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O'Neil Ford, whose work includes the Tower of the Americas and 26 buildings at Trinity University, had a lasting impact on San Antonio architecture.
Partners O’Neil Ford (left) and A.B. Swank discuss a perspective drawing of a frame house.
An architectural rendering of La Villita Assembly Building from Ford, Powell & Carson
The La Villita Assembly Hall
O’Neil Ford sketched a scheme for Trinity University’s Murchison Tower and Parker Chapel, with downtown San Antonio off in the distance.
Trinity University’s Parker Chapel is seen in an aerial view with Murchison Tower in the foreground
The 166-foot-tall Murchison Tower on the campus of Trinity University was designed by the architect O'Neil Ford.
Little Chapel in the Woods in Denton Texas, designed by the late O’Neil Ford.
Margarite B. Parker Chapel: One of architect O’Neal Ford’s most recognizable designs, the chapel, dedicated in 1966, is distinguished by its soaring interior arches, stained-glass windows and wood carved doors and other details created by Ford’s brother Lynn.
James W. Laurie, Trinity’s 14th president (from 1951-1970), right, with O’Neil Ford, Trinity architect who designed the campus. Photo appears to have been taken in the early 1960s from the top of the now demolished Northrup Hall looking west with Storch library and residence halls in the background.
Carolyn Peterson and O’Neil Ford at one of San Antonio’s Spanish Missions, circa 1960s. Ford was a pioneer in historic preservation in San Antonio, and passed along this passion to Peterson who is now a principal at Ford, Powell & Carson.
Architect Carolyn Peterson, a partner at Ford, Powell & Carson, worked with O’Neil Ford for many years. “He wasn’t an elitist,” she said. “He’d work close with the other architects.” She also fondly remembers receiving drawings from Ford stained with spilled coffee and ashes from his ever-present cigars.
Ford often brought in craftsmen to add vital details to his work. His brother Lynn Ford, shown here in an undated photograph, worked with wood, metal and clay and designed and crafted many doors, light fixtures, and other details indicative of his brother’s work.
O’Neil Ford (right) consults with Chris Carson about a residential architectural model sometime in the 1960s. Carson became one of Ford’s partners when it transitioned from O’Neil Ford Associates to Ford, Powell & Carson.
O’Neil Ford book reading
Renowned architect O’Neil Ford, above, put his stamp on San Antonio with projects such as the Tower of the Americas and the Trinity University campus. Trinity professor Kathryn O’Rourke has collected Ford’s speeches and writing in a new book, “O’Neil Ford on Architecture,” from the University of Texas Press. She’ll read from the book in the simpatico setting of the mid-century designs at Period Modern.
2 p.m. Sunday, Period Modern, 4347 McCullough. periodmodern.com
One of a series of sketches that hang in the offices of Ford, Powell & Carson. These sketches were done in 1926 while Ford was working with Dallas Architect David Williams. They display his talent as an artist, and were used to get a feel for the regional character of the buildings in this area when Ford was moving to San Antonio from Dallas.
A new book titled “O’Neil Ford on Architecture” is a compilation of his professional speeches and writings by Kathryn E. O’Rourke. It will be published April 22.
Another sketch from 1926 shows Ford’s talent, despite his having no formal training in art.
This 1962 house designed by O’Neil Ford was featured on the 2016 American Institute of Architects Home Tour.
O’Neil Ford sketched these designs for a chair and fireplace table.
The O’Neil Ford-designed Inter-Continental Motors building at 3303 Broadway was built to house an auto dealership while also preserving plenty of mature oaks and cedar elms on the site. Built in 1963, it nonetheless exhibits the large swaths of glass and uninterrupted interior space common of the International style that emerged following World War I.
A few steps from Murchison Tower and Parker Chapel, barely visible through the trees at left, Trinity University’s now-demolished Northrup Hall fit quietly into the landscape.
O’Neil Ford is probably the most well-known and renowned architect ever to have worked for a extended period in San Antonio and Texas. He designed most of the original Trinity University campus, HemisFair ’68 (including the Tower of the Americas), the reconstruction of La Villita and Texas Instruments’ Semiconductor Components Division Building in Dallas. He is also responsible for numerous residential homes throughout the region.
