Architectural writer and editor
Since 1979 Barrie Bradley has been engaged in research, archival work, lecturing, and writing about architecture.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Improbable Metropolis is the story of Houston's history as seen through its buildings and places from its founding in 1836 to 2017, just before Hurricane Hugo devastated the city and caused the rethinking of construction methods and planning policy. (2020, University of Texas Press)
As Houston's foremost modern architect in the mid-twentieth century, Howard Barnstone was little-known outside of Texas. Making Houston Modern explores the provocative architect's life and work as a central figure in Houston's post-war cultural history. (2020, University of Texas Press).
Fair Winds documents the trajectory of Houston's Kirby Corporation from John Henry Kirby's early exploits in East Texas to the founding in 1916 of Kirby Petroleum, the direct ancestor of Kirby Corporation. Today Kirby is the largest inland marine transportation company in the U.S. (2017, Herring Press)
Houston's Hermann Park provides a vivid history of Houston's oldest urban park beginning with events leading up to the donation of the land in 1914. This well-illustrated book charts how and why the park and institutions within it developed as they did.
(2014, Texas A&M University Press)
Ephemeral City, a collection of essays previously published in Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston, is divided into three sections: Idea of the City; Places of the City; and Buildings of the City. It was coedited by Barrie Scardino Bradley, William F. Stern, and Bruce Webb. (2003, University of Texas Press)
Clayton's Galveston is a chronicle of the transformation of this island settlement from a coastal village into "The Queen of the Gulf" at the end of the 19th century. The architects who designed Galveston's Victorian buildings are the focus of this book which is richly illustrated with historic and contemporary images, plans, and maps. Much of Galveston's historic fabric is extant. (2000, Texas A&M University Press)
Houston's Forgotten Heritage is the the history of Houston's residential architecture from 1824-1914. Four authors discuss landscaping, architecture, interiors, and domestic life during that time period. Most of the houses pictures and discussed have been demolished. (1991, Rice University Press)
Susan Mason's Silver Service is a compilation of the recipes and creative decorating ideas of Savannah's most sought after caterer. Susan asked Barrie, a long-time friend, to help write the book. All of the recipes and ideas are Susan's; all of the writing is Barrie's.
(2007, Pelican Publishing Company)
Barrie Scardino Bradley is an award-winning architectural writer who has published numerous books and articles on Texas architecture and culture, including Houston’s Forgotten Heritage (1991, Rice University Press); Clayton’s Galveston: The Architecture of N. J. Clayton and his Contemporaries (2000, Texas A&M University Press); Ephemeral City: Cite Looks at Houston (2003, University of Texas Press); Houston’s Hermann Park: A Century of Community (2014, Texas A&M University Press); and Fair Winds: The History of Kirby Corporation (2017, Herring Press). She has also edited several publications, significantly the Houston Architectural Guidebook (2012, AIA Houston).
Bradley is a native of Savannah, Georgia, a graduate of Duke University (BA/English) and the University of Southern California (MS/Library Science). She attended the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA, which she left before completing an MA in Architecture in 1979 to move with her family to Houston. She is also currently working on a memoir of her childhood in Savannah.
She began her Texas career in the fall of 1979 on the research faculty of the Rice University School of Architecture as the senior researcher on what became a six-volume study: the Houston Architectural Survey (1981). After completion of the survey, she became the first architectural archivist for the City of Houston at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center of the Houston Public Library. She left that position to return to Rice as a researcher and eventually became the managing editor of the Rice Design Alliance’s publication, Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston.
After living and writing in New York City from 1998 to 2004, she returned to Houston and became executive director of the American Institute of Architects, Houston Chapter, and the Houston Architecture Foundation until 2011 when she moved to Beaumont, Texas. She and her husband, Jerry Bradley, the poet and University Professor of English at Lamar University, have recently moved to Bluffton, South Carolina, just outside of Savannah (and across the Georgia-South Carolina state line).
