The house was contemporary by modern standards, and it spoke a Florida dialect of California “Eichler” that was popular in the ’50s and ’60s. It shared its vernacular with only a few other houses in Ponte Vedra Beach. It stood out from its surroundings while at the same time it seemed to disappear entirely. Some driving by would divert their gaze entirely. They preferred, instead, the road ahead or the houses on the ocean side of the Boulevard. Our father, architect Byron G. McIntyre, designed the house to reflect the age in which it was built, 1970.
The enclosed courtyard under the elevated perpendicular cedar-shingled roofline had three sets of five vertical concrete block openings on the south, east and north walls. These breeze block “footprints in the sand,” as we called them, were part of the building’s passive ventilation, and when the conditions were right, they would contribute to a whirlwind effect, by design, helping drive the sea breeze trapped by the roof-front down through the sliding screen doors and into the living room, hall and gallery. There, the breeze might encounter closed doors. It would be forced through the bedrooms on the north and south ends of the house before exiting through the screened back porch on the lagoon side of the property.
The breeze through the house could be controlled by opening or closing the bedroom doors, the gallery doors, the front screen door, or the sliding pocket door to the kitchen. The courtyard became a visual extension of the living room through two floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows. The height of the ceiling was a conservative 11 feet. It was one of the tallest living rooms in PV at the time. The house was designed to be experienced from the inside out and was certainly modest by today’s standards.
But not everyone agreed with the appropriateness of our father’s design for Ponte Vedra Boulevard. It was, by definition, a work of art, and we didn’t just live in it, we lived through it. Our father was able to accomplish something that only a handful of architects are ever able to do functionally and practically. He exhibited total artistic freedom in designing his own residence.
Toward the very end of the school year in 1971, on Mrs. Mickler’s morning bus, an older rider turned in my direction and leaned over the back of his seat. He asked me directly, “What’s it like to live in the ugliest house in PV?” Summer vacation was only days away. Kids can be ruthless and growing up in PV was sometimes tough.
My response wasn’t very well thought out but apparently my words hit their mark. “About the same as it is looking at your face.” Did I just fling an insult, or did I criticize my father’s design? The answer really didn’t matter. It was my first fight. I thought we were just using words, but my new adversary had other ideas and his punch landed hard. Mrs. Mickler caught the disturbance in the overhead mirror above her steering wheel and slowed the bus to a crawl. That was enough to get our attention and stop things from escalating.
In all honesty, it was not a fair question. Ugliness, and for that matter, beauty, are always subjective. If my words mirrored his critique, and if he had heard his own observation reflected in my split-second response, then that was on him. Or at least that’s what I convinced myself, however irrationally, as I held my upper left arm where his fist had made contact. Others had certainly expressed similar thoughts since we had moved in, but none with such directness, and certainly not with such determination to bruise.
Architecture in Northeast Florida in 1970 was establishing its own pattern language as graduates of the University of Florida College of Architecture and Allied Arts began making their mid-career marks in their chosen communities. Slogans like “Florida architects plan Florida buildings” had resonated since becoming popular under Dean William T. Arnett in the mid-1950s.
Dean Arnett headed a faculty in Gainesville of more than 40 artists, builders, planners and architects in the college, and was himself an architect by profession. He had held the position since 1946 when he returned to the university after serving in the Army for five years during World War II. The 1954 university yearbook, volume 44, tells us the history verbatim.
The College of Arts and Sciences might have been the heart of the university since 1852, but the College of Architecture and Allied Arts was active and growing. The Gargoyle Society connected various building construction fields with industry combining “practical knowledge and valuable business contacts” across the state. Ivan Smith was a prominent member in 1928 before receiving his Bachelor of Architecture in 1929.
In 1941, he became a founding partner of Reynolds, Smith & Hills Architects in Jacksonville. By 1954, UF encouraged civic engagement by example. Dean Arnett led the Bureau of Architectural and Community Research and the Inter-Departmental Graduate Faculty in Community Planning. In his spare time, his hobby was principally his own house with roll-back walls he designed to take advantage of the best qualities of the sub-tropic Florida climate. Florida architects plan Florida buildings.
