A Coastal Bend Reinvention by Ben Koush Project Sylvan Beach Pavilion, La Porte Client Harris County Precinct Two Architect Kirksey Architecture Design Team Benito Guerrier, AIA; Doug Hammel, AIA; Kathleen Jircik, AIA; Luis Perez; Edgar Alvarado; Melika Mirzakhani; Kevin Hambly Photographer Shau Lin Hon
The recent rehabilitation of the Sylvan Beach Pavilion, a 1950s contemporary dance hall overlooking Galveston Bay in La Porte, stands out as a noteworthy example of responsible stewardship of the modern architectural heritage in the Houston metropolitan area. Inaugurated in May 1956, the building was designed by the progressive but short-lived Houston architectural firm of Greacen & Brogniez. Three years later, the firm would also go on to design Houston’s first all-glass office tower. In its day, the Sylvan Beach Pavilion was recognized for its design locally and nationally. In its first year, it won a medal of honor from AIA Houston, and in 1957, it was featured in two prominent magazines: Architectural Record and Arts & Architecture. Sylvan Beach Park was the location of a succession of recreational buildings dating back to the 1890s that had all been destroyed by hurricanes. Harris County acquired the park in 1954 and began planning a modern beach pavilion. The new facility, expressly intended to be stormproof, was designed as a collection of crisply defined, geometric elements, each of which housed a different part of the program. Its main component was a circular, 125-ft-diameter ballroom with continuous glass walls allowing extensive views of the park and the bay beyond. The dance floor was raised on concrete pilotis to mitigate the effects of storm flooding, which can surge up to 12 or 14 feet in
The 22-acre, privately owned
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that area. The ballroom was capped by a daringly thin, 4.5-in-thick reinforced concrete-shell construction supported by eight perimeter concrete columns. A large, triangular wood deck projected out over the bay from a rectangular ancillary wing containing a bar and restrooms. Entry to the facility was originally made via a ground-level stair encased in a glass block cube. The design of the Sylvan Beach Pavilion is intriguing for the dialectical way that it integrated the vernacular circular dance hall form — a Central Texas building typology that strongly expressed its structure — with the modern movement’s functionalism and innovative thin-shell concrete construction technology. In fact, the preference for such thin-shell structures during the postwar years, notably along the Texas coast, was detailed in a special issue of Texas Architect in September 1963, which included a portfolio of exuberantly shaped buildings that according to the editors exemplified “The Coastal Bend Revolution.” Hurricanes are a common occurrence along the Gulf of Mexico, and the Sylvan Beach Pavilion has weathered many storms, including the devastating hurricanes Carla and Alicia in 1961 and 1983. But when the building was heavily damaged by Hurricane Ike in 2008, the then Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Sylvia Garcia decided not to make the repairs necessary to reopen it. The county government instead tried to demolish the building in order