Although platted following the first flush of energy following the arrival of the railroads in the late nineteenth century, Sunset Heights only developed in the twentieth century. Streets follow the topography of a rocky foothill of the Franklin Mountains cut away on its south edge by the Rio Grande, making the blocks large and irregular. Trees were planted before lots were sold and retaining walls of fieldstone or concrete are pervasive landscape elements. Mundy Park, near the north edge of the district, was the terminus of the downtown streetcar line. Once houses started to be constructed, Sunset Heights was built out in twenty years, making the district a compendium of early-twentieth-century residential types, including multifamily housing and institutional buildings.
The Joseph H. Goodman House (1912) at 1300 N. El Paso Street is a plain, red brick Classical Revival building with a monumental, two-story porch of six fluted Tuscan columns that wraps the front and south side. Goodman, a member at Congregation B’Nai Zion (see EP32), represented the third wave of Jewish immigration to El Paso, many of whom had started businesses in Mexico and expanded into Texas with the coming of the railroad and settled here after the Mexican Revolution.
At 1205 N. El Paso, the Douglas Gray House (1906) is one of the most unusual of Trost and Trost’s designs, combining hipped roofs with wide Prairie Style overhangs, a deep loggia with Sullivanesque ornament on the lintels supported by stout Egyptoid fluted columns, and blind vertical oval windows.
Trost and Trost also designed the Joseph F. Williams House (1905; 323 W. Rio Grande Avenue). Built shortly after Henry Trost’s move to El Paso, the house, a carryover from his previous work in Tucson, is visually sensational. The white stuccoed California Mission-styled house has big-scaled, elaborate Alamo-scroll pediments, arched loggias, canal scuppers, and ornate iron grilles over windows. Williams was mayor in 1915 when meetings were held in his house between General Francisco “Pancho” Villa and U.S. General Hugh Scott.
Shoe merchant Victor Caruso hired Gibson and Robertson to design his handsome one- story house (1914) at 718 Prospect Street with the profits he made selling footwear to “Pancho” Villa’s forces during the Mexican Revolution. The tawny brick, flat-roofed house has a bold cornice and parapet and a front porch carried on pairs of slender Ionic columns. Running deep into the lot to the west of the Caruso House, the Caruso Apartments (1914, Trost and Trost; 800 Prospect) has a tall red brick first story and a shallow stuccoed second floor under wide eaves.
Edward Kneezell (1855–1926), one of the earliest known architects in El Paso, arriving in 1882, designed the Wallace Apartments (1913; 1201–1205 Randolph Drive). The long, two-story, stucco-covered, California Mission-styled building adapts to its acutely angled corner site with a round, arcaded corner loggia. Small Alamo-scroll pediments mark entrance bays.