Volume 2, Fort Sam Houston Maintenance and Repair Plan: Quadrangle and Staff Post

Summary

Fort Sam Houston’s buildings exhibit a variety of architectural influences as a result of its incremental development. Its four posts, the Quadrangle and Staff Post, Infantry Post, Cavalry and Light Artillery Post, and New Post, are excellent visual records of the Army’s planning ideals and the architectural styles employed during their respective construction periods. The various architectural styles include Italianate, Colonial Revival, Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival, Greek Revival, Classical Revival, and Romanesque.

At the Quadrangle and Staff Post, the predominant architectural style is Italianate. San Antonio architect Alfred Giles used this style in his design of officers’ quarters and the hospital in the Staff Post. The Italianate style originated in England in the mid-1800s as part of the Picturesque movement. The movement was a reaction to the formal, classical ideas of the preceding 200 years. The first United States examples of Italianate-style houses appeared in the late 1830s. The Italianate style became increasing popular with the publication of Andrew Jackson Downing’s pattern books in the 1840s and 1850s (McAlester and McAlester 1984:212–214). The style was common in residential construction from 1850 to 1880 in the Midwest and Northeast, but less so in the South. Features of the Italianate style typically consist of an asymmetrical plan, two or three stories, and a front-facing, centered gable. The windows are tall and narrow, with the tops either rectangular or segmentally arched. Doors are usually double, with large glass panels. The roof is low-pitched with wide, overhanging eaves and single or paired decorative brackets underneath (McAlester and McAlester 1984:211).

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Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Cultural Resource Office, Joint Base San Antonio

Repository(s): Fort Sam Houston

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