CULBERTSON, Margaret

PERSONAL: Born in TX.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, 106 Architecture Building, Rm. 106, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-4000. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Librarian and author. University of Houston, William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, Houston, TX, librarian.

WRITINGS:

American House Designs: An Index to Popular andTrade Periodicals, 1850-1915, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1994.

Texas Houses Built by the Book: The Use of PublishedDesigns, 1850-1925, Texas A&M University Press, 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: Margaret Culbertson, a librarian at the University of Houston, blends her professional interest in art and architecture with her writings, creating resource books on house design both nationally and regionally, in her native Texas. In American House Designs: An Index to Popular and Trade Periodicals, 1850-1915, Culbertson looks at domestic architecture, compiling and indexing more than 6,500 house designs from 2,000 architects published in thirty-five journals, including builders and women's magazines, agricultural and carpentry periodicals, as well as home and garden publications. Such designs "did much to influence . . . housing construction across the country," noted Robert J. Havlik in American Reference Books Annual. Havlik went on to comment that Culbertson's study "opens up a new and interesting glimpse to this influential source of design ideas." Writing in Choice, S. M. Klos found that the book "fills a significant gap in the literature of American domestic architecture." And Michael Alcorn, reviewing American House Designs in the Journal of American Culture, called it an "important bibliography for students of American domestic or vernacular architecture." For Alcorn, the "importance" of Culbertson's book is that it provides information about lesser-known and regional architects at the turn of the twentieth century.

Culbertson takes a narrower focus in her 1999 book, Texas Houses Built by the Book: The Use of Published Designs, 1850-1925. In this work the author argues that "published house plans created desire and democratized the housing market," according to Walter L. Buenger in Agricultural History. Utilizing these inexpensive, ready-made house plans—and sometimes ready-made houses themselves—the middle classes in Texas were able to join the "mainstream of evolving national trends in residential architecture," Buenger further explained. In separate chapters, Culbertson offers an introduction to the pattern-book market and looks at one of the masters of such published designs, George F. Barber. In addition, she chronicles the use of prefabricated houses in the state and also views the impact of such design availability in the vernacular architecture of one Texas community, Waxahachie (where her own grandfather built his farm in the 1940s). Reviewing the book in Choice, L. B. Sickels-Taves noted that Culbertson's is "one of the first [publications on pattern-book houses] specifically and geographically focused." Sickels-Taves also commented that the book provides an "excellent cross section of identifiable structures throughout Texas." And though Buenger felt that "annoying repetition mars the organizational structure," he also thought that the work "makes a valuable contribution" to the understanding of the rise of American consumer culture.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Agricultural History, spring, 2001, Walter L. Buenger, review of Texas Houses Built by the Book: The Use of Published Designs, 1850-1925, pp. 248-249.

American Reference Books Annual, Volume 27, 1996, Robert J. Havlik, review of American House Designs: An Index to Popular and Trade Periodicals, 1850-1915, pp. 434-435.

Choice, June, 1995, S. M. Klos, review of AmericanHouse Designs, p. 1566; January, 2000, L. B. Sickels-Taves, review of Texas Houses Built by the Book, p. 920.

Houston Chronicle, August 6, 2000, Margaret Culbertson, "Reminiscing on a Fence," p. 8; May 20, 2001, "Three Books That Are Worth a Look."

Journal of American Culture, summer, 1996, Michael Alcorn, review of American House Designs, pp. 133-134.*