FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 16, 2008
CONTACT: Molly Dannenmaier
Director of Marketing and Public Relations,
409-765-7834
molly.dannenmaier@galvestonhistory.org

Architectural Historian Stephen Fox to Give Lecture/Booksigning on the Country Houses of Prominent Houston Architect John F. Staub

Stephen Fox, co-author with Ellen Beasley of the famous Galveston Architecture Guidebook (1996), will offer a lecture at 6 p.m. Thursday, January 17, focusing on the topic of his new book, The Country Houses of John F. Staub (2007). The event, part of the Menard Lecture series, will take place in the ballroom of Ashton Villa, 2328 Broadway. A book sale and signing will follow the lecture. Both of Fox’s books will be available. Refreshments will be served. The event is for GHF members only. Memberships are available at the door. For more information, call 409-762-3933.

Stephen Fox is an architectural historian and a fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas, a Houston-based foundation that undertakes projects in architecture, architectural history, and architectural publishing. He is an adjunct lecturer in architecture at Rice University and the University of Houston.

With GHF Executive Director Dwayne Jones, Fox is a contributor to the first volume of the forthcoming Buildings of Texas, a two-volume guidebook to architecture in Texas published as part of the Society of Architectural Historians’ series, The Buildings of the United States.

For more than four decades, John Staub, the subject of Stephen Fox’s new book, designed grand houses in communities such as Shadyside, Broadacres, and, perhaps most notably, River Oaks, now the site of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Although Staub also completed commissions for clients elsewhere in Texas and the United States, it was primarily in Houston that his work and influence took root. The Houston Chronicle has described Fox as “a sort of unofficial collective conscience for the city...”

Staub’s clients included the Hoggs, for whom he created Bayou Bend; the Mastersons, his clients for Rienzi; and members of many prominent Houston families.