Building construction and lumber merchandising were growing joint activities at the college into the 1960s. Furniture design and interiors became specialized fields. By the 1970s, the UF graduates under Arnett were career professionals co-mingling with other architects from other schools, each with their own well-documented aesthetics and influences. Bill Morgan graduated from Harvard, Ted Pappas from Clemson and Taylor Harwich from the University of Pennsylvania. They all settled with others in Northeast Florida as artists in their own right, and as architects by profession.
Bill Morgan brought to the region his extensive interest in prehistoric architecture in the eastern United States. Ted Pappas began “breaking open the box,” creating lasting legacies through vision and leadership. Taylor Harwich extended the roots of the German Bauhaus through aesthetic associations to Josef Albers and his work at Black Mountain College and Yale.
It’s not difficult to visualize the architectural legacy printed on the outside of the jigsaw puzzle box. All the pieces are intact, and it only takes one issue of The Florida Architect, the official Journal of the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects, January/February 1970, Volume 20, No. 1, to find the four corners of the puzzle and begin working around the edges.
In his Report from the Regional Director, Alan Sander writes: “The environment, its decay and death have become the issue of this decade. Overpopulated cities, underfed humanity, pollution of air and water are being discussed in every living room across the country. In Florida, we have had the problems brought home by controversy on the Cross-Florida Barge Canal and the Everglades Jetport. The AIA Board of Directors set as one of their priorities in public policy the solution of the problems of ecology for a viable human environment.”
Fifty-six years ago, these thoughts set the tone for “action following up rhetoric.” These issues from half a century ago are still regularly discussed around kitchen tables.
Alan Sanders continues. “As planners we must educate our clients in the advantages of the most efficient methods available to obtain ecological balance. We must work to clean up our communities. We must work with politicians to see that the proper laws are passed and the money properly spent to make our cities decent places to raise children. We must use our expertise to design a better America, a better world.”
The report concludes with a quote by Adlai Stevenson: “We travel together, passengers on a little space ship; dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil and committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work … the love we give our fragile craft.”
For architects and their families, Sunday drives are never just Sunday drives; they are architectural outings. Our house at 556 Ponte Vedra Blvd. was a regular stop on the circuit for other architects and their families. The vacant lot next door made pulling off the road for a photograph that much easier.
On our excursions, our father would begin by telling us about what we were about to see; about to experience. He was a state director of the Florida Association of the AIA, and architects are always close-knit peers and professional colleagues sharing news on interesting projects. Many followed the advice of those before them and were active leaders in their communities. Our father served as a member of the Ponte Vedra Zoning District through the 1970s and up into the mid-‘80s.
Ponte Vedra Beach has always had many distinctive and well-documented architect-designed homes, each being a milestone for the community. But as odd as it might sound, it wasn’t the extraordinary that attracted our father’s interest the most; it was the ordinary. It was the simple materials and how they were used in a utilitarian manner that influenced our view of contemporary aesthetics.
The arts were at the very core of our family identity. Both my brother, Scott, and I received BFAs from the Atlanta College of Art before the school was merged into the Savannah College of Art and Design to become SCAD Atlanta. Our father contributed greatly to our success, and he passed away peacefully this last Easter Monday while Scott and I were with him on either side of his bed. Three days earlier, in what would become his last full conversation, his final sentences ended with these words: “I’ve got the house in order. Now, it’s up to you to see what you can do with it.”
It was a perfect reflection on his life as a UF graduate, Gargoyle, and Ivan Smith Architect schooled in the importance of serving others in a vocation of impermanence. Time will always be an active participant in any material structure, and this becomes part of the guiding principles of excellence that makes this smartly casual place of all places, Ponte Vedra Beach, the magnet for success it has always been since 1928.
