O’Neil Ford Influenced the Timeless Architecture of Scott Lyons and Frank Welch

Why are some modern architectural designs (such as the work of O’Neil Ford, FAIA, Scott Lyons, FAIA, and Frank Welch, FAIA) new, progressive and influential while other modern designs seem trendy and tired at the same time?

The Best Architecture for a Site Creates Timeless Design

Timeless modern architecture is inspired by the site, crafted by the finest artisans, and built using the best technology and materials of the time — those that are familiar as well as technologies and materials that have recently become available. Every era has its achievements from which we build, reinterpret and admire. Great design of any period remains great design.

The Haggerty/Hanley House Designed by O’Neil Ford Draws From Past and Influences Future

The Haggerty/Hanley house that architect O’Neil Ford designed in 1957 is a great example of timeless design. This midcentury Texas modern home draws from Ford’s earlier 1930s Texas modern work as well as that of David Williams, FAIA, which combined elements of European modernism and pioneer houses. This home is artfully situated to emphasize the site and orientation of the home in relationship to the sun much like the first Texas modern home David Williams designed in 1933 on McFarlin Boulevard with views of Turtle Creek. The Haggerty/Hanley home is also considered the best combination of Texas modern architecture and Texas modern art.

O’Neil Ford Designed the Haggerty/Hanley Home Almost As If It Were a Village

Architect O’Neil Ford designed the Haggerty/Hanley home in a much larger scale, one that is common today but rare in Dallas at the time. Taking advantage of the beautiful acreage bordered by a creek, O’Neil Ford designed the home almost as if it were a village, much like the early homes of Texas. It is set down from the street, wrapping around the topography with walls of windows in the living areas closest to the creek.

Even when designing in this larger scale, O’Neil Ford drew from his memory of sketching earlier pioneer homes. O’Neil Ford also still relied on the same artisans like his brother Lynn Ford (who did the metal work and wood carvings on O’Neil Ford’s first modern home) for the architectural details on the Haggerty/Hanley home.

O’Neil Ford’s Haggerty/Hanley 1957 Home Directly Influences Architect Scott Lyons’ 1983 Designed Home and Architect Frank Welch’s 2004 Designed Home

O’Neill Ford

Scott Lyons

Frank Welch

The Haggerty/Hanley home reiterates detail and handcrafted artisanship while creating new volumes and uses of materials that influenced great architects like Scott Lyons and Frank Welch who worked with O’Neil Ford and whose later work reflected Ford’s influence.

These three Texas modern homes by O’Neil Ford, Scott Lyons, and Frank Welch were built over a span of 50 years and yet all remain architecturally current and influential. The beautiful estate area acreage and topography drove the design of each of these homes. All three are approximately 10,000 sf, built with steel frame construction, and designed as a series of attached structures with a significant secondary structure.

The O’Neil Ford Designed Haggerty/Hanley Living Room Has Influenced Architects for Over 50 Years

Architects locally and around the country come to see this midcentury modern Texas home and the living room O’Neil Ford designed. Architects admire and absorb the hand carved open wood screen, the continuous walls of soft Mexican brick, the walls of windows overlooking the lawn and sculpture garden as it descends to the creek, the pitched ceiling that gives balance to the spacious dimensions of the space, and the stick ceiling that acoustically softens the room and brings warmth. The floating wall gives separation without impeding the immense openness of the room.

Architect Scott Lyons Reinterprets and Further Modernizes Design Inspired by O’Neil Ford

In 1983 Scott Lyons was selected to design a home on possibly the most beautiful land in Preston Hollow. Like O’Neil Ford, he submitted the design of this modern home to the landscape. Scott Lyons set the house down from the street with the main living room closest to the deep ravine and spring fed creek. The home expands and cleans up the horizontal axis while still retaining the indigenous qualities of the materials and details. An open wood screen shields and announces the living room from the front door. A stick ceiling is not used as a finish, but an exposed ceiling joint on the pitched ceiling dramatizes the precision in which the house was built. The oversized soft Mexican brick complements the warmth of the cross-cut white oak. The wall of floor-to-ceiling windows wraps around the room, providing views of the creek and small lake beyond the garden. While the house almost disappears when viewed from the street, from inside it affords a spectacular view of the beautiful land on which it is set.

