The Anson Mills Building is a historic building located at 303 North Oregon Street in
El Paso, Texas
El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the county seat, seat of El Paso County, Texas, El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau w ...
. The building stands on the original site of the 1832
Ponce de León ranch.
Anson Mills
Anson Mills (August 31, 1834 – November 5, 1924) was a United States Army officer, surveyor, inventor, and entrepreneur. Engaged in south Texas as a land surveyor and civil engineer, he both named and laid out the city of El Paso, Texas. Mills a ...
hired Henry C. Trost of the
Trost and Trost architectural firm to design and construct the building. Trost was the area's foremost pioneer in the use of
reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...
. Built in 1910–1911, the building was only the second concrete-frame
skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...
in the United States, and one of the largest all-concrete buildings. At 145 feet (44 m), the 12-story Mills Building was the tallest building in El Paso when completed. The architectural firm of Trost and Trost moved its offices to the building upon completion, where they remained until 1920. The Mills family sold the building in 1965. The building stands on a corner site opposite
San Jacinto Plaza
San Jacinto Plaza is a historic park located on the corner of Oregon and Mills in the heart of Downtown El Paso, Texas.
History
When the US government leased land from Smith's ranch, for the first Post opposite El Paso (meaning El Paso del Norte ...
, with a gracefully curved street facade that wraps around the south and east sides. Like many of Trost's designs, the Anson Mills Building's overall form and strong verticality, as well as details of the ornamentation and
cornice
In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...
, are reminiscent of the
Chicago School work of
Louis Sullivan
Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called a "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism". He was an influential architect of the Chicago School, a mentor to Frank Lloy ...
.
In 1974, the Mills Building's windows were replaced with vertical bands of mirrored
glass
Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...
, radically altering its appearance.
The Mills Building was designated as a Texas Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the
American Society of Civil Engineers
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
in 1981.
See also
*
References
External links
* describes, but does not include building in submission due to alterations
Emporis.comEl Paso Historic Registry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mills Building
National Register of Historic Places in El Paso County, Texas
Skyscraper office buildings in Texas
Skyscrapers in El Paso, Texas
Downtown El Paso, Texas
Landmarks in Texas
Trost & Trost buildings
Office buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas
Office buildings completed in 1911
Chicago school architecture in Texas