Paul Kieu
A new exhibit at the Hilliard Museum at the University of Lafayette explores the work of architect A. Hays Town, who built over one thousand homes all over the Southeast; pictured above is the home of Melanie and Michael McKenzie, which will be on view during tours led by the museum this summer.
In 2003, after living in Chicago for almost a decade, my husband and I returned South in an effort to cure an intense case of homesickness. Though we’d both been raised in Louisiana, our new home in Baton Rouge was unfamiliar territory. Hungry for vernacular architecture after years of dwelling in a large, urban landscape, I drove through town excitedly exploring the charming neighborhoods of our new home. I began to notice the beautiful “new but made to look old” houses dotting the leafy streets of town, and I was smitten. Being a design professional myself, I had a keen eye for detail and could tell immediately there was something different about the residential architecture of the Capital City. There was a depth to the design in the way the traditional wood windows were set into the jamb, the old brick weathering with the elements, shady porches and courtyards languishing beneath old live oaks, sugar kettle fountains providing the background music of nature…
I was captivated by the pervasiveness of this Creole style that had a sense of elegance and integrity, much more than a historic copycat. I soon discovered the man behind this visual feast was the renowned architect A. Hays Town. Over a career which spanned almost seventy years, he built over one thousand homes all over the Southeast, and even a few scattered from coast to coast and in the Caribbean. So important was the architect, in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Hilliard Museum at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (whose original building, still on the property today, was a Town design), the museum will provide an intricate look into his work and life, running June 15 through December 29, 2018. The exhibition, aptly named A. Hays Town and the Architectural Image of Louisiana, will display his sketches, drawings, photographs, models, vignettes of hand-selected art and furnishings, and most interestingly, oral stories on video of interviews with his homeowners, or “families,” as he fondly referred to them. Client relationships are really at the heart of the show, highlighting how beloved Mr. Town was by his clients and the adoration he gave them in return.
Laying the groundwork
Born in 1903 in Crowley, Louisiana, Town entered Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) and proceeded to graduate from Tulane University with a degree in Architecture. While living in New Orleans, he soaked up the architecturally rich built environment, and it became a part of his design DNA. Always a talented artist and skilled draftsman, Town had a pivotal opportunity to document historic buildings of importance for the WPA Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), a Works Progress endeavor by the U.S. Government to employ architects, artists, and craftsmen during the Depression years of the early 1930s. It was during this time that he observed first-hand the classical proportions of elegant antebellum homes, iconic millwork details, and the concepts of scale, balance, and symmetry. Along with his decidedly Modernist training at Tulane, Mr. Town was well equipped to embark upon a successful career, designing many notable commercial and governmental buildings all over Mississippi and Louisiana.
[Also read about Jim Dart's Preservation with Imagination in St. Francisville]
Over the course of forty years, his practice focused exclusively on commercial projects, such as the award winning Art Deco style Bailey School in Jackson, Mississippi and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development building, a handsome study in Modernism that catches my eye each time I pass it on I-110 in Baton Rouge. Mr. Town did design homes for friends and acquaintances in those years, but regarded these early endeavors as more hobby than avocation.
One of his first and most important residential commissions was for Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Heymann in 1936. A Lafayette businessman and entrepreneur, Heymann asked Town to design a house that was evocative of the region in France in which his wife was born. The Norman-style home, with unmistakable Art Deco and International Style elements, now serves as the Alumni Center for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In a pattern that would be repeated for the rest of his life, Hays Town and Maurice Heymann would remain lifelong friends and collaborate on many other projects in the region, such as the Oil Center in Lafayette.
A second act
In the early 1960s, when Mr. Town was approaching what other mere mortals would consider retirement age, he chose to devote himself almost completely to residential architecture. His early training with HABS —as well as his work during college with Richard Koch in New Orleans to catalog the restoration of Louisiana plantation homes Shadows-on-the-Teche and Oak Alley—laid the groundwork for his later embrace of historically accurate design. He was heavily influenced by Spanish and French architecture, developing a rich Creole-inspired style.
Paul Kieu
The home of Melanie and Michael McKenzie.
He found the close relationships he fostered with his clients fulfilling and residential design “a more satisfactory outlet for my talents.” Known for his legendary work ethic, Mr. Town often rose at 2 am, working until daylight hours when he could make his rounds and visit his “families” to inspect the progress of his projects. Clients placed immense trust in him and relied on his expert eye to consult on all aspects of their lives—furnishings, art, textiles—even the family dog should be a German Shepherd, per Mr. Town.
It is clear that Hays loved to shop, scouring his favorite vendors in New Orleans for antique furniture and art, old beams from a demolished factory or wood plank flooring rescued from an old train depot. During the 1960s and ‘70s, as New Orleans began to grow, many old warehouses and historic structures were lost to the wrecking ball in order to make room for shiny new high-rises springing up in the Central Business District. Town saw to it that many of these building materials were salvaged and given a second life in his designs. Rich with the patina of age and impossible to reproduce from contemporary goods, the old-growth wood with tight graining lent a tactile integrity to the feel of his homes. He called upon the talents of a cadre of building trade craftsmen, like Warren Grevemberg, who helped Town concoct his signature stained brick flooring; many of these craftsmen were Creoles from the Pointe Coupee Parish region, whose skills had been passed down through generations. Town depended on these artisans to execute his vision to the level of excellence he commanded.
