The Nix Houses
Innovation and Style in Texas' Oldest Historic District
Release: Summer 2007
Roy Pachecano's documentary is based on three
prominent South Texas players in real estate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The characters profiled
are true-life individuals who shaped the skyline of San Antonio: Atlee B. Ayres, Joseph Madison ("JM") Nix and Birdie
Lanier Nix. When these three got together in the late 1890s life would never be the same for them as well as for
San Antonio.
Published by Watercress Press, the book pieces
together an intricate historical account of a real estate project launched by an unknown architect and out-of-town developer
that proves to be the genesis of two patron families of San Antonio. Pachecano’s essay weaves the architectural significance
with the social, economic and political histories that were contemporaneous with the creation of The Nix Houses in the late
nineteenth century.
Review
“Personalities create great architecture–typically driven by the
combination of a moneyed client and a striving architect–enabled
by the fortunes of a specific time and place. Many significant architectural structures survive multiple owners only later to find themselves the focus of renewal and enhancement. Roy Pachecano has written a weave of facts and additional stories told through
two historic San Antonio houses–the remarkable collaboration
between a pioneer Texas merchant and his designer. All of these dynamics
fuse together in this intriguing profile of the Nix Houses in the King William District of San Antonio. This book is a great read with evocative historical facts and a wonderful story.”
--Michael Buckley,
FAIA, Director, Real Estate Development Program, Columbia University, New York, New York
Excerpt
"Roy R. Pachecano
has composed a short documentary about a development project that
originated over a hundred years ago in another era, in a particular
place, and in a different society which is relevant today; the
narrative reaches out to anyone who is interested in learning
about the architectural development of an historic neighborhood in
San Antonio and offers hints at how to make these older dwellings
exceed today’s green building standards. It is also an account of the convergence of three individuals late in the nineteenth century: J. M. and Birdie Nix, and Atlee B. Ayres.
"The Nixes represent
outsiders who influenced development in San Antonio. They were
born in Alabama before the end of the Civil War. After Reconstruction
they immigrated to Texas in search of opportunities to succeed
in business. Together they formed a formidable force in early
twentieth-century development in South Texas.
"The other figure,
Atlee Bernard Ayres, represents an outsider who influenced style
in San Antonio as no other before him. Born on July 12, 1873, in Hillsboro, Ohio, he became an adopted San Antonian at an
early age; the Ayres family moved to Houston, where they lived temporarily;
in 1888 they migrated to San
Antonio.
"This documentary
chronicles the first critical step in what would become an escalating
staircase of successful architecture and development projects
produced by the Nix and Ayres families in South Texas."
--From Foreword
by Félix D. Almaráz, Jr., Ph.D., Peter T. Flawn Distinguished University, Professor of Borderlands
History, The University of Texas at San Antonio
For links to the publisher, Watercress Press, and book designer Fishead Design Studio and Microgallery,
click on the links below.
