necessitating the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art to adhere to a conservation plan that also ensures the show's integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association. The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art is recognized as one of the major centers for the study, identification, preservation, appreciation, and diffusion of knowledge about Folk-Outsider-Visionary Art and environments in the United States.