Yet for several reasons, when histories of U.S. architecture are told, he remains largely forgotten, especially compared to contemporaries like Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. And his influence, both in the structures he designed and in the architects he inspired, often has gone unappreciated.
Trinity University associate professor of art history Kathryn E. O’Rourke hopes to help change that with the April 22 release of “O’Neil Ford on Architecture” (University of Texas Press, $29.95), her collection of Ford’s professional writings and speeches. Dating back to 1928, the collection traces Ford’s evolution not only as an architect, but also an early proponent of preserving landscape and the environment, today called sustainable development.
“Ford was the granddaddy and an early practitioner of what architectural historian Kenneth Frampton called ‘critical regionalism,’ ” said Aaron Seward, editor of Texas Architect magazine, referring to a style of architecture that uses modern technology but also local and regional building traditions.
Although never formally trained in architecture, Ford, who moved to San Antonio during the Depression to work on the restoration of La Villita, hired and inspired numerous architects, many of whom moved here specifically to work with him. In his 1982 obituary, the New York Times said of Ford, “though he designed none of the huge skyscrapers that dominate the Texas landscape, (he) was considered the dean of Texas architects.”
Ford did much of his work during the period from the 1960s to ’80s when architecture was transitioning from the “less is more” ethos of modernism to the “less is a bore” reaction of post-modernism. Ford, who often called himself a premodernist, borrowed from both camps.
Modernism, which had its heyday in the post-War period, saw buildings almost like machines, apart from nature. And it utilized materials newly available thanks to technological advances.
“That’s when you’d see big slabs of glass, steel beams than could span larger spaces, even air conditioning,” said Ted Flato, principal at the award-winning firm Lake | Flato, who worked at Ford, Powell & Carson in the late ’70s, where he met his current business partner David Lake.
Post-modernism, which appeared in the 1970s and ’80s, was a rejection of modernism’s simplistic view, refusing to dismiss architecture’s history and willing to work with nature.
Ford’s work often relied on the materials and building techniques of his predecessors while also embracing new materials and techniques when they served his purpose.
“He loved crude, simple, indigenous architecture,” Flato said. “He was very interested in the way early buildings in San Antonio were made, like the beautiful German buildings in La Villita with their thin roofs and exposed wood.”
He also often brought in skilled wood, metal and clay craftsmen, including his brother Lynn, to hand make or decorate the doors, light fixtures and other interior and exterior details indicative of his work.
But Ford was also an advocate for integrating new technologies in his work. He was an early adapter of what was called lift-slab, a building technique developed in part by San Antonio businessman Tom Slick that made it easier and less expensive to construct precast concrete buildings.
For the Texas Instruments building, he designed a large open space between two floors that housed “38 varieties of pipes … that supply everything from water to gas to some of the more exotic gases and liquids used in semiconductor manufacture,” according to “O’Neil Ford, Architect” by Mary Carolyn Hollers George.
The 9-foot-high space allowed the company to easily move these pipes to accommodate unforeseen changes in manufacturing and other needs.
Perhaps Ford’s most enduring legacy is his work, with architect Bartlett Cocke, on the campus of Trinity University. Beginning in 1949 until his death in 1982, Ford designed upwards of 40 buildings (several have since been demolished or radically altered) that blended modernism and tradition.
Ford also resisted early efforts by the school’s board to build a traditional campus of Georgian architecture that would have required leveling much of the campus land, which was a former rock quarry. Instead, Massachusetts Institute of Technology dean of architecture William Wurster, brought in to consult on the project, advised the school to, “let the hills design your buildings.”
Ford complied, and the result is a series of handsome, red brick-clad, rectilinear buildings set amid the undulating landscape. To help students and faculty navigate the multilevel campus, he also designed bridges, walkways and stairs to connect it all.
In 2018 the campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places in part because it contains the largest collection of Ford works in one place.
Carolyn Peterson, principal of Ford, Powell & Carson, points to another project to illustrate Ford’s commitment to place: La Villita Assembly Hall, just south of downtown.
“If you look at it, it’s such a large building fitted in a small space,” Peterson said.
She and another of the firm’s principals, Adam Reed, explained that Ford, understanding the scale of the neighborhood, designed the hall as a circle rather than a square so that no matter from where it was viewed, it always looked the same size, as opposed to a square building which, viewed from a corner, appears broader and larger than it actually is.
