Texas's rich multicultural heritage comes alive through its diverse architectural landscape, with five distinct styles serving as windows into the state's evolving relationship with shelter, land, and economy. From ancient adobe structures in West Texas to modernist masterpieces in major cities, these architectural traditions tell the story of a state shaped by Indigenous peoples, Spanish colonizers, European immigrants, and visionary architects.
The oldest of these traditions, adobe construction, has roots stretching back nearly 500 years to when Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca first encountered Indigenous peoples living in permanent mud dwellings near present-day Presidio in 1535. After seven years wandering among nomadic tribes, Cabeza de Vaca was overjoyed to find people whose homes stayed in one place, built from the simple mixture of dirt, water, and straw that would become synonymous with West Texas architecture.
Today, adobe remains the building material of choice throughout everything west of the Pecos River. Joey Benton, whose design company Silla Marfa has been restoring adobe buildings throughout West Texas for decades, explains that before the railroad arrived, all forts and large family homes were built of adobe because it was the available building material. "You could purchase the bricks, something that was available to many, or you could build your own brick, and it was tied to a labor rate that was either free or so low it didn't matter," Benton notes.
The small art enclave of Marfa exemplifies adobe's enduring appeal, with over 400 adobe buildings among its 1,500 residents. Once considered the construction method of the poor, adobe is now so prized by the design-savvy and affluent that buildings made of adobe can be taxed higher than those constructed from wood or cinder block. Notable adobe structures include El Corazón Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesús in Ruidosa, believed to have the largest remaining adobe arches in Texas, and Fort Leaton in Presidio.
Victorian architecture represents a different era entirely, when wealth flowed through Galveston in the late 1800s, earning it the nickname "Wall Street of the South." A Saturday stroll down Sealy Street in Galveston's historic East End reveals colorful two-story Victorian homes with wraparound porches, turrets, and floor-to-ceiling windows that predate the devastating Hurricane of 1900, still the most fatal natural disaster in U.S. history.
"Architecture follows money," explains Denise Alexander, chief of museums at the Galveston Historical Foundation. "And in the late 1800s, the money was flowing in Galveston." The city's elite wanted to display their wealth through fancy Victorian homes, characterized by steep gabled roofs, double gallery porches, and intricately carved wooden details. Irish immigrant architect Nicholas Clayton designed more than 150 Victorians in Galveston, including the crown jewel Bishops Palace on Broadway Avenue, shaping the city's structural environment so profoundly that the period from 1870 to 1900 is called the Clayton Era.
Spanish Colonial Revival architecture emerged in the 1920s as part of a broader regional movement throughout the sunbelt states that had once been part of New Spain. The style represents a romantic reimagination of Texas's original Spanish architecture from the 18th and 19th-century missions and forts. The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, designed by state architect Atlee Ayres in the late 1920s, exemplifies this style with its lily pad fountain courtyard, wrought-iron railings, textured stucco walls, and red clay roof tiles.
Cultural historian Kenneth Hafertepe of Baylor University calls the McNay "the greatest hit of Texas Spanish Colonial Revival style." Ayres approached the style not as someone copying Southern California trends, but as a Texas architect being a leader in adapting elements of colonial Mexico to modern times. Similarly, El Paso-based architect Henry Trost created beloved West Texas hotels including The Paisano in Marfa, The Gage in Marathon, and The Holland in Alpine, all influenced by Spanish Colonial aesthetics.
Vernacular architecture tells the story of everyday people building practical homes with materials at hand and without trained architects. The limestone Biry House in Castroville, now the Castro Colonies Living History Center, exemplifies this approach with its original cypress ceiling boards that still smell fresh generations after Alsatian immigrants installed them in the mid-1800s. "The Alsatians didn't trim up the boards. That's called a living edge," explains Phil King, museum chairman at the history center.
Vernacular buildings respond to practical needs in straightforward ways, as architectural historian Kathryn O'Rourke of Wellesley College explains: "If it's raining and hot and you need to be sheltered but outside, you build a porch. You're responding to practical needs in a straightforward way and using materials that are easy to get." The Alsatian settlers in Castroville adapted quickly to their new landscape, starting with one-room shelters and gradually adding kitchens, bedrooms, and porches as they learned what was needed to survive in Texas heat.
Modernist architecture flourished in Texas between 1930 and 1990, when oil money began flowing and the state emerged as a major economic and political force. The newly wealthy hired world-renowned modernist architects to build cultural landmarks like the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, designed by Louis Kahn in 1972 with its signature vaulted concrete barrels and filtered skylights. "Texas was a good fit for modernist architecture," O'Rourke observes. "You had LBJ, the first president from Texas; a booming economy; and this willingness to adapt and try new things."
O'Neil Ford, known as the father of Texas regional modernism, adapted clean lines and functionality of global modernism to suit the Texas landscape, materials, and craftsmanship. His Little Chapel in-the-Woods at Texas Woman's University in Denton, designed in the late 1930s and dedicated by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1939, features graceful brick arches and 11 striking stained-glass windows showing women at work in science, social service, and the arts. The building was constructed in collaboration with Works Progress Administration workers and 300-plus undergraduate women who carved the wooden pews and designed the windows.
Ford's influence extended beyond major cities to smaller communities, including a post office he designed for Johnson City in the late 1960s at the request of then-President Lyndon Johnson. With its long porch, ample limestone, and wood-framed windows, the building demonstrates how modernist principles could be adapted for small-town Texas. In 1974, the National Endowment for the Arts declared Ford a National Historic Landmark—the only person ever to receive this designation.
These five architectural styles—adobe, Victorian, Spanish Colonial Revival, vernacular, and modernist—continue to shape Texas's built environment and cultural identity. As O'Rourke notes, "Texas is a big, geographically diverse state, and when you travel with your eyes open, you start to see its landscapes and history and the buildings that emerge from them in new ways." From the ancient adobe churches of West Texas to the modernist museums of Houston and Fort Worth, these architectural treasures cast light upon the state's history, people, and evolving sense of place.