Frank Welch Identifies O’Neil Ford Designed Living Room as Room That Inspires Him

Approximately 50 years after O’Neil Ford designed the living room in the Haggerty/Hanley home, Frank Welch designed the living room for this home in the estate area of Bluffview. A wall of windows looking over the garden, a pitched ceiling with a tight pattern of parallel sticks, a floating wall, and cross-cut white oak finishes add depth and polished texture to the room.

Frank Welch does not mimic the past. Frank Welch designs homes that reflect ideas of the past that he advances with new technology, greater precision, proportions that are perfect, and a design that is fresh, exciting, and will influence generations in the future.

Great architects like O’Neil Ford, Scott Lyons, and Frank Welch have designed modern homes that are perfect for the site, beautifully crafted and articulated, and offering a new vision for future generations.

See more information and photographs on this Scott Lyons architect designed home offered for sale.

Highland Park and Dallas Preservation Plans

I’m excited to report that residents of Dallas and Highland Park have two new avenues for historic preservation of their homes. One is a proposed new initiative in Highland Park that should be in place by early 2010; the other is an effort to expand the presence of an existing national program to the entire Dallas area. Together, these important preservation tools will give property owners additional protections for the exterior of their homes, in ways that protect their home into the future.

Property Owners Have Sole Right to Add Preservation Protection

With most preservation tools – such as local ordinances, preservation districts, etc. – restrictions or requirements are imposed on individual property owners by the neighborhood, community or government. However, the preservation tools coming to Dallas are different because homeowners can initiate restrictions on their own property.

Park Cities Historic and Preservation Society, and Trust for Architectural Easements

By coincidence, I had two appointments fall on the same Monday – breakfast with Dan Reardon of the Trust for Architectural Easements, who was in Dallas for a two-day exploratory visit, and lunch with Marian Ann Montgomery of the Park Cities Historic and Preservation Society to discuss preservation in the Park Cities.

Park Cities Historic and Preservation Society

Marian Ann Montgomery and the Park Cities Historic and Preservation Society are working with the town of Highland Park on a historic preservation ordinance that would allow individual homeowners to submit their property for designation as a protected structure. The town of Highland Park will participate by managing and enforcing the ordinance of the properties accepted for protected status.

This approach is really quite brilliant because no districts or ordinances – historic, conservation or teardown – are crammed down the throats unwilling homeowners. This preservation ordinance will only apply to properties put into place at the request of the property owner. Architecturally significant Highland Park homes will be preserved, architectural prestige enhanced, and momentum generated for maintaining the architectural landscape of Highland Park. Highland Park township resources will be better employed on preserving significant structures rather than imposing unwanted restrictions on non-receptive property owners.

Trust for Architectural Easements

Don Reardon was in town as part of an exploratory visit for the Trust for Historical Easements, which is looking to make Dallas a major part of its efforts. This trust has been very successful this decade in receiving façade easements and protecting the future of these buildings, both residential and commercial. Here again, this preservation measure is deployed by the property owner, assisted by the Trust and acknowledged by the Department of the Interior, which grants a 3% – 17% tax deduction for the donated façade. Characteristically a property owner donates the façade easement to the Trust for Architectural Easements after the Trust helps the property owner place the property on the National Register of Historic Places. The Trust then owns and controls the façade and the property owner receives a tax deduction in the 3% – 17% of the building’s value, most often around 10% of the home’s value.

Members of the Trust for Historical Easements have identified Dallas as an area with great houses and great architecture, with people interested in preserving it. I think that’s exciting.

Architectural Patrons and Philanthropists

These preservation incentives will resonate with architectural patrons, philanthropists and those people who love the aesthetic landscape of Highland Park and the Dallas area. Donating a façade easement to protect the architecture in perpetuity is much the same as donating a piece of art to a museum – except the donor doesn’t have to worry about the architecturally significant home being put in storage. Architecture is our public art. Often, more people will see the front of an architecturally significant house than will see a painting or sculpture in a museum. Dallas is a city of patrons and philanthropists that astound the rest of the world with their giving. These preservation tools provide yet another avenue to improve our community through giving.

Owners Who Are Already Protecting and Preserving Their Homes

We know that there is an audience for these types of voluntary preservation tools because we are already seeing great citizens protect their homes. Whether these homeowners elect to participate in one of these programs or elect to take a tax deduction is irrelevant because measures are already in place to preserve the architecture.

