Arthur Dallas Stenger began building houses in the 1940s in Austin, primarily on Arthur Lane in the Barton Hills area, named after his father (the first Arthur Dallas Stenger), who was also an architect. Although Stenger attended architecture school at the University of Texas after returning home from World War II, he never graduated. He earned his architecture license as a student and began building houses for postwar Austinites.
Although the FHA loans had built-in design restrictions, that didn’t stop Stenger from creating one-of-a-kind homes at moderate prices, even if it had to help homeowners find loans. He also worked differently from other builders, buying land (primarily in the Barton Hills and Pemberton Heights areas), finding a buyer, and building a home without his clients signing contracts. There was no pressure for the buyer to keep the home after completion, although clients rarely backed down after viewing the home.
A Stenger home will stand out, with characteristic low peaked ceilings lined with concrete, wood, rock, and other organic materials. He also used rock and stone quarried from the site of the house as cladding or embedded in the fireplace, helping the house to easily fit into its surroundings. Stenger loved long, low fireplaces that were reminiscent of 1950s living rooms, so every home he built included a wood-burning fireplace, although it’s not particularly necessary in the heart of Texas.
The homes also have many of the conveniences now appreciated by Austin’s great modern building boom, with window walls and clerestory windows hanging just below the exposed roof line, and stained concrete floors, now costing around $ 10 per square foot. He also used the organic building theory of “bringing the outside in”, running exterior masonry through the house and into it.
Although Barton Hills appeared as “the largest air-conditioned subdivision in the world” in the Parade of Homes of 1956, Stenger did not build his houses with central air conditioning. Instead, he built large windows to catch the morning light, and not the mid-afternoon sunlight, and a floor plan to allow a breeze to pass through the vents when the windows were opened.
In 1957, when Stenger’s friend, radio host John Henry Faulk, was blacklisted as a communist in the McCarthy era, he built and financed a house for him, knowing that his friend was overwhelmed by legal fees. He also took into account the financial situation of his other clients, which helped offset furniture costs with various built-in furniture and the price of their homes between $ 18,000 and $ 22,000, although today they can range between $ 400,000 and $ 600,000.
Stenger built around 100 unique homes in the Austin area, and he built the last one for his wife Jean in 1999, a few years before she died in 2002 at the age of 82. The current battle lies between those looking for Stenger houses for their originality and great use. of space, and others who prefer to tear down these houses to build larger houses, as the locations are highly sought after just for their land.
