Photo by Lonn Taylor
The William T. Jones ranch house near Fort Davis, built in 1915 and possibly designed by Henry C.Trost.
Photo by Dallas Baxter
The house at 209 W. Avenue B in Alpine, built c. 1928 and probably designed by Henry C.Trost.
14
Photo by Lonn Taylor
The house at 309 E. Mendias in Marfa, built in 1925 and definitely designed by Henry C.Trost.
Cenizo
First Quarter 2010
Residences in the Tri-counties Designed
by Trost and Trost
T
by Lonn Taylor
he El Paso architect Henry C.
Trost and his brother Gustavus
Adolphus Trost designed nearly
500 buildings in El Paso and the sur-
rounding region between the establish-
ment of their firm, Trost and Trost, in
1903 and Henry Trost’s death in 1933.
Henry Trost was the principal architect
of the firm and was an architectural
genius. He worked fluently in every style
that was popular in the first quarter of
the 20th century and some that were
unique, such as the Bhutanese buildings
that he created for the campus of the
Texas School of Mines, now the
University of Texas at El Paso. He left an
indelible mark on El Paso.
But Trost’s work was not limited to El
Paso. He designed hotels, schools, office
buildings and private residences in New
Mexico, Arizona, Chihuahua and in the
Trans-Pecos region of Texas where he
designed the Paisano Hotel in Marfa, the
El Capitan in Van Horn, the Gage in
Marathon and the Holland in Alpine.
Trost’s buildings were characterized by
his innovative use of materials, especially
concrete, and by his creative approach to
ventilation, which was especially impor-
tant in the days before air conditioning.
Troy Ainsworth, the City of El Paso’s
historic preservation officer, has
described him as “the architect of arid
America.”
In addition to the Paisano and
Holland hotels, Trost designed resi-
dences in Marfa and Alpine and may
have designed a ranch house south of
Fort Davis. Since there is no complete list
of the firm’s work and no complete set of
the firm’s drawings, determining
whether or not a house is a Trost house
is largely a matter of oral tradition and
educated guesswork based on construc-
tion techniques and decorative details
known to have been employed by the
firm.
Two Alpine houses are cases in point.
They are both small Spanish-style hous-
es. One is at 209 W. Avenue B and is now
owned by Mark and Kathleen Withers,
and the other, at 702 E. Lockhart, is
owned by Chris Carlin. They were both
built between 1927 and 1929, while
Trost was working on the Holland Hotel,
and they were both built for members of
the Holland family. According to Carla
McFarland, the former owner of the
Holland and a careful student of Trost’s
work, the house on Lockhart Street was
built for John Holland and the one on
Avenue B for his mother. John Holland
died shortly after the Lockhart Street
house was finished, and it belonged to
Sul Ross professor and Big Bend natural-
ist Barton Warnock for many years. The
Avenue B house was owned by the
Kokernot family after Mrs. Holland’s
death and is still often referred to as the
Kokernot house.
Both houses incorporate the same
building materials, hollow red fireproof
tiles and cut gypsum blocks, that Trost
used in the Holland Hotel, and both
houses have many of the same decora-
tive details. Forrest Hendryx, an Alpine
building contractor whose father once
owned the Holland, told me that “when
you walk into the living room of the
Kokernot house you can immediately
see that it was designed by the architect
of the Holland.” The fireplace is a
smaller version of the one in the lobby
of the Holland, the exposed wooden
beams supporting the ceiling are similar
to those at the Holland, and the arched