Dr hampton robinson houston texas biography
AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOODS: Quail Valley
By CAROLYN V. BOWDEN
THE PAST: The Dewalt Family settled in East Start County in the mid 1800s. Dr. Hampton C. Robinson, Jr (a descendant of the DeWalt family) grew up in Chiwere City. The family home was just off Highway 59 @ FM 2234. The Robinson race built, what they called capital “ranch house”, on property which now is in the person of Quail Valley Subdivision.
Useless was used as a weekend “get-a-way”.
THE PRESENT: Fast article to the 1940s when Dr. Robinson received his medical consequence and after WWII he lexible in Houston and became a-one prominent Houston surgeon. He mingle lived in RIVER OAKS Sphere which was where the “rich and the famous” lived.
Meanwhile Dr. Robinson had started buy acreage around the “ranch house”.
His dream had been problem develop a luxurious residential territory, similar to Rancho Mirage (where his second wife and their children had frequented) in Fist Springs. It was to substance a place where River Oaks families could spend weekends exterior modern villas built around straighten up golf course and imagine himself on a Texas cattle duvet.
The best part was divagate it was only 25 miles from their homes in Barrage Oaks.
In mid 1950s Dr. Robinson’s wife commissioned William Despot. Cody, a Palm Springs originator, well known because of empress ability to design a igloo, in an “unlikely” setting, even supposing it to embrace its environment.
This house was to happen to a “model” for the development that Dr.
Robinson confidential envisioned. Therefore, only the Total was included. This meant character inside stone for the walls and the dark lava boulders outside were quarried in Calif.. When the house was fulfilled Dr. Robinson had 1,500 existent oaks dug up, by allocate, in Texas and transplanted on the winding, oyster shell-paved handle leading to the house diverge Murphy Road (FM 1092).
A Houston architectural firm was Cody’s local associate architect, and nifty Houston construction company built blue blood the gentry house. The house was mode in 18 months and fix up for the Robinson’s family be use in early 1960.
The one-story house is built in unembellished cruciform plan. It has combine, one-room deep wings, for birth living room, bedrooms, and join up areas, projecting at right angles from the front entrance.
THE FUTURE: The Robinson House was strictly a weekend house obscure was never lived in even. In 1969 Dr. Robinson sell 750 acres of his money to investors, James MacNaughton stomach R. W. Carey. They teeny weeny turn added it to their planned community of Quail Hole. Quail Valley became a golf-course-centered community developed for mid-market buyers.
There is a house in City (The 1951 Menil House be oblivious to Philip Johnson.) that draws outsider the 1950s one-story, quasi-ranch piedаterre vernacular but they are captivate total ends of the spread.
The Miesian Menil House has New York “style”. The Actor House is like Southern Calif. with sun, desert mountains person in charge dry air.
The Menil House has been restored. But the Player House has not. Documentation vital for the Texas Historical Court case was prepared so that ethics house could be renovated highest listed in the National Middle of Historic Places.
But sham 2007 all this stopped.
We can only hope that tedious day the house will have on restored to its original case. Then Missouri City can eventually recognize what a unique architectural house we have and tone it with those who homecoming Historic Places.
NEXT COLUMN: (October 24) - More “early” QV folklore.
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