Architecture of the Lower Rio Grande Valley: An Introduction
Through photographs, Architecture of the Lower Rio Grande Valley: An Introduction, celebrates the architecture of the Texas-Mexico border region, its craftsmen, its cultures and its climate. The architectural images by Pino Shah provide a journey through 160 years of history and heritage, revealing the border’s built environment as filtered through diverse cultures: Mexican, Spanish, American, German, and French. The photographs highlight the distinctive styles -- Spanish and Mexican Colonial, border brick, Mid-century Modern, Pan American and 21st Century – found in the southernmost region of Texas. These architecturally significant buildings are often culturally and historically significant as well. Pino Shah is a world heritage photographer based in McAllen, Texas and Ahmedabad, India. Stephen Fox is an architectural historian and Fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas provided the narratives for photographs and is as an architectural advisor to the project.
Through photographs, Architecture of the Lower Rio Grande Valley: An Introduction, celebrates the architecture of the Texas-Mexico border region, its craftsmen, its cultures and its climate. The architectural images by Pino Shah provide a journey through 160 years of history and heritage, revealing the border’s built environment as filtered through diverse cultures: Mexican, Spanish, American, German, and French. The photographs highlight the distinctive styles -- Spanish and Mexican Colonial, border brick, Mid-century Modern, Pan American and 21st Century – found in the southernmost region of Texas. These architecturally significant buildings are often culturally and historically significant as well.
Pino Shah is a world heritage photographer based in McAllen, Texas and Ahmedabad, India. Stephen Fox is an architectural historian and Fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas provided the narratives for photographs and is as an architectural advisor to the project.
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1950<br />
TEMPLE BETH ISRAEL<br />
1702 E. JACKSON AVENUE, HARLINGEN<br />
COCKE, BOWMAN & YORK, ARCHITECTS<br />
The oldest Jewish institution in <strong>the</strong> <strong>Lower</strong> Río <strong>Grande</strong> <strong>Valley</strong> is <strong>the</strong> Cemetery <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong><br />
Hebrew Benevolent Society <strong>of</strong> Brownsville and Matamoros, opened in Brownsville<br />
in 1868. Not until <strong>the</strong> early 1930s were <strong>the</strong> first Jewish houses <strong>of</strong> worship built<br />
in <strong>the</strong> <strong>Valley</strong>, in Brownsville (1932) and Mercedes (1936). After World War II, new<br />
congregations in Harlingen and McAllen superseded <strong>the</strong> Mercedes congregation.<br />
Harlingen’s congregation, Beth Israel, commissioned Cocke, Bowman & York to<br />
design its east side temple and community building, a wood-framed one- and twostory<br />
structure faced with a base course <strong>of</strong> Texas limestone and a superstructure <strong>of</strong><br />
wood board-and-batten siding. Architects Walter C. Bowman (1912-1966) and John<br />
G. York (1914-1980) were <strong>the</strong> <strong>Valley</strong>’s great modern architects. They responded<br />
with ingenuity to <strong>the</strong> congregation’s limited budget by differentiating <strong>the</strong> highceilinged<br />
sanctuary from <strong>the</strong> lower-ro<strong>of</strong>ed community spaces. The temple opens<br />
to its south-facing rear patio through a wall <strong>of</strong> awning windows. Inside, <strong>the</strong> doors<br />
<strong>of</strong> a storage wall swing out to become space dividers between Sabbath school<br />
seating clusters. By addressing limitations with imagination and exuberance, York<br />
and Bowman brought national recognition to <strong>Valley</strong> architecture for <strong>the</strong> first time.<br />
<strong>Architecture</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Lower</strong> <strong>Rio</strong> <strong>Grande</strong> <strong>Valley</strong>: <strong>An</strong> <strong>Introduction</strong>. Photograph © 2017 Pino Shah. Narrative © Stephen Fox
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