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Dee’s Bistro Grill (Ector County Public Library)

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1942, J. Ellsworth Powell, with Haynes and Kirby. 622 N. Lee Ave.

Powell’s bravura sensibility is apparent in Odessa’s first purpose-designed public library. This long, low, one-story library’s corner entrance is located in a quarter-circle bay framed by projecting curved bays. Steel sash windows, a panel of glass block, and alternating raised brick courses animate the buff brick building texturally and spatially. The rear wing steps up over a raised basement to further enliven the library’s profile. Odessa’s newfound oil wealth made possible the ultimate luxury in 1942: central air-conditioning.

The former library shares the N. Lee Avenue and W. 7th Street intersection with another bastion of West Texan respectability: the conservative, buff brick and tile-roofed, Romanesque-styled First Baptist Church (1955, Wilson, Patterson and Associates). Around the corner on W. 8th Street is the congregation’s twenty-first-century worship center, a sleek, glass-faced, metal-roofed 1,500-seat arena (2013, The Beck Group).

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Dee’s Bistro Grill (Ector County Public Library)", [Odessa, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-MT26.

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, 465-465.

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