Built in Texas

A book of folk building in Texas, that ranges across the state in word and photograph. It explores the pine buildings of settlers in East Texas, those of oak in the Western Cross Timbers, and the rock homes of European migrants into Central Texas. West Texans of the Pecos, who had neither rocks nor logs to build with, mixed mud and grass, made adobe brick, and built in traditions borrowed from the Mexican-Indian population already settled there. These were the folk, building out of the environment, wasting nothing, building forms to suit their needs. Germans, Poles, Norse, and Alsatians coming straight from the Old World with their countries’ ways of building in mind had to adapt to the new materials and learn from the older Anglo settlers the methods of putting the materials together.

Built in Texas is divided into Methods and Materials; Style and Form; Barns and Outbuildings; Gates and Fences; Holding Water; Restoration and Preservation.