Marshall R. Sanguinet was an outstanding Fort Worth architect who built this house in 1894, in the Arlington Heights neighborhood, then the poshest of neighborhoods in Fort Worth.
The Sanguinet home at home at 4729 Collinwood Avenue was listed on the US National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
A talented architect in his own right, after he partnered with Carl Statts in 1903, their firm gained fame for their innovative approach to modern office buildings. Eventually, the pair would work together on over 1800 buildings, many of the coolest buildings in Fort Worth were designed by this firm.
The waymarked carriage block sports the family name in bas-relief with a pair of hitching posts on either side. A state historic marker nearby reads as follows:
"MARSHALL R. SANGUINET HOUSE
Noted Fort Worth architect Marshall R. Sanguinet (1859-1936) built this Shingle Style house about 1894, incorporating his earlier residence at this site which was damaged by fire. A partner in the prominent statewide architecture firm of Sanguinet and Staats, Marshall Sanguinet was associated with many of the citys early multi-story buildings and with the development of the Arlington Heights subdivision, which included his home."
From the Handbook of Texas Online: (
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"SANGUINET, MARSHALL ROBERT (1859–1936). Marshall Robert Sanguinet, architect, was born on March 18, 1859, in St. Louis, Missouri, the eldest son of Marshall P. and Annie E. (Betts) Sanguinet. His father was a banker and real estate agent. Sanguinet attended St. Louis University and possibly either Chatawa College in Mississippi or Redemptorist College but did not graduate. He worked in the architectural office of his uncle Thomas Walsh in St. Louis for two years before beginning a two-year course in architecture at Washington University in 1881.
After completing that study he moved to Deming, New Mexico, where he spent six months in architectural practice before moving to Fort Worth, Texas, in the summer of 1883. Sanguinet formed a number of partnerships, but the longest and most productive was that of Sanguinet and Staats, with Carl G. Staats, which expanded to include Wyatt C. Hedrick from 1922 to 1926. Sanguinet retired in 1926 and sold his interest in the firm to Hedrick.
Over the forty-four years that Sanguinet practiced, his firms were responsible for more than 1,800 buildings throughout Texas and the nation. Sanguinet and Staats produced a wide array of building types, but the firm is best remembered for its early multistoried office buildings.
Sanguinet was a member of the American Institute of Architects and served for a time as president of the Texas chapter. He was also president of the Texas State Association of Architects from about 1920 to 1922. He was a Democrat and a Catholic and a member of the Elks and Knights of Columbus. He also helped organize the Fort Worth Commercial Club. He married Edna Robinson on February 6, 1886. They had three daughters. Sanguinet died at home on July 25, 1936.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 25, 1936. Stephen Fox, "Sanguinet and Staats in Houston, 1903–1926," Perspective 12 (Spring 1983). Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans (5 vols., ed. E. C. Barker and E. W. Winkler [Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1914; rpt. 1916]). Buckley B. Paddock, History of Texas: Fort Worth and the Texas Northwest Edition (4 vols., Chicago: Lewis, 1922)."
More in the firm of Sanguinet and Staats, also from the Handbook of Texas online: (
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"SANGUINET AND STAATS. The architectural firm Sanguinet and Staats was founded in 1903 by Marshall R. Sanguinet and Carl G. Staats. Sanguinet, who was twelve years older than Staats, moved to Fort Worth in 1883 and practiced architecture there with a variety of partners until the turn of the century.
Staats, a native New Yorker, moved to Texas in 1891 and worked for noted San Antonio architect James Riely Gordon until 1898, when he was hired by Sanguinet as a draftsman.
Sanguinet and Staats headquartered in Fort Worth and rapidly developed one of the state's largest architectural practices; they produced buildings of all types from factories and large hotels to churches and schools. The firm is best known, however, for its contributions to the design of steel-framed skyscrapers. Almost every tall building constructed in Fort Worth before 1930, and for a time the tallest structures in Beaumont, Houston, Midland, and San Antonio, were designed by Sanguinet and Staats.
The twenty-story Amicable Insurance Company Building in Waco, completed in 1911, was for a brief time the tallest building in the Southwest. Other prominent examples include the First National Bank Building, Houston (1905), the Flatiron Building, Fort Worth (1907), the Scarbrough Building, Austin (1910), the C. F. Carter Building, Houston (1919), the South Texas Building, San Antonio, (1919), the Neil P. Anderson Building, Fort Worth (1920), and the Jackson Building, Jackson, Mississippi (1923).
The firm designed in a variety of styles and forms that transformed the scale and style of the state's rapidly growing cities. In addition to large commercial buildings, Sanguinet and Staats also designed a number of large residences, especially on Pennsylvania Avenue in Fort Worth and Courtland Place in Houston, where examples still stand.
Sanguinet and Staats was one of the first firms to use a large office team of architects, engineers, and other support people. The firm, which had branch offices in Dallas, Wichita Falls, San Antonio, Waco, and Houston, was also among the first Texas architectural enterprises to have a statewide practice. In 1922 Wyatt C. Hedrick bought a partial interest in Sanguinet and Staats. The new practice was known as Sanguinet, Staats, and Hedrick, and the Houston branch operated as Sanguinet, Staats, Hedrick, and Gottlieb, under the direction of R. D. Gottlieb, a limited partner.
That arrangement lasted until 1926, when Sanguinet and Staats officially retired and sold their share of the firm to Hedrick. Thereafter, Hedrick continued the practice under his own name in Fort Worth and in limited partnerships in Houston and later Dallas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Stephen Fox, "Sanguinet and Staats in Houston, 1903–1926," Perspective 12 (Spring 1983). Michael C. Hoffmeyer, "Public Buildings of Sanguinet and Staats," Perspective 10 (Spring 1981). Jamie L. Lofgren, Early Texas Skyscraper: A History of the Skyscraper Style (M.A. thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1987). Sanguinet and Staats-Hedrick Collection, Architecture and Planning Library, University of Texas at Austin."