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Portrait of Eugene
T. Heiner
Photo courtesy Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus, Texas |
A
New
Yorker by birth, Eugene T. Heiner came into the world on August 20,
1852 in NYC. At the tender age of thirteen, he was apprenticed to
a Chicago architect. He moved to Dallas
in 1877, and arrived in Houston in 1878. Houston
was where he would spend the rest of his short (but prolific) life.
See Eugene Thomas Heiner
- Historical Marker |
| In
the late 1880s Heiner designed several buildings at Texas A & M University
at College
Station as well as the Brazos
County Courthouse in nearby Bryan.
One building at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville
was designed by Heiner and several commercial buildings in Galveston.
The bulk of his work was close to home in Harris
County. Heiner occasionally designed private houses - including
the home of Charles S. House and that of Thomas H. Scanlan. |
The Henry Brashear
Building (1882), a Heiner building in downtown Houston at 910 Prairie
Avenue
TE photo 2-2005 |
Cotton Exchange,
Houston, 1884
W. L. Foley Building, Houston 1889
Henry Brashear Building 1882
W. House Bank, Houston 1889
Houston High School, 1894
Houston Ice and Brewing Company, 1893*
Sweeney and Coombs Opera House, Houston 1890 |
An Incomplete
List of Heiner Courthouses:
Austin
County Courthouse, Bellville, 1888
(burned 1960)
Brazoria
County Courthouse, Angleton, 1897 (now a library)
Brazos
County Courthouse, Bryan, 1892 (razed)
Colorado
County Courthouse, Columbus, 1891
Falls
County Courthouse, Marlin, 1888 (razed)
Jasper County
Courthouse, Jasper (Altered)
Jefferson
County Courthouse, Beaumont, 1893 (razed)
Lavaca
County Courthouse, Hallettsville, 1897
Matagorda
County 1895 Courthouse, Bay City (razed)
Polk
County 1884 Courthouse, Livingston (razed)
Runnels
County Courhouse, Ballinger 1889 (Altered)
Wharton
County Courthouse, Wharton, 1889 (restored 2005-2006) |
| Eugene
T. Heiner was a founding member of the Texas State Association of
Architects in 1886. He died in Houston
on April 26, 1901 and is buried in Houston's Glenwood
Cemetery - within sight of downtown Houston.
A historical marker has recently been erected over his grave. |
The Heiner Gravesite
and historical marker
2525 Washington Ave.
Glenwood Cemetery, Section C4
TE photo, 2005 |
Historical Marker
Text
Eugene Thomas
Heiner
(August 20, 1852
- April 26, 1901)
Born in New York City to German immigrants Nicholas
and Margaretta Heiner, Eugene Thomas Heiner apprenticed himself to
a Chicago architect when he was thirteen years old and later completed
his training in Berlin, Germany. Heiner became a draftsman for architect
J. A. Vrydaugh in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1873. Three years later,
with the prize money he won in a design competition at the Philadelphia
Centennial Exposition, Eugene T. Heiner moved to Dallas.
There he met and married Viola Isenhour. They settled in Houston
and were the parents of four daughters. His first major design was
rendered for the Galveston County Jail in 1878. Heiner became known
for his work on Texas
county courthouses and jails,
though his work also included many commercial buildings and private
homes.
Heiner's designs of the 1870s and 1880s often employed variations
of Classical detail typical of American High Victorian architecture.
The two-story Italianate and Second Empire style Smith County Jail
in Tyler
(1880-1881) was designed during the prosperous days after Reconstruction.
His style then shifted toward the increasingly popular Richardsonian
Romanesque, but retained his strong High Victorian tendency toward
vertical lines and structural ornamentation. Heiner designed more
than twenty courthouses and jails in as many years. He also was responsible
for the design of such unusual buildings as the Houston Cotton Exchange
and Board Of Trade Building (1884). A founding member of the Texas
Association Of Architects in 1886, he left a remarkable legacy of
public buildings in Texas. |
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