When Peter MacKeith came to Arkansas in 2014 as dean of the University of Arkansas' Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, he began reading extensively about the state and its history.
MacKeith remembers the first book he bought here. Written by Kenneth Smith for the University of Arkansas Press, it was titled "Sawmill: The Story of Cutting the Last Great Virgin Forest East of the Rockies." Published in 1986 and reprinted in 2006, it has long been on my bookshelf.
"Sawmill" is a history of logging in the Ouachita Mountains from 1900-50. Smith interviewed more than 300 people for the book, which explains the heyday of big sawmills and company towns in southwest Arkansas and southeast Oklahoma. Mill towns such as Rosboro, Glenwood and Forester thrived as timber barons such as T.W. Rosborough bought and sold vast tracts of land.
It didn't take MacKeith long to understand the influence forests have had on Arkansas' culture through the decades. About 56 percent of the state remains forested, and the timber industry is a major part of Arkansas' economy. Last Sunday's column and Perspective section cover story detailed MacKeith's efforts to find new uses for Arkansas timber.
MacKeith also came to understand this small state's history of producing great architects, many of whom made use of native timber and stone. No one better exemplified that style than the school's namesake, Fay Jones, who practiced from 1954-98 from a studio in Fayetteville. Of the 218 projects Jones designed, 129 were built. Of those 129, 84 were built in Arkansas.
Jones was born at Pine Bluff in January 1921. He grew up in El Dorado after his family moved there so his father could operate the People's Cafe.
According to the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas: "As a boy, Jones learned he had distinct talents for drawing and construction. He built tree houses and underground forts and drew on everything. In El Dorado, after seeing a film about Frank Lloyd Wright and his Johnson Wax Building, Jones came away determined to combine, as he said, 'drawing and building.'
"When he enrolled at the University of Arkansas in 1938, the only architecture classes offered were in the engineering department. For two and a half years, he studied civil engineering."
After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Jones moved to Little Rock in 1945 to work as a draftsman. Friends and associates encouraged him to return to the university and enroll in the new architecture program started by John Williams. Jones did so, graduating in 1950.
He was accepted into the graduate program at Rice University in Houston, where he completed his master of architecture degree, then held his first teaching job from 1951-53 at the University of Oklahoma.
Jones returned to Fayetteville in 1953 to teach and begin his practice. He became the first chair of the department in 1966. Eight years later, he was named the inaugural dean of the new School of Architecture. In 1985, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture awarded him the title of ACSA Distinguished Professor.
"Fay Jones met his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright, in 1949 at the American Institute of Architects' annual convention in Houston, where Wright was to receive the Gold Medal," the encyclopedia notes. "They met again at the University of Oklahoma, and Wright invited Jones to visit his Arizona studio Taliesin West during Easter 1953. The next summer, Jones was invited to become an apprentice at Taliesin East in Wisconsin. Jones and his wife became members of the Taliesin Fellowship, returning annually for the next 10 years.
"Wright's most lasting influence on Jones would be in the application of the principle of organic architecture: simplicity of construction, use of native materials, attention to crafted details and seamless integration of building to site. In his own work, Jones reached original architectural conclusions with the innovative vertical use of glass and a strict awareness of the role of interior and exterior spaces of light."
Jones began training young architects while also assembling teams of Arkansas builders, woodworkers and stonemasons to practice organic architecture statewide.
Jones won the AIA Gold Medal in 1990. His Thorncrown Chapel at Eureka Springs was voted by AIA as one of the top five buildings designed by an American architect in the 20th century. The Roy Reed House in Washington County also received AIA honors, and in 2000 Jones was recognized by AIA as one of the 10 most influential architects of the 20th century.
Other notable Jones structures in Arkansas include the Shaheen-Goodfellow Weekend House in Cleburne County, the Hantz House in Washington County, the Walton Family House in Benton County, the Pallone House in Pulaski County, the Faubus House in Madison County and the Alexander House in Washington County.
Jones died at his home in Fayetteville in August 2004. The School of Architecture was named for him in April 2009.
Among those who learned from Jones and carried on his work was Heber Springs native Maurice Jennings, a 1973 UA graduate. He developed a keen interest in building design as a boy and was Jones' business partner from 1986-98. Jennings' son Walter also developed a passion for organic architecture and joined his father in 2011 in the firm Maurice Jennings + Walter Jennings Architects. Maurice Jennings died in October 2016 at age 68.
Jennings worked with Jones on Thorncrown Chapel and later on the Mildred Cooper Chapel at Bella Vista, the Anthony Chapel at Hot Springs and the Hunt Chapel at Rogers.
David McKee is another northwest Arkansas architect from the Jones tree. While completing his UA degree in the early 1970s, he worked as a mason and carpenter. He was asked to join Jones' firm in 1982 and from 1998-2006 was part of the firm Maurice Jennings + David McKee. In 2006, McKee began his own firm.
When my family travels to Eureka Springs, we like staying at Crescent Cottages, which McKee designed in 2007. They're behind the Crescent Hotel parking lot and are a wonderful example of Arkansas organic architecture with lots of native wood. Sunlight streams into the cottages.
Continuing to bring attention to the Arkansas scene is internationally recognized architect Marlon Blackwell, born in 1956 to a military family stationed in Germany. Blackwell came to the UA in 1992. He was selected by a national jury as one of the top 40 designers younger than 40 in 1995. In 1998, the Architectural League of New York recognized Blackwell as an Emerging Voice in Architecture.
"Blackwell is noted for his style of working outside the architectural mainstream," writes Arkansas historian Nancy Hendricks. "His architecture is based in design strategies that celebrate vernaculars and draw upon them, seeking to transgress conventional boundaries for architecture. ... In 2012, he was named a recipient of an Arts & Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the first Arkansan ever so honored."
In a 2020 essay for Oxford American, MacKeith wrote: "'Places and buildings ... buildings and places,' mused Marlon Blackwell, the 2020 AIA Gold Medalist in Architecture and my faculty colleague at the Fay Jones School, in response to my question to him on the purposes of the design education we attempt to provide our students.
"For Blackwell, an Air Force child of the South, educated in architecture initially in Alabama with his first commissions in North Carolina, that simple phrase definitely distills his experiences and comprehensions of where he is and what he values in life and work--and the place of building, of designing and building well, in the American South.
"Fay Jones asserted the same purposes and commitment to place throughout his career, the differences of time and architectural character notwithstanding, initially determining to seek commissions no farther than a day's drive from Fayetteville."
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.