Alden B. Dow

(1904-1983): In 1941, Dow was asked to design a new town for Dow Chemical’s expansion to Freeport, Texas, a move to turbo-charge production of vital Allied war materials. The architect, son of Dow Chemical’s founder, had apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright, then won the grand prize for best residential design (his own home) at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Backed by a mix of Federal wartime funding and private investment, in two years he had laid out the town of Lake Jackson, commissioning about 500 modern single-family homes and 200 duplexes in a garden setting on a former plantation site; many survive today, making Lake Jackson an unexpected crucible of modernism.