Photo (03/28/2005) Trost design: The former St. George Antiochian
Orthodox Church, at 915 N. Florence, has been placed on Preservation
Texas’ list of endangered Texas historic sites.
October 29, 1985
Shortly before the turn of the century, Henry C. Trost marked an architectural trail across the South and Southwest – through Denver, Pueblo and Colorado Springs, Colo.; Galveston, Texas; Albuquerque; Tucson, Ariz.; and New Orleans.
The Ohioan, who had studied in Chicago with Louis Sullivan (called “the father of modern architecture”), came west in 1880and lived – something only for brief periods – in all those aforementioned cities.
With the arrival in the Southwest of a brother, also an architect, Trost’s firm was expanded to include him. Eventually, the architects set up regional headquarters in El Paso and branch offices in Phoenix and Albuquerque. Later, the men were joined by a third brother, a structural engineer.
Among the hotels the firm was responsible for are the Hilton, Paso Del Norte, Cortez and Gateway in El Paso; the Driskull in Austin; the Franciscan and El Fidel in Albuquerque; La Caverna and the Crawford in Carlsbad; El Capitan in Van Horn; the Paisano in Marfa, Texas; and the Hidalgo in Lordsburg, N.M.
“Old Main,” the first building at the Texas College of Mines (now the University of Texas at El Paso), is a Trost design, as is the La Tuna federal prison in Anthony, Texas; the O.T. Bassett Tower in El Paso; and county courthouses in Pecos, Texas and Gallup, N.M.
Hundreds of private residences and many apartment houses also bear the Trost imprint.
Trost never married, and he died in 1933. Other family members operated the firm until 1947, when the last remaining Trost brother retired.
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