Samuel Edward Gideon

GIDEON, SAMUEL EDWARD (1875-1945). Samuel Edward Gideon, architectural scholar, son of Louis and Henrietta (Brooks) Gideon, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, on December 9, 1875. He studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University and graduated from the School of Fine Arts at Fontainebleau, France. He taught at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) from 1900 to 1904 and returned to MIT to teach from 1905 to 1913. In 1908 he married Sadie Griffin of Bryan, Texas. In 1913 Gideon became professor of architectural design and history at the University of Texas. He taught in the university school of military aeronautics during World War I and during World War II taught aeronautical drafting.

An authority on early Texas architecture and culture, Gideon lectured on those subjects and published numerous illustrated articles in Pencil Points, The American Architect, and the Harvard Historical Quarterly. He was chairman of the Central Texas branch of the Landmarks Preservation Committee and was instrumental in converting the home of William S. Porter into a museum. His illustrated brochures included Landmarks of Austin (1925), Historic and Picturesque Austin (1936), and Austin and the Austin National Bank (1940). In 1943 he served on the national committee for the planning of the city of Washington, D.C. He also lectured and wrote on French art, Gothic architecture, Italian gardens, Mexico, and black culture. Gideon was president of the Texas chapter of the National Committee on the Preservation of Historic Buildings, of the Texas alumni of Fontainebleau, and of the Guild of Austin Artists; he was a member of the American Institute of Architects. He died in Austin on August 13, 1945, and was buried in the State Cemetery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sam Hanna Acheson, Herbert P. Gambrell, Mary Carter Toomey, and Alex M. Acheson, Jr., Texian Who's Who, Vol. 1 (Dallas: Texian, 1937). Daily Texan, August 19, 1945. Goldie Capers Smith, The Creative Arts in Texas: A Handbook of Biography (Nashville: Cokesbury, 1926). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "GIDEON, SAMUEL EDWARD," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/GG/fgi8.html (accessed February 1, 2005).