By Xavier Navedo
Imagine a giant sombrero landing atop the entertainment district in downtown El Paso. Imagine entering that sombrero to delight yourself to rock concerts, symphonies, children’s programs, and other forms of fun. Well, that sort of did happen. Resembling a unique sombrero shape, a distinct feature in the southwest desert, The Abraham Chavez Theatre sits in the heart of downtown El Paso, with its neighbor the Williams Convention Center, better known as the El Paso Civic Center. The theater, aptly named after Maestro Abraham Chavez Jr. for his musical prowess and accomplishments beginning at 13, continues hosting Broadway shows, concerts, and other live events.
Image Caption: Abraham Chavez Theatre (Courtesy of El Paso, Inc.)
The Chavez Theatre, erected in 1974 and initially named the Civic Center Theatre, seats approximately 2,500 in three tiers. With a three-story highglass entrance, the theater maintains a 5,000-square-foot lobby and a 40-by- 56-foot stage, with 14 dressing rooms in the back for performers. The elegant decor beams with lights, arched staircases, creative entryways, and luminescent chandeliers.
The Society of Architectural Historians describes the curvature of the roof as reflecting the shape of a cable-hung steel compression ring, bent in the middle to produce the curved roof. However, many see the roof as timeless with its distinctive sombrero appearance. Garland & Hilles Architects and Carroll, Daeuble, DuSang and Rand collaborated in designing a unique theater that has offered decades of high-scale entertainment. Interestingly, Carroll and Daeuble also contributed to the San Jacinto Plaza and Garland and Hilles, the El Paso County Courthouse.
Before the official opening day of the theater, the El Paso Symphony Orchestra committee selected Maestro Chavez as guest conductor for the theater’s grand opening. After Maestro Chavez’ first performance, many from the audience let him know he was loved and respected in his hometown. A 2017 El Paso Times article asserts, “There could have been no happier choice. Maestro Chavez is one of the most beloved artists in this city ever known, and his welcome attests to that.” Maestro Chavez became the El Paso Symphony Orchestra conductor the following year until 1992.
In 2012, the City Council met to discuss the theater’s future, like “turning the facility into additional banquet space for the El Paso Convention Center, transforming it into a smaller theater, or just fixing it up.” In 2018, the El Paso Times reports that Bryan Crowe, general manager for Destination El Paso, “estimates the theater – which is protected from demolition by a 2012 city council resolution – needs $35M-$45M [sic] worth of renovations” since the theater had not been tended to since the early 1990s. Although The Chavez Theatre is one of two operated by the city of El Paso, the other being the Plaza Theatre, Crowe says, “It’s actually convenient having both.” He adds, “Oftentimes, we have things that are in rehearsal in one of the theaters, so having two rooms gives us the ability to have more availability for touring shows.”
The theater’s sombrero shape results from Brutalism, an architectural form emphasizing materials, textures, and construction, and producing highly expressive forms. Born in 1887, Le Corbusier, a pseudonym for Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, was a pioneer of modern architecture and introduced the Brutalist style. Following his father’s footsteps, Le Corbusier abandoned school at 13 to enamel boxes and engrave watch faces. Like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier lacked formal architectural training. Attracted to the visual arts at 15, he entered the municipal art school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds to learn the applied arts connected with watchmaking.
Three years later, he attended the higher course in decoration, founded by the painter Charles L’Éplattenier. He wrote later that L’Éplattenier made him “a man of the woods,” teaching him about painting from nature. L’Éplattenier taught him art history, drawing, and the naturalist aesthetics of Art Nouveau, inspiring Le Corbusier to leave watchmaking and study more about art and decor to become a painter. However, L’Éplattenier insisted Le Corbusier engage in architecture, giving him his first local project at age 20 in 1907.
Following the first house project, Le Corbusier traveled central Europe and the Mediterranean as an architectural apprentice, visiting Italy, Vienna, Munich and Paris. He began collaborating with structural and rational architects like Auguste Perret, a pioneer of reinforced concrete construction. This led to his Brutalist focus with concrete sculpting of buildings in the Modernist style. Le Corbusier also apprenticed with renowned architect Peter Behrens, whom he worked with from 1910 to 1911. Returning from his trip, Le Corbusier made three significant architectural discoveries: the contrast between large collective spaces and individual compartmentalized spaces, classical proportions via Renaissance architecture, and geometric forms and the use of landscape as an architectural tool.
In 1912 Le Corbusier taught alongside L’Éplattenier at La Chaux-de-Fonds, which led to the opening of his architectural practice, designing residential structures. He also perfected reinforced concrete as a structural frame of a modern technique. Le Corbusier had the idea of an affordable building design to help reconstruct cities after World War I. A housing floor plan consisted of open spaces, leaving out obstructive support poles and freeing up the usual exterior and interior wall structural constraints. This type of architecture became the backbone of Le Corbusier for the next decade. He moved to Paris in 1917, where he started working under a government contract as an architect making concrete structures.
Later, Le Corbusier proposed a modern style of architecture that would solve the industry’s demand, hoping it would change how people in future generations see the functional form of architecture. This led to the Maison Monol architectural style and the more recognizable Maison Critöhan, “the machine of living.” As the Biography website explains, Le Corbusier wanted to imitate the manufacturing of cars in an assembly line. Maison Critöhan would become classified as modern architecture because of its “support pillars that raised the house above the ground, a roof terrace, an open floor plan, an ornamentation-free facade, and horizontal windows in strips for maximum natural light.” This type of architecture continues today with architects applying their own spin on the style.
Peter and Alison Smithson first used the term “Brutalism” in 1953 for an unexecuted project for a house in Colville Place, Soho, describing the warehouse aesthetic of bare concrete (beton brut), brick, and wood as the fundamental form of New Brutalism in the United Kingdom. However, Reyner Banham, an English architectural critic, in 1955 reviewed Alison and Peter Smithson’s school at Hunstanton in Norfolk with its uncompromising approach to the display of stark steel, brick, and concrete slabs that cemented the architectural movement.
From 1950 till the 1970s, that style vastly spread across the United States, starting from New York, expanding as far west as California. In the 1960s, the federal government saw a rapid increase in work. The need for more available space prompted President John F. Kennedy to establish the Ad Hoc Committee of Federal Space. The committee published a report drafted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an American politician and diplomat, in 1962 that included Principles for Federal Architecture, requiring federal planners to reflect the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American National Government and embody the finest contemporary American architecture.
With Brutalism at its peak, it complied with what Moynihan had requested. Since Brutalism consists of concrete and is durable, and the materials needed were economical, it made for an ideal choice for federal agencies. With the efficient facilities, designers believed it represented the stability of the American Government.
By the 1980s, Brutalism began to fade in the architectural world, but many federal agencies and offices constructed in the Brutalist style still exist. El Paso has two: The Chavez Theatre/Civic Center and the federal building near the airport. While the Brutalist style has fallen out of favor, the Chavez Theatre offers a glimpse of what was innovative architectural design. The Chavez Theatre, one of a kind in the southwest, is the most recognized building in downtown El Paso, embodying not only Maestro Chavez’ spirit but Le Corbusier’s vision.
Handbook of Texas Music by 
