may 2008

The Zidell House, designed in 1953 by the Austin-based architecture firm of Lundgren & Maurer, is the preeminent residential example of the Modernist movement in the town of Taylor, Texas. The house incorporates many tenets of the International style of architecture, including horizontal bands of windows, exposed columns or pilotis that allow the structure to hover over its site, and a juxtaposition of industrial materials, such as steel casement windows and columns, with organic materials such as concrete, stucco, stone, and wood. Unique in all of Taylor, the Zidell House has been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion C, in the area of Architecture, at the local level of significance.

The flat-roofed, two-story Zidell House presides over nearly six acres of grass lawn, trees, and golden bamboo, supported by a simple grid of steel columns and a concrete slab. The house faces West Lake Drive at the northern edge of the property but is sited at an angle, and its first-floor façade is constructed of Arkansas ledgestone and appears long and low to the ground, with only a few small awning windows to maintain privacy. At the east end of the residence, the second-story volume—originally a concrete grey but now covered in a white stucco—is supported by steel columns and projects out, beyond the first floor, over a front porch partially hidden by an Arkansas ledgestone privacy wall. On the first floor at the southeast corner, steel casement windows placed between bands of fixed plate glass windows open to the hidden front porch area and offer views of a creek that runs north-to-south along the eastern edge of the property. On the projecting second-story volume of this northern façade, the bedroom and bathroom windows are horizontal bands of small awnings to maintain privacy from the street.

In contrast to the more public, street-facing elevation designed for privacy, the rear façade to the south is open and transparent, with sliding glass doors on tracks at grade level that open up to large patios, offering wide views of nearly 2 acres of grass lawn and another 4 acres of greenbelt dense with trees and golden bamboo. The second floor is lined with steel casement windows and clad with a vertical siding that originally was unpainted Western red cedar. The southwest side of the residence, which includes a carport and kitchen, is clad in Western red cedar that has since been painted. The carport possesses a wall of Arkansas ledgestone along its north side, while the south side is framed with custom storage closets for garden tools and other outdoor items.

Across the lawn to the southwest of the house is a wood-framed building with a gabled roof that was built after 1962, when the Zidells sold the house and left Taylor. The current owner uses this building as a home office and studio, and while it is more substantial than a mere outbuilding, it does not contribute to the nominated property, as it was not designed by Lundgren & Maurer nor constructed by the Zidell family.

original watercolor

Upon entering the door in the kitchen at the southwest corner of the house, one can see all the way down the full length of the ground floor interior, beyond the ceiling-mounted cabinets and an L-shaped bar area. The walls are covered with panels of Philippine mahogany, and the custom cabinetry is made of the same material. The first floor is comprised of a kitchen and dining area on the west end, and a living room and small bedroom with a half-bathroom on the east side. The kitchen and dining areas are floored with 6-by-6-inch square Saltillo tiles of terra cotta, which makes the continuous space seem larger than it is. Horizontal bands of metal awning windows on the north and south walls of the kitchen allow for cross ventilation. In the dining area, floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors and screens facing the south, opening to the rear patio. The north side of the dining area is defined by a custom-built buffet cabinet of Philippine mahogany that also serves as a screen between this space and the front door facing Lake Drive; the entry vestibule created by this mahogany cabinet is small, and the front door is a flush-panel door with a small, vertical light in its upper third and a single sidelight to the east of the door.

The dining area overlooks the sunken living room, accessible by descending three steps. Defining this edge between the two levels, and adjacent to these three stairs, an Arkansas ledgestone planter runs perpendicular to the floor plan and extends outdoors, thus also dividing the two rear patio areas. A large plate glass window sits above the planter, emphasizing its unifying effect between the outdoor and indoor spaces; attached to the stone planter is a dimpled glass panel in a frame, effectively screening the living area from the dining and kitchen area. On the north side of the living room, the wall is paneled with Philippine mahogany, a rich contrast to the open glassiness of the south side. Yet a third entry door exists on the northeast end of the house, also facing Lake Drive, that opens out to an ample patio of concrete slab, screened for privacy by an Arkansas ledgestone wall. Steel casement windows line the south and east walls of the sunken living room, giving it an open, bright appearance; above and beneath these bands of casements are fixed windows of clear glass. At the foot of the three stairs between these two first-floor zones is a doorway leading to a small bedroom with a half-bathroom. The bedroom walls are covered with Philippine mahogany, and three awning windows near the ceiling on the north side provide light and air but maintain privacy. At the northeast corner of the bedroom, the half-bathroom is ventilated with one awning window on the north side. An unusual feature of the bedroom is the sculptural addition of the staircase leading to the second floor; the stairs, exposed at the southwest corner of the bedroom, have Plexiglass risers that allow additional light into the small space, and a small storage closet with a sliding mahogany door is tucked under the staircase.

