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Greenhill School

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1963–present. 4141 Spring Valley Rd.

Founded in 1950, Greenhill, a coeducational K–12 school, is significant for its campus designed by Texas’s leading regionalist architects of several generations. Eugene McDermott of Texas Instruments, an early financial supporter of the school, secured O’Neil Ford to design the five original buildings, whose Science Building (1963) and Montgomery Library (1969) established the use of soft orange brick and metal roofs that unifies the assortment of building sizes and shapes. The campus’s location amid intense commercial development was addressed by a new master plan in 1994 by Lake|Flato of San Antonio. This brought a focus to the campus by connecting interior courts to organize circulation and a new “front door” image facing Spring Valley Road. Continuing Ford’s choice of materials and small scale, David Lake and Ted Flato (both worked for Ford early in their careers) designed four new buildings: Levy Middle School (1995), a gymnasium (1999), an administration building (1996), and Phillips Family Athletic Center (1998), with associates Hidell Architects and F&S Partners. More dramatic rooflines of hips, curves, and lanterns give a stronger identity to the school.

The largest building on campus, the Marshall Family Performing Arts Center (2016, Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism) acts as a screen against the high-rise development to the east on Midway Road, while using a long, projecting curved wall of brick as an opening gesture to the campus cross-axis on the west. The western side is a tall glazed lobby with a dance studio projecting from the second floor at one side.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Data

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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Greenhill School", [Addison, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-GF8.

Print Source

Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains, and West, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, 187-187.

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