Arthur Fehr

Arthur Fehr, F.A.I.A. (November 19, 1904 - January 23, 1969) was an American architect who turned in mid-career from his traditional architectural education to the Modern or International style and was one of its first practitioners in Texas.

Arthur Herman Kilian Fehr was born to Herman Benno Fehr and Selma Ottilie Kilian Fehr in Austin, Texas. He was the second of three sons and reared in lower-middle class, ethnic surroundings. His father was a barber and barber supply salesman. Though both parents were native-born Americans the household language was German. The social focus was the extended family of their local Lutheran church.

In his teens Fehr wanted to be a chemist. But a drafting teacher in his vocational school, noting his ability at sketching and cartooning, encouraged him to try architecture, and he enrolled in the University of Texas architecture program. After receiving his degree in 1925 he worked for architect Harvey P. Smith in San Antonio. Smith's work was in the Beaux Arts and Spanish Colonial styles, and under him Fehr worked on the first building of Lutheran Concordia College of Texas (now Concordia University). This was Kilian Hall, named for his own maternal great-grandfather, Jan Kilian, the pastoral leader of a group of Wendish immigrants to Texas in 1855. The building's design was later cited by the Architects' Guild of Texas, and for Fehr this was an early taste of peer recognition.

In 1926, on the urging of his university professors, Fehr left Texas for New York and worked as a draftsman for Kenneth M. Murchison, whose better known designs were in the Beaux Art tradition. He also took a short and pennywise tour of England and the Continent during the summer of 1927, from which he returned (in his own words) "[a] better American and a much better Texan". While in New York he attended night courses at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, Columbia University and New York University. He returned to San Antonio in 1928 to work as chief draftsman and designer for Smith on various projects ranging from the officers club at an Army air base to the restoration of San Antonio's 18th-century Spanish Governor's Palace. In 1931 the Depression interrupted his progress, but after two years of infrequent work he rejoined Smith in the survey and initial restoration work on San Antonio's 18th-century Spanish mission of San José y San Miguel de Aguayo.

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