Stanley Marcus Home

Years ago, the Lovvorn family of Dallas initiated historic designation for their home, which was formerly owned by Stanley Marcus. They have accepted landmark status and are in the process of doing further renovation.

Edward Durell Stone Designed Home

Owners of one of the great American modern homes of the 20th century, Jennifer and John Eagle, retained architect Russell Buchanan for a masterful renovation of this Edward Durell Stone designed home. They are making plans to preserve the home for future generations.

John Allen Boyle Designed Home on Overhill

Few eclectic homes have a façade as distinctive as this home designed by John Allen Boyle, who was also the architect for The Mansion on Turtle Creek. Denny and Connie Carreker have been relentless about renovating and protecting this home, including putting the original parcels of land back together.

Scott Lyons Designed Home

This Highland Park home, one of the most important homes designed by Scott Lyons (and one much loved by the community) will be given to an important foundation so that it may be preserved and used in much the same way it has been over the last 50 years.

Fooshee and Cheek Designed Home

Jack Knox has made one of the most dramatic revisions on a home on Armstrong Parkway people now love.

Many Successful Preservation Efforts in Dallas

There have been many successful preservation efforts in Dallas. The nation’s most successful neighborhood revitalization occurred in what are now Dallas’ historic districts. The city possesses an abundance of conservation districts. We’ve had mixed success with a teardown ordinance – that may have created more acrimony than value. But most importantly, I’m seeing increasing interest in architecture and preservation. And I’m heartened by these two new preservation tools, with their potential to further protect architecturally significant homes and to assist homeowners in preserving great properties into the future.

Austin stone house becomes available in the same 125-home neighborhood of Mayflower Estates

A spectacular home designed by Highland Park and Preston Hollow architect Hal Yoakum just came on the market, only one estate home away from the Bushes. 

While President Bush bought a good home, if only he could have waited.  This Austin stone home has a similar configuration but with more square footage, and is better sited on more land and is offered at a much lower price than where the Bush home traded.

The home has an informal and rugged feel, with stone or wide plank wood floors.  The 750-square foot informal living room with pecked cypress wood walls and a fireplace as tall as a person, expresses warmth and distinction.

Despite its informality, the home’s proportions and quality of finishes are stately. The 27-foot long dining room can seat 50 for a formal dinner. A master bedroom suite boasts a presidential sized office and equally lavish executive bathroom. The master bathroom has been recently renovated. A wall of windows and door look out to a totally private courtyard framed in green.   

On the second floor are two guest bedrooms and an enormous informal living area, a perfect recreation area.  Like the President’s house, this home has a minimally attached two-story guesthouse.  This one, however, looks over the large swimming pool with a diving rock and extensive gardens.  

This Preston Hollow Home is Larger and on More Land Than President Bush’s Home

The home is somewhat larger than the Bush home, and sits on a considerably larger lot – 1.288 acres – with phenomenal views of the ascending 50 acres of treetops of the two adjacent estates. Offered at $2,695,000, it’s remarkably less expensive than the home the President purchased a few months ago.

One of Original Grand Preston Hollow Houses Designed by Highland Park Architect Hal Yoakum

This Austin stone home designed by Highland Park architect Hal Yoakum is one of the one of the early grand houses built in the Preston Hollow estate area, located right in the heart of Mayflower Estates.  The home’s style and elegance complements the country lane feel of this neighborhood. 

Home Surrounded by Neighboring Lakes, Greenbelts, and Estate Properties

Estate Property buffers view of nearby homes.  Only over a rear garden wall will you see a glimpse of a roof top of a nearby home nested down on a lower perch above the creek and a three acre private greenbelt accessed by a foot bridge. 

Across Hollow Way, there’s a stunning view of a small private lake, with swans and ducks, surrounded by expansive lawns and extensive acreage filled with private gardens.  On the other side of the home is one of architect Cole Smith’s favorite homes that he designed. Within this small neighborhood, you have some of the most prominent Dallas families in both large and very subtle homes.

Mayflower Estates Home Exudes Value

This home represents such an excellent example of Mayflower Estates. The place is large, graceful and subtle, with glass windows and doors looking out over what seems like endless pathways, courtyards and small gardens.  For more information on this early estate home with real value go to Featured Listings.