Biography
O'Neil was born in Pink Hill, Texas in 1905 but moved to Denton in 1917 after the death of his father. He enrolled in North Texas State Teachers College for two years, but financial burdens forced him to abandon his efforts of a formal education. Instead, he earned an architectural certificate by mail from the International Correspondence Schools of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
In 1926, he began a long partnership with regional architects and was first mentored by architect David R. Williams. Together they produced a number of fine regional houses of native brick, wood, and stone in north central Texas. He entered into private practice in 1934 and worked with a series of partners within the state of Texas beginning in 1936.
Ford was influenced by the tradition of the English Arts and Crafts Movement and the attempt to combine architecture and visual arts. As a strong preservationist, he helped launch Texas architecture on a new path by showing that its roots were deep and often beautiful. His well-crafted structures were composed of bricks, glass, wood, and were intimately tied to its setting. He enlisted his brother Lynn, a master carver and sculptor, to create custom doors, screens, and louvered grates.
Ford was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1960. He was appointed to the National Council on the Arts by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and in 1974 Ford himself was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Council (the only human to ever be given that title).
He resided in San Antonio until his death in 1982 at age 76. In 2001 Drawings were donated by his widow, Wanda Graham Ford, to the Alexander Architectural Archive at the University of Texas at Austin. The gift included 5,540 original architectural drawings, 5,484 prints, 40 presentation drawings, 39 presentation sketches, and 63 sheets of photographic materials.
Read more about this topic: O'Neil Ford
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)