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Calder Circle Community Center

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1931. 2590–2598 Calder Ave.
  • (Photograph by Gerald Moorhead )

Wholesale grocer, oil, and real estate investor John Henry Phelan built the Calder Circle Community Center—careful examination reveals that there are indeed quarter-circular curb cuts at the 10th Street–Calder intersection, making it a circle. It is a retail strip, with one-story wings splayed to either side of a diagonally aligned two-story central block capped by a central tower bay. The outspread wings frame a surface parking lot, a spatial arrangement that caused architectural historian Richard Longstreth to note that Calder Circle is an early example of a shopping center that spatially addresses its parking lot rather than, in an older, more urban fashion, the sidewalk and street.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Calder Circle Community Center", [Beaumont, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-01-BM21.

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