He also surrounded the main body of the arena with a covered walkway that blocks the view of the height of the building so that pedestrians don’t feel dwarfed.
Almost 40 years after his death, Ford’s influence continues to be felt — especially in Texas. “His firm spawned quite a few good Texas architectural firms,” Seward said. In addition to Flato, other San Antonio architects who got their start at Ford, Powell include Lewis Fisher and Jim Heck who formed Fisher Heck Architects, and Tim Blonkvist, a principal at Overland Partners.
But his influence also has impacted the way architects use local materials, such as limestone, and forms, such as shed roofs, in their projects.
“There’s an awareness of the built environment you can trace back to Ford,” Seward said. “And of working with modern technology without losing a sense of place.”
Stephen Fox, an architectural historian at Rice University and the University of Houston points to several San Antonio architects who are carrying on these traditions, including Lake | Flato “probably the best architectural firm in Texas at the moment,” Overland Partners and younger architects like Tobin Smith and Candid Rogers.
“You can see it in their work with design touches like concrete framing with brick and stone infill and raised seam roofing that give buildings a strong architectural character,” he said. “Also, in the way that, although they incorporate air conditioning, they build shaded outdoor spaces that are meant to be lived in, not just looked at from the inside.”
Those who knew and worked with Ford tend to remember him fondly. Peterson remembers him as a collaborator who took a hands-on approach to the work.
“He wasn’t an elitist,” she said. “He’d work close with the other architects.” She also remembers receiving drawings from him stained with spilled coffee and smudged with ashes from his ever-present cigars.
O’Rourke first became familiar with Ford’s work after coming to Trinity in 2009 and living close enough to campus that she could walk to work, walks during which she developed a familiarity and appreciation for the buildings he’d designed.
During an interview in her Trinity office, O’Rourke told of a 2012 symposium she organized titled, “O’Neil Ford and the Future of Trinity.” Designed, in part, to raise awareness of Ford’s importance as a leading midcentury modernist architect, it attracted scholars from across the country, although many, even the speakers, were only vaguely familiar with Ford’s work.
“I remember most clearly Alice Friedman, a top architectural historian who teaches at Wellesley, and Joel Sanders (best known for his adaptations of midcentury buildings) both observing that Ford deserved to be nationally known,” she said. “A conclusion that they came to in the course of preparing for their talks at Trinity.”
O’Rourke blames several things for the general ignorance of Ford’s work.
“Historically there have been relatively few architectural historians in Texas,” she said. “He has also been omitted, I think, because of an enduring anxiety here that somehow Texas architecture isn’t as consequential as that of the East and West coasts.”
She also said that Ford’s reliance on local building materials and traditions tends to limit the impact of his buildings.
“Our stuff looks like our space,” she said. “And because it looks like it belongs to the landscape, people tend to assume it’s important only with its local context.”
Ford was better known in his own time.
In the late ’50s, for example, he was one of several architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies, invited to participate in a Berkeley study of creativity that analyzed their responses to various tests, interviews, and questionnaires. He lectured widely, including at Harvard and the University of Virginia. And his work was featured in national magazines such as “Architectural Forum,” a now-defunct publication of Time Inc.
But regionally, Ford’s influence continues to be felt. Lake | Flato is working on a project to build a new Humanities Department building in the northwest corner of the Trinity campus. It will complete a quadrangle courtyard currently bordered by two earlier Ford buildings, Chapman and Halsell.
The design, according to Flato, will complement the other two buildings while standing on its own. It will also use materials unavailable in Ford’s time, including exposed cross laminated timber, made by gluing together layers of solid-sawn lumber, with each layer oriented perpendicular to adjacent layers.
“It’s a technology I’m confident Neil would fall in love with,” he said.
Richard A. Marini is a features writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | rmarini@express-news.net | Twitter: @RichardMarini
Richard A. Marini is a features reporter for the San Antonio Express-News where he's previously been an editor and columnist. The Association of Food Journalists once awarded him Best Food Columnist. He has freelanced for American Archaeology, Cooking Light and many other publications. Reader's Digest once sent him to Alaska for a week. He came back.