Maurice Joseph Sullivan

Sullivan's practice reached well beyond the Houston buildings on his plaque. Before 1912 he worked as an engineer for architects in Fort Worth and Waco. From the Villa de Matel on, he specialized in churches, schools, convents and hospitals for Catholic orders and the Galveston diocese, among them St. Anthony's in Bryan, St. Mary's Hospital in Port Arthur, St. Patrick's in Crockett and St. Mary's in Texas City. A fellow of the American Institute of Architects from 1951, he was its national treasurer to 1954, the first Texas architect in national office. The house is private.

What the plaque says

Maurice Joseph Sullivan (June 11, 1884 – December 15, 1961) Maurice J. Sullivan, son of Maurice and Margaret (Fitzsimons) Sullivan, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended Detroit College (1901-1903) and studied Structural and Civil Engineering at the University of Michigan (1904-1906). While working at engineering firms from 1909-1912, Sullivan taught himself architecture. He married Anne Winston and they had four sons and three daughters. After moving to Houston in 1912, Sullivan was appointed City Architect by Mayor H. Baldwin Rice and took on numerous projects, including Dora B. Lantrip Elementary School (1916). Known for being an eclectic architect who frequently worked in popular revival styles including Romanesque, Mediterranean, and Neo-Gothic, Sullivan opened his own practice in 1919, sharing an office with Birdsall P. Briscoe for 35 years. His ecclesiastical work is considered his most significant and includes the Villa de Matel Chapel (1923-28), Holy Rosary Church (1933), St. Anne Catholic Church (1940) and First Presbyterian Church (1949). Other prominent buildings include The Petroleum Building (now The Great Southwest Building), which introduced the stepped-back skyscraper to Houston, Houston Negro Hospital (now Riverside Hospital), St. Thomas High School, Ripley House, and St. Mary's Seminary. In 1922, Sullivan designed his family home at the corner of Southmore Boulevard and Fannin Street in the Picturesque Manorial Style, exemplifying the houses associated with 1920s and 1930s elite Texas residential neighborhoods. In 1924 and 1933, he served as President of the South Texas Chapter of The American Institute of Architects. Sullivan is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery. In 1992 private citizens purchased the home for use as a commercial property. Maurice Sullivan married Anne Winston King, daughter of Dr. F.B. and Elizabeth (Winston) King, in 1911. The Sullivan home was built at Southmore and San Jacinto. (2011)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 0.3 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 0.8 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 0.9 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• The Menil Collection — 1.0 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Houston — steps away
• W. L. and Susan Clayton — steps away
• St. Paul's United Methodist Church — steps away
• The Playhouse Theatre — 0.2 mi