Henry Charles Trost, the senior design partner of Trost and Trost, had been in El Paso barely six years when he built this house. Although influences of the Chicago School, the Prairie Style, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright may be found throughout Trost’s career, he built no other house like this, nor any building so overtly Wrightian. The dominant style in Trost’s work when he moved from Tucson to El Paso in late 1903 had been California Mission; his El Paso work developed in new directions.
The two-story, L-shaped house is elevated on rising ground at the north side of Sunset Heights (EP34), where it commands views of downtown El Paso and Ciudad Juárez to the south. The house’s exterior is dominated by three elements: a shallow-pitched, double-layered, gabled roof with broad overhangs; tall rectangular brick piers that dissolve wall surfaces; and a recessed second story of light-colored stucco wall panels and decorative bands of molded plaster that float between the roof and the supporting piers. The frieze bands beneath the eaves contain abstract floral forms Trost cast in concrete for the Rio Grande Valley Bank (EP20) and Roberts-Banner (see EP20) buildings a year later. Inside, Trost treated the reception rooms as spatially continuous, running the long dimension of the house. Geometric-patterned stained glass windows illuminate public spaces, and the living room has a painted leather wall surface. Trost designed the leaded glass for the windows and cabinet fronts, along with the furniture, which was built by J. P. Paulson of El Paso and is still in the house. When Frank Lloyd Wright saw the house in 1957, he reportedly quipped, “How did that get here?” In 1958 the house was acquired by Malcolm and Bobba McGregor.