Jessen, Harold (American painter, architect, and designer, 1908-1979)

Bubi Jessen was born and raised in Austin. Jessen attended University of Texas and graduated with a B.S. in Architecture in 1928. In the same year he was awarded the School Medal of the American Institute of Architects. The following year he served as an assistant in the University’s Architectural Department, leaving there to further his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Master’s degree in architecture in 1931.

For the next five years Jessen worked as a draftsman for park restoration for the Works Progress Administration and draftsman-designer for C. H. Page. In 1936 he was awarded first prize in a statewide competition sponsored by Portland Cement Association for a concrete house to be built at the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. Bubi Jessen was an original partner in the Austin architectural firm Jessen and Jessen when it was organized in 1938.

Jessen was a charter member of the Texas Society of Architects, affiliated with the American Institute of Architects, and president of the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners (1956). He was also an accomplished watercolorist, illustrator, and publisher. Jessen published his first book Humbert the Lion in 1959 and illustrated The Purple Tree, a group of poems, by Katharine Parr Hamilton, published in 1953.

He married Janet Arment in 1947 and had three children.

Wolf Jessen graduated from University of Texas with a bachelor’s degree in Architecture in 1936. He worked in the office of C. H. Page from 1933-1937 and became a partner with his brother Bubi in the Austin architectural firm Jessen and Jessen when it was organized in 1938. He began an ancillary career with the Austin Symphony Orchestra in 1938 as flutist.

He practiced primarily residential architecture until interrupted by military service during World War II. After the war, Jessen returned to Austin and resumed the practice of architecture with Bubi and became Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas in 1946. They formed a partnership with Charles Millhouse and Alton Greeven in 1946 and became Jessen Jessen Millhouse and Greeven. In 1969 the firm became Jessen Jessen Millhouse Greeven Crume Day and Newman, and Jessen, Inc. in 1971. Jessen retired in 1974 to devote more time to travel, but returned to assist with some projects.

In 1948 he married musician and dancer Janet Collett. Together they traveled the world extensively, every continent except Antarctica.

From the guide to the Jessen and Jessen papers, JESS Accession number: 2008003., 1938-1974, (Alexander Architectural Archive, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.)