The George Kraigher House

 By Diego Garcia III ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

Driving southbound down Paredes Line Road past Price, you'll see the Brandywyne Apartments followed by a resaca. You'll then see Brownsville Rehabilitation Services. After that, you'll see a white building with lots of windows surrounded by a few scraggly trees and a Texas Historical Marker. 

The unorthodox looking single-family house  has stood on the 500 block of Paredes Line Road since 1937. The house has been in Brownsville longer than the Charro Days festival has. Architectural historians recognize the house as one of Texas' first houses made in the Modern style. 

The house was designed by Richard Joseph Neutra, a Viennese architect who lived in the early 20th century. Neutra mostly designed houses and other structures in California. The house on Paredes is the only known example of a Neutra house in the entire state. Neutra fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in The Great War. He studied architecture and worked for a German architect before immigrating to the United States in 1923. He spent time working for architectural firms in New York and Chicago, He would also work in world renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright before moing out to California.

George Kraigher was born in Slovenia in 1891. Kraigher went to aviation school and flew airplanes for the Austro-Hungarian air force at the outbreak of World War I. After being held as a prisoner of war, Kraigher defected and fought alongside French volunteers against the Central Powers. After The Great War, Kraigher immigrated to the United States where he would hold several jobs in the aviation industry before landing in Brownsville where he delivered a new airplane to Pan-Am Airlines. Before World War II, Kraigher would become chief pilot and administrator of Pan American Airways Western Division where he became one of Pan-Am's go to pilots flying to Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

Kraigher would become the operations manager for Pan-Am in Africa before serving as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Kraigher became enamored with a Neutra-designed home he saw in California. He contacted Neutra and asked him to design a house for him to be built in Brownsville. The house was completed in 1937. Kraigher would not live in the house for a fukl decade. He sold the house in 1946. The house would have a couple of different owners and renters before being boarded up and abandoned.

The house, like other historic houses in our fair city, fell into a sad state of disrepair. All its windows and fixtures were broken and stripped for scrap metal. Most of the lower floor wood was torn from the walls, and what was left was rotting away until members of The University of Texas at Brownsville partnered with the City of Brownsville to help restore the historic home.

The city purchased the property and leased the house to the university. In the 2000's, the house underwent extensive renovations and refurbishment. Renovations would finally be completed, and the house was restored to its former glory. But then, something strange happened.

Absolutely nothing.

Aside of a few cocktail parties, the University did not occupy the building full-time. Unlike the Cueto Building on East Madison Street, the Kraigher House sat relatively abandoned and unused. Without any regular use, the stucco and wood structure is starting to show signs of disrepair once again, and is turning into the derelict brittle shell it once was.

This historic building is yet another casualty of the breakup of The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College. I wonder if the powers-that-be at UTRGV even know the Kraigher House even exists.

When will we ever learn? Why do we wait until something is crumbling before we try to save it? And why don't we learn from our mistakes? We've already saved this historic house from collapse once; now we're going to have to try to save it again? Or are city and UTRGV leaders happy to take the bulldozer to the house to make way for another doctor's office or Stripes?

Will the Neale House suffer the same fate when it's moved to linear park? Will it, too, be restored only to be forgotten and abandoned?

Why is historical preservation so low on the list of priorities for our civic leaders? Why are they so busy gazing up at the stars hoping for something that may never materialize when our history is so rich and colorful and waiting to be discovered?

Brownsville's architectural history is as diverse as it is interesting. From French Quarter style buildings downtown, to Victorian style homes along downtown's periphery, to Spanish architecture, Modern style buildings, and turn of the century American design, you can find something for every taste.

Unfortunately, if we don't try to preserve these beautiful structures, they're all going to be lost in the sands of time.