“We don’t feel like we own the house. We are stewards of a piece of Louisiana history.”
In his elegant yet simple home, Town kept his office as a showroom/laboratory, presenting a life-sized model of what it “felt” like to live in a home designed by the master. Exterior brick walls were allowed to gather mildew and moss, wood was left in its natural unvarnished state to weather gracefully, and large flagstones displayed their time-worn elegance. This “benign neglect” created a comfortable environment, even better for rambunctious families with small children to inhabit without reservations.
Paul Kieu
Town specialized in comfortable environments, as seen in artist Chase Nelson's living room.
Mr. Town had an innate sense of proportion and scale, allowing him to turn out complete drawings and sketches quickly. These construction drawings were works of art themselves, and will be on display at the Hilliard exhibition. But the greatest benefit to owning a Hays Town house was getting a piece of the man himself. By all accounts, to know him was to love him. Gregarious with a gentle demeanor and prodigious talent, he treasured his client relationships, often attending weddings, funerals, and parties in their honor. He once said, “If you build a residence, you are always a part of the family.” However, he did not hesitate to reject a potential client if he felt he could not get along with them, making those who did pass muster cherish their membership in this exclusive fraternity that much more.
A living legacy
Time marches on and design trends come and go, even in a Town-designed home. Brown Formica countertops need to be updated with more durable stone. Bathrooms and closets need expanding, to which Town would pithily retort, “If you require a larger bathroom or closet, you spend too much time in there and you have too many clothes.”
Paul Kieu
Artist Chase Nelson renovated his Town home in 2016, keeping the architect’s ethos intact while incorporating pops of color—a cobalt blue to complement Town’s warm red-orange wood tones, inspired by imported Mexican tiles Nelson had chosen for his kitchen.
Still his work continues to draw fans from new generations. Many current owners profess to admiring a childhood friend’s home, finding out later it was designed by Town, and then embarking upon a mission to have one of their own someday. That was the case with Melanie McKenzie, who will open up the Lafayette home she and her husband own for tours during the exhibition later this summer. When asked what it’s like to live in an architecturally significant home, she remarked, “We don’t feel like we own the house. We are stewards of a piece of Louisiana history.” Interior elements such as 12” wide by 3” thick reclaimed wood plank floors, cypress cabinetry, and colorful Serapi rugs create a relaxed ambience. Views of the lush exterior landscape add to the interior sense of calm and comfort. “[It’s] the kind of feeling you get when you sink into a sofa and never want to get up,” said McKenzie.
[Read about more historic architecture in A Woodville House with a History]
Artist Chase Nelson was similarly enchanted by Town’s work growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, where Town designed many landmark homes. Nelson secured a Masters in Architecture and founded the Boyd & Nelson Architectural Design firm, but he ultimately left architecture for painting in 2000. His home in Lafayette, a Town design, flooded in 2016. As he renovated, Nelson kept the design ethos of the house intact while incorporating pops of color inspired by imported Mexican tiles, which Nelson had chosen for the kitchen walls. New cabinets in the adjacent scullery kitchen and library were painted a glossy, deeply pigmented blue. I was curious what he thought Mr. Town’s reaction would be to the injection of strong color—an unexpected but beautiful choice. “I really think he would agree that as an artist himself, the cobalt blue is a natural complement to the warm red-orange wood tones which envelope the interior floors and walls.” The Nelson home will also be on tour in conjunction with the Hays Town exhibition so curious visitors can make their own judgments.
The Town Touch
Hays Town’s influence is especially pervasive in South Louisiana but can also be seen in the entire southeast region. It would be easy to call him a revisionist and dismiss his style as nothing more than a facile regurgitation of the historic vernacular. This would ignore the essence of his work, which adhered faithfully in many ways to the tenets of modernism: simplicity of form, integrity of materials, lack of ornamentation, expanses of glass windows, blurred lines between inside and out, human-centered design. Town internalized the details of historic architecture, and it flowed gracefully from his pen to the paper, but his early Modernist training informed much of his work as well, both playing off of one another and creating an exceptional trademark style.
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Sketched in Town’s distinct hand above, the Heymann House still stands on the University of Louisiana at Lafayette campus, serving as the Alumni Center.
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The Heymann House, which now serves as the UL Alumni Center.
Dr. Carol McMichael Reese, guest curator for the Hilliard exhibition and professor at Tulane School of Architecture, sums up Town’s work and the goals of the exhibition as “nostalgia, memory, attachment to place, and regionalism, all which are rooted in the land, immersing the visitor in the style of Hays Town to create an indelible image of home in Louisiana, his cherished native land.”
Town maintained a deep and abiding love for Louisiana, calling it “the most beautiful of places I’d ever been,” though he’d traveled all over the world. His legacy has enhanced our state and region beyond measure. The exhibition at the Hilliard is a grateful homage to the gentleman architect who loved her first.
A. Hays Town and the Architectural Image of Louisiana will be on view from June 15—December 29, 2018 at the Hilliard Museum. hilliardmuseum.org.
This article originally appeared in our June 2018 issue. Subscribe to our print magazine today.
