Maurice Joseph Sullivan
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(June 11, 1884 – December 15, 1961) Maurice J. Sullivan, son of Maurice and Margaret (Fitzsimons) Sullivan, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended Detroit College (1901-1903) and studied Structural and Civil Engineering at the University of Michigan (1904-1906). While working at engineering firms from 1909-1912, Sullivan taught himself architecture. He married Anne Winston and they had four sons and three daughters. After moving to Houston in 1912, Sullivan was appointed City Architect by Mayor H. Baldwin Rice and took on numerous projects, including Dora B. Lantrip Elementary School (1916). Known for being an eclectic architect who frequently worked in popular revival styles including Romanesque, Mediterranean, and Neo-Gothic, Sullivan opened his own practice in 1919, sharing an office with Birdsall P. Briscoe for 35 years. His ecclesiastical work is considered his most significant and includes the Villa de Matel Chapel (1923-28), Holy Rosary Church (1933), St. Anne Catholic Church (1940) and First Presbyterian Church (1949). Other prominent buildings include The Petroleum Building (now The Great Southwest Building), which introduced the stepped-back skyscraper to Houston, Houston Negro Hospital (now Riverside Hospital), St. Thomas High School, Ripley House, and St. Mary’s Seminary. In 1922, Sullivan designed his family home at the corner of Southmore Boulevard and Fannin Street in the Picturesque Manorial Style, exemplifying the houses associated with 1920s and 1930s elite Texas residential neighborhoods. In 1924 and 1933, he served as President of the South Texas Chapter of The American Institute of Architects. Sullivan is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery. In 1992 private citizens purchased the home for use as a commercial property. Maurice Sullivan married Anne Winston King, daughter of Dr. F.B. and Elizabeth (Winston) King, in 1911. The Sullivan home was built at Southmore and San Jacinto.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Maurice J. Sullivan taught himself architecture and turned that self-education into one of Houston's most prolific practices. Appointed City Architect soon after arriving in 1912, he worked fluently across revival styles and left the city schools, hospitals, and especially churches, from the Villa de Matel Chapel to St. Anne Catholic Church, along with the stepped-back Petroleum Building that introduced the modern skyscraper form to Houston. In 1922 he built his own picturesque family home, a signature of the city's elite 1920s neighborhoods.
Why it matters
Sullivan's buildings gave shape to a booming twentieth-century Houston, and his career shows how a determined autodidact could help define a great city's skyline.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Maurice Joseph Sullivan
- · Anne Winston King
- · Birdsall P. Briscoe
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Clayton, W. L. and Susan
Houston, TX
William Lockhart Clayton left school early to become a court reporter and rose to build Anderson, Clayton & Company into one of the world's great cotton firms, moving its headquarters to Houston in 1916 as the new ship channel opened. Drawn into government service, he became Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs under George C. Marshall and a principal architect of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt postwar Europe. His wife, Susan Vaughan Clayton, shaped the family's celebrated River Oaks homes and gave herself to philanthropy, women's suffrage, and the Houston Public Library, to which the couple bequeathed their home.
Dr. John H. Foster House
Houston, TX
Born in Austin County in 1876, Dr. John Hoskins Foster earned his medical degree at the University of Texas Medical School in Galveston and moved to Houston around 1909–1910, helping to organize the Houston Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital in 1923. His 1912 home in the Montrose-area Bute Addition, designed by Houston architect Birdsall P. Briscoe, is a distinctive example of Prairie-style design.
Ned A. & Linda S. Eppes House
Houston, TX
Built in 1926 in one of Houston's new planned neighborhoods, this villa-style house was an experiment in modern building materials, raised in concrete when most homes were still wood and brick. Commissioned for a concrete manufacturer, it showed off stucco finishes and a Spanish mission doorway that would not become fashionable for years. It stands as an early local test of construction methods that would soon spread across suburban America.
Gilmer-Cage-Cohn House
Houston, TX
Built in 1905, this stately, pillared home is an early Houston example of the Classical Revival style, its four Ionic columns and elliptical balcony announcing a fashionable respect for antiquity. Its owners read like a roster of the city's rising business class: Brian Brewster Gilmer, a drug-industry leader and Chamber of Commerce president; attorney Elliott Cage of the Cage Cotton Company; and finally Harry Cohn, a dry-goods and furniture merchant born in Latvia whose family lived here for 64 years. Each family left its mark on a house that shows both Neoclassical and Arts and Crafts influences.