interior down

At the north end of the dining area, this staircase of three short flights leads to the second-floor bedrooms. The east wall of the stairwell is of Arkansas ledgestone. A long vertical window of fixed, reeded glass on the west wall illuminates the stairwell to the landing. Continuing upstairs from the landing, the stairwell is paneled in Philippine mahogany on the west wall, with exposed Arkansas ledgestone on the east. At a second landing, the stair turns 90 degrees, allowing a view between the treads to the living room below. A corridor runs the entire length of the second floor and is currently carpeted, although it was covered with cork flooring originally; the walls of the hallway are paneled in Philippine mahogany.

front façade

Two bedrooms are on the south side of the hallway, accessible through flush-panel pocket doors. The walls in each bedroom are Philippine mahogany, and on the south wall of each room tall, single-pane casement windows provide expansive views outside to the wooded greenbelt beyond the grass lawn. Under these windows are built-in storage cabinets of Philippine mahogany; the cabinets’ appearance is opposite that of a window seat, as they are flush with the windows on the interior and project out on the exterior, appearing from outdoors as a wood railing or barrier to a non-existent balcony. In both bedrooms, sliding flush-panel doors cover storage closets with custom built-in shelving and drawers.

THE ZIDELL FAMILY

On October 8, 1954, when the Zidell family opened their newest clothing store in downtown Taylor at 314 North Main Street, Harold (Hal) Zidell had already been in the clothing business for 42 years. His father had operated a department store in Paris, Texas, when Hal was a young boy and, like him, his brothers also became merchants.

Charles Zidell operated stores in Killeen and Temple, Texas; and older brother Ted had stores in California. As a young man, Hal Zidell was the general manager of a national chain of stores, and his job took him and his young family all over the country. With his wife Pearl, Hal had five children: William (Billy); Robert (Bobby), who joined the Air Force and was shot down over Germany during World War II; daughter Leatrice; and twin boys Alvin and Allan. Hal managed a clothing store in Beatrice, Nebraska, before he moved his family to Taylor and opened his own Ladies Ready-to-Wear Store in February 1939. Their daughter married and moved to Los Angeles, but the three surviving Zidell sons remained in Taylor and worked in the family clothing stores throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Shortly after arriving in Taylor, mutual friends introduced Billy Zidell to Rozan Rappeport of Shreveport, Louisiana, a student at the University of Texas in Austin. On December 31, 1944, Billy and Rozan were married in Houston, Texas, and in 1945 25-year-old Billy assumed his place as the manager of Zidell’s Ladies Ready-to-Wear Store; his father Hal then moved to California to assist in the family stores located there. Allan worked as the assistant manager of the shop, and Alvin also worked there, as did Rozan. During this period Billy and Rozan Zidell had two children, Marsha Sue and Marshall Stanton, and they shared a modest 1,100-square-foot, 2-bedroom house on Wallace Street with Billy’s younger twin brothers. In 1953, with a third child on the way and a constant stream of family members living with them for extended periods, the couple decided it was time to build a larger home.

Through a Houston friend who was building a residential development in Taylor, the Zidells were introduced to two young architects from Austin, Leonard Lundgren and Edward Maurer; their friend described Ed Maurer as a very gifted architect. According to Rozan Zidell, she and Billy had agreed that their main concern for any new house was to have enough space for three children and a regularly rotating cast of visitors. In an October 2008 interview, she remembered that Ed Maurer had told her that in order to achieve the most space for their budget, they would have to forego “the bells and whistles,” and build a house that was “no frills.” A design that required a lot of architectural details, such as paneled doors or complicated mouldings, would not be affordable, but Maurer suggested that a modernist house—made with high-quality materials in a minimalist but thoughtful execution—would meet their needs. Leonard Lundgren recently recalled that the resulting house was not a low-end house by any means, but that it was a mid-range, custom-built home.

The couple had purchased nearly six acres of land on Lake Drive, one of the most prestigious streets in Taylor, which ran west from Main Street, passing Murphy Park and its lake as it headed toward the municipal airport and open fields beyond it. This area to the west of downtown Taylor had once been a part of the 60,000-acre ranch owned by former Union soldier Crawford Henry Booth, the president of the Taylor National Bank. Booth’s 1880s Queen Anne-style mansion,. one of the oldest houses in Taylor, stood across the street from the Zidell’s new property. With its fish-scale shingles, stained glass windows, elaborate spindlework railings on vast wraparound porches, and an enormous turret capped with a copper onion-dome, the Booth House would be quite a contrast to the very contemporary house designed for the Zidells