Thomas M. Price (1916-1998) was Galvestons foremost modern architect. Price was a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (1938) and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1941), where he studied under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. After graduation he was a Professor of Architecture and Visiting Architecture Critic at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Price was employed as a designer and draftsman for the prestigious firms of Gropius and Breuer, Hugh Stubbins, and Oscar Stonarov.
During World War II, Price was commissioned Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy. He trained at the M.I.T. School of Naval Architecture, and was stationed in Galveston, Texas. After the war, Price remained in Galveston and opened his architectural firm in 1947. His designs included private residences, hotels, motels, schools, a social club, a beach house and commercial buildings. His major works include Sealy & Smith professional building (1964, demolished 2007), Flagship Hotel (with Neuhaus & Taylor), Seahorse Motel (1956, demolished), and Galveston Artillery Club (1959). His work was not limited to Galveston; he designed the Lasher House in Houston, and buildings in Alvin, Bay City, Freeport, Hitchcock, Houston, and Webster, Texas. He also designed hotels in Asheville, North Carolina, Biloxi, Mississippi, Maraton, Florida, and San Francisco, California. Prices work has been published in
Price was also involved in early efforts to preserve Galvestons 19th century architectural heritage. He was responsible for two pioneer preservation planning studies prepared for the city of Galveston:
The Thomas M. Price collection is comprised of 2,431 sheets of architectural drawings.
Access is by appointment only to any serious scholar. Rolled materials must be flattened before viewing. A three-day advance notice is required to flatten rolled materials.
Permission for publication is given on behalf of The University of Texas as the owner of the collection and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder which must be obtained by the researcher. For more information please see the Alexander Architectural Archive's Use Policy.
Thomas M. Price collection, Alexander Architectural Archive, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin
Drawings processed by: Donna Coates and Beth Dodd
This collection is indexed under the following headings in The University of Texas Online Catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings
The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.
The Drawings series entries are indexed by client name when known, otherwise by project name. Furthermore, similar projects are sorted in chronological order by date. Project names are supplied by the cataloger, as title blocks on the drawings prove to be inconsistent and many drawings are not labeled. Project names may also have been adjusted to accommodate alphabetical sorting. Dates are offered if they can be derived from the drawings or gathered from other authoritative sources. The term "drawing" includes both original works (such as pencil on trace paper, or ink on tracing cloth) as well as copies (such as sepia prints, blue line prints, etc.).