A Daring Rescue

26WINTER2009.citein 1937 to the designs ofrenown architect RichardNeutra (1892-1970) for a PanAmerican Airlines pilot, the George Kraigher housewas Neutra’s first residential design erected outsideof California. Neutra, a Viennese immigrant, whomoved across the Atlantic with hopes of exploring thepossibilities of modern design, settled in Los Angelesin 1925. A prolific writer and one of SouthernCalifornia’s most celebrated residential architects,Neutra designed the Kraigher House during a periodwhen his practice was flourishing. It is the onlyexample of his single-family homes in Texas, and thefirst International Style house built in the state.The project was completed for the sum of $5,000under the supervision and management of localBrownsville contractor A. W. Neck and architectFrank L. Godwin. Neutra himself did not actuallyvisit the Brownsville site until 1951. “Architectureby remote control” was how he described his limitedsite supervision of the Miller House construction inPalm Springs in 1937, which also aptly describes hisrelationship to the Kraigher House job.Neutra’s client, George Kraigher (1891-1984), wasa highly successful pilot and Pan American Airwaysexecutive who happened to see a Neutra home as hewas flying into southern California. He contactedthe architect to design a modern house for his newLower Rio Grande Valley residence. Brownsville,just under an hour’s flight from Mexico City and2,301 air miles from the Panama Canal, openedan aviation gateway to Latin America during thelate 1920s. Pan Am leasedthe airport, changing thename to Brownsville-PanAmerican Airport in 1929,and established its WesternDivision headquartersthere three years later.Kraigher, the chief pilotand operations managerof the division, perfectedinstrument flight techniquesand land approach patterns on the mountainousair routes south of the border before returning tothe northeast in 1946. (He would later commissionNeutra again for another home.) Pan Am remaineda strong presence in the city until the early 1960s,when it relocated its Western Division headquartersto Miami.The house, however, deteriorated more quicklythan Brownville’s place in aviation history. Therewere two subsequent owners following Kraigher’sdeparture. On his only visit to the house, fourteenyears after it was completed, Neutra was upset bycracks in the stucco and unsympathetic changes tothe original interior design. The subsequent use ofthe house as a rental property beginning in the 1970sand encroaching development further advanced itsincreasing disrepair. Strip malls, restaurants, andNear collapse after years of neglect, squatting, and water damage, Preservation Texasand the National Trust named the Kraigher House to their “most endangered” list in 2004.apartments transformed the country landscape,and by the early 1990s, the building was in direcondition and only six acres remained of the onceexpansive site.Although the National Trust for HistoricPreservation called attention to the plight of theKraigher House as early as 1992 (as did Cite in 1993),it was Ambrosio Villarreal, Jr., the ardent founder ofPreservation Brownsville, who took up the cause ofsaving the Kraigher House in the mid 1990s. Historicpreservation efforts focused on the conservation ofnineteenth-century buildings had enjoyed popularsupport in the border city since the 1970s. Villarrealset out to educate the public and municipal officialsabout the value of the Kriagher House. Due tohis persistent lobbying and persuasion, the City ofBrownsville purchased the house and a third of itssix-acre site in 1999 in order to avoid its demolition.A fence was erected to protect the property fromInterior restorationincluded replicationof Masonite built-infurniture.