Preston M Geren Jr

An architect and engineer, he joined the firm his father founded here in the 1930s, Preston M. Geren Architects & Engineers, and had a hand in designing Southwest High School, buildings at Travis Avenue and Broadway Baptist churches, and at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, TCU, the University of Texas at Arlington and Texas A&M. The firm worked with architect Louis Kahn on the iconic Kimbell Art Museum. After graduating from Arlington Heights High School, he attended Texas A&M University until he joined the Army in World War II. For service in the Third Army in Europe, he received a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. Although he finished college after the war at Georgia Tech, he was forever an Aggie. “Preston represented Texas A&M's ‘First Family of Architecture,’” Jorge Vanegas, dean of A&M’s School of Architecture, said in a statement. His grandfather, Frederick Giesecke, taught the first architecture class at Texas A&M University in 1905, and his father and an uncle also studied architecture at A&M, Vanegas said.