E Fay Jones' Obituary
Mr. E. Fay Jones, 83 of Fayetteville, AR passed away August 30, 2004 in Fayetteville. He was born January 31, 1921 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas to Euine Fay and Candy Louise (Alston) Jones. He was a retired architect.
In 1990 he received the American Institute of Architecture's Gold Medal, its highest award. He was the first of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellows to win the medal. Prince Charles, whose criticism of some modern architecture had raised hackles in Britain, spoke admiringly of the Jones style at the awards ceremony. The award was presented by President George H. W. Bush.
In 2000, Mr. Jones's Thorncrown Chapel in the Arkansas Ozarks was voted the fourth best building of the 20th century after Wright's Fallingwater and New York's Chrysler and Seagram Buildings.
The architect's career spanned more than half a century, beginning with summers at Wright's Taliesin teaching compounds in Wisconsin and Arizona. There he perfected his skill as a draftsman and drew inspiration from the aging man?s ideas on organic architecture. He went on to become the best known of Wright's students.
Members of the American Institute of Architects in 1991 ranked Jones among the 10 most influential architects of the time. Others in the top 10 included I.M. Pei, Robert Venturi, Charles Moore and Michael Graves.
His most famous building, Thorncrown Chapel at Eureka Springs, was a reverse play on the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. It was inspired especially by Ste. Chapelle in Paris. The authors of "Architecture in North America Since 1960" described his method there: "At Thorncrown, he reverses the Gothic characteristic of a heavy compressive structure of stone and makes its inverse as a light tensile structure of wood." Robert Adams Ivy, Jr., in a biography of Jones, says, "This harmoniously unified masterpiece is arguably among the twentieth century's great works of art."
Mr. Jones won the Rome Prize Fellowship in 1980. He and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, who is known as Gus, returned to the American Academy there many times for lectures and visits during the ensuing years.
The Joneses were befriended early on by Edward Durrell Stone, a native of Fayetteville. Jones liked to tell the story of having lunch with Stone in New Orleans when the latter received a call from the White House notifying him that he had won the design contract for what would become the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Jones designed 135 residences and 15 chapels and churches in 20 states from California to Massachusetts and from Florida to Colorado. Most were in Arkansas. He designed an assortment of other structures including fountains, gardens, pavilions, and commercial buildings. He once designed an auto repair shop, but the brothers who owned the business fell out before it could be built. His first project was a honky tonk that became one of Fayetteville?s most popular. He collected his fee $10 to $20 a week at midnight every Saturday before the club's cash register was emptied.
Besides Thorncrown, his other well known sacred structures include the Mildred Cooper Chapel at Bella Vista, Arkansas, and the Marty Leonard Chapel at Fort Worth, Texas.
His work has been included in at least 32 books and studied in numerous university architecture programs. Thorncrown Chapel is featured in a fifth-grade geometry textbook in Texas.
He studied engineering two and a half years at the University of Arkansas, then earned a degree in the University's new architecture program headed by his friend John Williams in 1950. He received a master's degree in 1951 at Rice University in Houston. Two years earlier at an AIA convention in Houston, a chance encounter with Mr. Wright led to a lasting connection. His first Taliesin Fellowship was in 1953.
He taught architecture at the University of Oklahoma from 1951 to 1953. His mentor there was Bruce Goff, whose influence on the young man was considerable. The rest of his teaching career was at the University of Arkansas. He became the first dean of the newly created School of Architecture.
Mr. Jones flew dive bombers for the Navy in World War II. He spent 15 months in the Pacific and had some close calls, although he was never in combat. An American aircraft carrier once fired on him by mistake. When President George H. W. Bush presented the AIA Gold Medal to Mr. Jones at the White House, the two men compared notes on their war years. Mr. Bush, also a Navy pilot, was shot down by the Japanese and was rescued by an American submarine.
His wife Mary Elizabeth Jones, and two daughters, Janis Jones of St. Louis, Missouri, and Cami Jones of Austin, Texas survive him.
A memorial service will be announced at a later date.
Memorial contributions may be made to the charity of your choice.
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