Mark Lemmon, Dallas Architect
Past Dallas and Texas Architect
Mark Lemmon attained his under graduate degree from University of Texas in 1912 and his architecture degree from MIT in 1916. Mark Lemmon had a career interspersed with partners that were both Classicists and Modernists. His prolific success came from commercial, academic, ecclesiastical and residential projects. In his 50-year career that started after World War I, he successfully worked in many styles.
Example of Homes Architect Mark Lemmon Designed
Douglas Newby Sold Architect Mark Lemmon’s Own Home – An Architecturally Significant Historic Home Preserved with Deed Restrictions
3211 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, Texas
Highland Park, Texas, National Historic Landmark – Sold by Douglas Newby
Many consider this Highland Park home designed by Mark Lemmon to be the most historically significant home in Highland Park and maybe Dallas and North Texas. Richard R. Brettell, the former director of the Dallas Museum of Art and founder of the Dallas Architecture Forum, co-authored with Willis Cecil Winters, FAIA, and former Dallas Parks Director, the book, Crafting Traditions—The Architecture of Mark Lemmon. Edmund P. Pillsbury, the former director of the Kimbell Art Museum and the Meadows Museum, wrote the introduction to this book on Mark Lemmon. Ted Pillsbury wrote that, “Mark Lemmon (1889-1975) was the most important historicist architect of 20th-Century Dallas.”
Thoughts on the Contributions of Architect Mark Lemmon Continued
In 1931, he designed the Tower Petroleum Building at 1907 Elm Street, avoiding the skyscrapers of the classical style skyscrapers of the 1920s. This building more closely resembles Eliel Saaren’s Chicago Tribune Tower entry developed in 1922 with its modern styling of vertical lines stepping back the top of the Tower.
He also designed the Cokesbury Bookstore, Woodrow Wilson High School, Perkins Chapel and nineteen other buildings at SMU. He may be best known for his churches, which include Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Highland Park Methodist Church, Third Church of Christ Scientist and many others in Galveston, Houston, Tyler, and San Angelo. His most loved residence was his own house at 3211 Mockingbird Lane, which was inspired from the time he spent in Normandy during World War I. This cottage designed in the early 1920s was probably an inspiration for the cottages that were designed over the next ten years in Greenland Hills.