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Portrait of Henry C. Trost, Image from the Aultman
Collection, provided by the
El Paso Public Library
Research Packet and
Narrative by:
Jesse Clark
Dr. George D. Torok
Honors Project
Summer 2003
National Endowment for the
Humanities Historical Markers Project
Henry C. Trost (1860 -
1933)
Henry C. Trost lies buried in Evergreen Cemetery on
Alameda Avenue in El Paso, Texas. He was El Paso’s most prolific
architect and designer of the early 20th century producing
hundreds of buildings that continue to grace the landscape of El Paso
and the greater Southwest. Henry C. Trost was born to German immigrant
parents in Toledo, Ohio on March 5, 1860. Trost’s father was a
carpenter and building contractor, so Henry had early exposure to the
building trades. During the 1870s, he attended art school in Toledo
and worked as a draftsman. Henry Trost moved west in 1880, spending
time in Denver, Colorado Springs, New Orleans and many other growing
western cities. In the late 1880s, he worked ornamental metal in
Chicago where he was exposed to the architectural works of Louis
Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. During the 1890s Henry Trost lived in
California and Arizona where he developed an interest in the Mission
Revival style. Throughout this restless period in his life Trost
experienced the booming, thriving atmosphere of the American West and
was highly influenced by the many architectural styles and designs he
encountered. He made his final move to El Paso, Texas in 1903 where he
joined his brother Gustavus Adolphus Trost and helped with the design
and construction of the city’s Carnegie Library. The two brother
formed the architectural firm Trost and Trost, and were later joined
by their brother Adolphus Gustavus in 1908.
For almost thirty years, Henry C. Trost served as
the firm’s principle designer and developed some of the region’s most
striking and unique buildings. The firm created almost every type of
building and structure, including office buildings, homes and
residences, schools and public sites. They worked with all of the
popular architectural styles of the day, from Victorian to Art Deco.
Henry Trost led the firm in design and innovation. According to
historians Lloyd C. and June Marie F. Engelbrecht, who produced an
extensive study of Trost’s works, “he very consciously designed for
the exacting conditions imposed by the unique and special environment
he liked to call “arid America” and he produced drawings which are
revealing documents of his creative mind.”
He eventually created more than 650 buildings in the Southwestern
United States and northern Mexico; more than 200 of them were built in
El Paso.
His works throughout the El Paso area are
well-known to area residents and visitors. Some of his most striking
works include the Spanish Renaissance style Loretto Academy campus,
completed in 1923; El Paso High School, a classical revival style
structure, built in 1916; and various buildings on the University of
Texas at El Paso campus. Trost developed a national, and even
international reputation during his lifetime. He was a pioneer in the
use of reinforced concrete for large urban structures. His downtown El
Paso sites include the massive Paso del Norte Hotel, constructed in
1912; the Spanish Colonial revival style Cortez Building, completed in
1926; and the fifteen story Bassett Tower, designed in the Art Deco
style and once the tallest building in downtown El Paso. Trost’s own
home, built at 1013 West Yandell Boulevard in 1909, has been called
“one of the most outstanding example of the Chicago (or Prairie)
school of architecture to be seen outside the Midwest.” Even the
originator of the style, Frank Lloyd Wright, admired the house during
a visit to El Paso in 1957.
Henry C. Trost died in El Paso on September 19, 1933.
He never married, did not have children, and the firm continued in to
be operated by his brothers until the 1950s. His library was donated to
Rice University 1954. Many of his major buildings are still found
throughout the American Southwest including more than twenty that are
concentrated in the downtown area.
. Lloyd C. and
June-Marie F. Engelbrecht, Henry C. Trost: Architect of the
Southwest (El Paso, TX 1981), 3-4; Mary A. Sarber, “Henry C.
Trost,” The Handbook of Texas Online at http:/www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/article.
.Engelbrecht and
Engelbrecht, Henry C. Trost, 31-35.
. Sarber, “Henry
C. Trost,” 2; Evan Haywood Adane, ed. Portals at the Pass: El
Paso Area Architecture to 1930 (El Paso, TX 1984), 24.
. Sarber, “Henry
C. Trost,” 2.
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