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Gray Residence
El Paso, Texas

 

Description: Gray residence
Other Names: Grey house
Address: 1205 North El Paso Street, El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Type: domestic: single family house
Original Client: Douglas and Angeline Gray
Historic Inventory: In Sunset Heights Historic District; on El Paso Register of Historic Places
Date: 1904
Condition: extant

Architect or Firm: Henry C. Trost
Associated Architect or Firm: Trost & Trost
Contractors:
Dimensions and Orientation: originally one story faces north
Budget/Cost:

Foundation:
Wall Materials: adobe, plastered
Roofing Materials: originally shingle
Other Materials Used:
Remodeling and Additions: converted to apartments; side porches enclosed; one half story added; wing added to rear

Present Owner: privately owned
Location of Drawings: none known to exist
Location of Documentary Photographs: El Paso Public Library: Ponsford 147, general view; 148, facade from the west; 149, close-up of facade; 150, perspective view; Aultman, E.P. Residences file: A5107

Bibliography: (1) Trost & Trost, Architects. (El Paso, Trost & Trost, 1907), page 20 (photograph, Ponsford 147)
(2) El Paso Chamber of Commerce, El Paso, the Story of a City, 1883-1910 (El Paso: El Paso Chamber of Commerce, [1910]), unpaged (photograph of exterior)
(3) William Phillips Comstock, editor, Bungalows, Camps and Mountain Houses, 3rd edition revised and enlarged [first published 1908] (New York: The William T. Comstock Co., 1924), page 36 (photograph with landscaping)
(4) Lloyd C. Engelbrecht, Henry Trost: the Prairie School in the Southwest, The Prairie School Review, volume VI, number 4 (Fourth Quarter, 1969), page 23 (discussed, illustrated with 1967 photograph of exterior by June F. Engelbrecht)
(5) Harriot Howze Jones, editor, El Paso, a Centennial Portrait, El Paso:El Paso County Historical Society, 1972), page 50 (discussed, illustrated with exterior photograph)
(6) Lloyd C. and June F. Engelbrecht, Henry C. Trost: Architect of the Southwest (El Paso: El Paso Public Library Association, 1981), pages 34 and 35 (discussion; illustrated on page 34, Ponsford 147); page 49 (mention)
(7) Jay C. Henry, Trost and Trost in El Paso, Texas Architect, volume XXXVII, number 2, March April, 1987, front cover and pages 34-39 (page 34: critical analysis and exterior photograph by Jay C. Henry)
(8) Jay C. Henry, Architecture in Texas: 1895-1945(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), pages 44-45, discussed; figure 3.05

Remarks: Originally this was one of Henry C. Trost’s finest El Paso bungalows. Remnants of his attention to detail and scale can be seen on the facade, and in what was the original entry hall space. In Bibliography item 5, above, Jones wrote: A one story house with plaster exterior featuring beautifully ornate columns at main entrance; hipped, shingled roof, tremendously romantic in feeling.The house is almost a clone of Trost’s no longer extant Mark Smith in Tucson.

Douglas Grey and his wife moved to El Paso in 1904-1905 with the El Paso Smelter. The Grays vacated the house in 1910 after which it was divided into apartments. Part of the porch was enclosed and a second story added. It is now a private residence.

Prepared for the El Paso Public Library by Lloyd C. and June F. Engelbrecht under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1993