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Richard Hawn House

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1939, Richard S. Colley. 3200 Santa Fe St.

This large house was Colley's first substantial residential commission. It spreads horizontally across a vast lawn in one of the multi-acre lots in the Hewit Estates Subdivision. Still based on historical images, the house is designed as an elegant, streamlined homage to Spanish Mediterranean. The whitewashed, sloping, buttressed, and parapeted walls, along with the pointed piers supporting its railed fence, were assembled of brick units made with clay from the site. Directly across the street at 3 Hewit Drive, the demolished Guy Braselton House (1957) tested the residential viability of thin shell construction in a design by Richard S. Colley. Composed of a set of hyperbolic paraboloids—including traditional chimney—the curved geometric shapes tempted pedestrians, roller skaters, and motorcyclists to walk or ride across the roof and into the backyard. It stood as a testament to Braselton's early faith in the promise of thin shell concrete and, with the Hawn House, it strikingly juxtaposed two significant designs in different phases of Colley's career.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Data

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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Richard Hawn House", [Corpus Christi, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-01-CC34.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 248-248.

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