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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1964<br />
FIRST NATIONAL BANK BUILDING (BANK OF AMERICA BUILDING)<br />
1101 CONWAY AVENUE, MISSION<br />
KENNETH BENTSEN ASSOCIATES (HOUSTON)<br />
During <strong>the</strong> 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, <strong>the</strong> two major banking interests in <strong>the</strong> <strong>Lower</strong> Río<br />
<strong>Grande</strong> <strong>Valley</strong> centered around V. Frank Neuhaus <strong>of</strong> McAllen and bro<strong>the</strong>rs Lloyd M.<br />
and Elmer C. Bentsen <strong>of</strong> McAllen. The men commissioned <strong>the</strong>ir Houston architectrelatives<br />
— Doc Neuhaus’ cousins, Hugo V. Neuhaus, Jr. and J. Victor Neuhaus III;<br />
and Lloyd Bentsen’s son, Kenneth E. Bentsen — to design new bank buildings. Hugo<br />
Neuhaus’ magisterial McAllen State Bank Building <strong>of</strong> 1961 in downtown has been<br />
altered beyond recognition. But Kenneth Bentsen’s First National Bank Building in<br />
Mission and First National Bank Building in downtown Edinburg (now Plains Capital<br />
Bank) remain in operation. Kenneth Bentsen, who grew up in Mission and McAllen,<br />
but spent his pr<strong>of</strong>essional career in Houston, designed <strong>the</strong> long, low, glass-walled<br />
First National Bank to modernize Mission’s Conway Avenue business district. The<br />
bank’s transparency and sleek horizontal lines contrast with <strong>the</strong> tall pylon tower<br />
carrying <strong>the</strong> bank’s identifying graphics. Bentsen stationed a delicate metal solar<br />
screen in front <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> inset glass curtain wall to deflect and filter <strong>the</strong> morning sun.<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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