Everybody (well, almost everybody) has heard it, a lot of people try to sing along with it, but almost no one can remember all the words to it. This notorious ballad from Marty Robbins came out in 1958, and in El Paso at the time, naturally it became a huge hit. It's from his album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, released on the Columbia/Legacy label. (4:21) Below is a "follow-up" song about the Mexican maiden in the song - Feleena. There was another "follow-up" titled "El Paso City," which we'll deal with later on. We found Feleena on The Essential Marty Robbins 1951-1982 two-disc set, released in '91 on the Legacy-Columbia label. (8:17)
The Army built their first post in the area in 1849 to protect newly-acquired territory from raids by Apache and Commanche Indians. My dad ended his military service here (2nd call) in '52, after discharge from William Beaumont Army Hospital, but continued to take us for Saturday visits to the replica of old Fort Bliss, adjacent to the Parade Ground (below), where I first heard Sousa's military marches. The United States Field Band and Soldiers' Chorus performs here, from their In Concert CD, released this year on the Altissimo! label. (3:26)
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El Paso's "big city" look and feel downtown is due to a number of factors, not the least of which was the fact that an incredibly talented architect had made El Paso his home.
HENRY CHARLES TROST (1860-1933).
Henry C. Trost, architect, was born in Toledo, Ohio, on March 5, 1860. His father, who immigrated from Germany in the early 1850s, was a carpenter and building contractor. Henry Trost attended art school and worked as an architectural draftsman in Toledo until 1880. He then moved west and during the following eight years worked in Denver, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Fort Worth, Galveston, New Orleans, and Dodge City. From 1888 to 1896 he was a designer of ornamental metal in Chicago, where he was greatly influenced by the work of Louis H. Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as by the California Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, which introduced the Mission Revival style. Trost returned briefly to Colorado Springs in 1896 and then moved on to Tucson, Arizona, in 1899. Here his interest in Mission Revival was reinforced by the early-eighteenth-century Spanish colonial mission of San Xavier del Bac. In 1903 he moved for the last time, to El Paso. His brother, Gustavus Adolphus Trost, had arrived there in 1902 to superintend the construction of the Carnegie Library and no doubt convinced Henry that El Paso was an advantageous location for a fledgling architectural firm. Henry and Gustavus formed Trost and Trost, assisted by their nephew George Ernest Trost. Gustavus's twin brother, Adolphus Gustavus Trost, a structural engineer, joined the firm in 1908.
The firm was immediately successful. No building was too large or too small for it, from bungalows and one-room schoolhouses to reinforced concrete skyscrapers. Commissions came in from throughout the region. Trost and Trost designed at least 300 buildings in El Paso as well as additional hundreds through West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Notable among these are: the Hotel Paso del Norte (El Paso, 1912), the Mills Building (El Paso, 1911), Bassett Tower (El Paso, 1930), Trost's own residence (El Paso, 1909), El Paso High School (El Paso, 1916), San Angelo City Hall (San Angelo, 1928).
For thirty years Henry Trost was chief designer of the firm as well as patriarch of the family. He never married. After his death in El Paso on September 19, 1933, the brothers continued the firm until the early 1950s, but few buildings of significance were designed during this later period. Trost's contribution as an architect is significant not only for the number of buildings he produced, but for the ease and virtuosity with which he worked in virtually every current style, from Victorian to Art Deco. He also was among the first consciously to design buildings adapted to the desert region he called "Arid America." In his own residence he adapted the Prairie School style to the rigors of high temperatures and hot sun by the addition of wide, overhanging eaves and balconies that shade nearly all of the windows. He was equally successful with Mission Revival (Williams Residence, El Paso, 1905) and Pueblo Revival (Franciscan Hotel, Albuquerque, 1923; demolished 1972). Many of Trost's major buildings remain standing. More than twenty are concentrated in downtown El Paso, and the tallest of them dominated the skyline for nearly fifty years. Trost died in El Paso on September 19, 1933.
