Rowley and Wilson worked for Meyer at his practice; Howard Meyer, Architect where both were involved in the Temple EmanuEl and 3525 Turtle Creek projects.
Meyer's philosophies were inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. While Meyer was enormously influenced by the Bauhaus, the most Wrightian project is the Morris Zale Residence at 440 Rheims Place Dallas, TX (Demolished in 2003). This residence, characterized by its distinctive horizontal layers of uneven stone and broad, overhanging eaves extending from the gently sloping roof, pays homage to the architectural style of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie homes.
As Meyer was influenced by Wright, so were Rowley and Wilson, and you can see the FLW design language in some of the Ju-Nel work. What Rowley and Wilson left with after working with Meyer is arguably more Wrightian Prairie and less European Modernist.
Carolyn Clark (1927-2014) was a family friend and patron of Mr. Meyer. An excerpt from her obituary: "In recent years, she championed the aesthetic preservation of the work of architect Howard Meyer, specifically the renovation and restoration of Temple Emanu-El, the crown jewel of mid-twentieth century architecture in Dallas."
The notable works section immediately following is from howardmeyer.org.
Completed in 1957, the Temple EmanuEl became the largest, most expensive, and most detailed synagogue of Meyer’s religious architecture repertoire.
Having worked on two other synagogues, Teferet Israel Synagogue (1938) and Temple Beth El (1938-48), Howard Meyer’s efforts in religious architecture reached their pinnacle through the creation of Temple EmanuEl. Completed in 1957, the Temple EmanuEl became the largest, most expensive, and most detailed synagogue of Meyer's religious architecture repertoire.
Temple EmanuEl reveals a sense of maturity in Meyer’s architecturally aesthetic through a culmination of his bourgeoning architectural experience and emphasized effort of collaboration on the project. Combing the efforts of structural engineers, landscape architects, lighting consultants, artists, and additional architects developed an architectural masterpiece that alone each could seemingly not have conceived. Consequently, Howard Meyer’s Temple EmanuEl achieves a resolutely cohesive international building within variety that lacks a “signature” appeal.
Comprised of discrete units, the massing of Temple EmanuEl exalts the series of interior programs. Through the chapel, sanctuary, the hall, offices, entertainment, meeting spaces, and a school, the forms clearly express the interior functionality of the building. Contrasting the seemingly sterometric forms of Temple EmanuEl, the encapsulated green spaces and arcaded garden create areas of retreat and reflection similar to what Meyer implements in the interior program. These enclosed courtyards provide an organic connection and a feeling of sanctity due to their positioning throughout the built environment. Providing division between the exterior inhabitable space and the interior of the temple is a glass-partitioning device. The playful nature of the varying textures of the glass panes allows for dappling and diffusion of light into the corridors. This natural lighting technique creates a unique ambiance that emanates the religious nature of the building.
3525 Turtle Creek provided Meyer the opportunity to create a large-scale housing complex to relay the forward thinking nature that was emerging as Dallas was defining itself as a city of class and style.
Emanating the ideals of luxury and finesse, the perspective interiors of 3525 Turtle Creek are poignant in respect to the perspective resident. Being the first truly modernist building in Dallas, 3525 Turtle Creek became a symbol of an emerging lifestyle in Dallas. Appreciative of the arts and progressive building motifs lent from European predecessors, the residents of 3525 Turtle Creek paved the way for the acceptability of the international-style in the context of a multi-story, multi-family environment.
Open concept-plans within the individual units of 3525 Turtle Creek allowed for an unconstructed sensibility in respect to entertaining. Similar to the concepts employed in the highly recognized Barcelona Pavilion and Tugenhaut House by Mies van der Rohe, floating partition serve as “walls” within the space. While the public interior space remain unrestrained within their unit and private spaces remain bound for privacy, Meyer clearly maintains his allegiance to the modernist principles of interior spatial programming.
Preservation Dallas, & The Dallas Architecture Forum. (1997, November). Howard Meyer: Temple Emanu-El and Other Works. Dallas: Preservation Dallas.
While practitioners of the International Style, such as Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, elevated the exposure of structure and “weightlessness,” Meyer strove to balance the conflicting tendencies of maintaining spaciousness while providing substance.
Built in 1951 for Mr. and Mrs. Ben Liphsy in Dallas, Texas, the Nakoma Residence would come to symbolize Howard Meyer’s cohesive architectural aesthetic. Having toured the most acclaimed Modernist residences and having met Le Corbusier himself in 1928, Meyer had a significant and unusual education that allowed him an immersion into the modernist aesthetic. As a result. Meyer had cosmopolitan perspective that many American architects of the time lacked. The principles of the International Styles would become prevalent in the Meyer’s designs through his free-flowing arrangement of space and simplicity in rectilinear forms; however, the architect felt the need for connectivity to site and greater substance that could not be found in the “lightness” of Modernist architecture. As much as Meyer admired Le Corbusier and his Toward a New Architecture (1921), he additionally borrowed from the craftsman-centric and honesty-to-materials of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Through Meyer’s wealth of knowledge regarding the International Style and his prevailing interest in indigenous materials, the Nakoma Residence comes to be an adept reconciliation of Modernist expressed in indigenous materials to be in harmony with the local circumstance.
In 1956, Meyer brought about the realization of a residence for Mr. and Mrs. Milton Tobian. Employing International Style vocabulary, the Rockbrook Residence relies heavily on a palette of rectilinear forms in consonance. While the planar nature of the architectonic forms provides a sense of stasis, the dynamic nature of mature live oaks and other surrounding forms of vegetation visually provides a harmonious arrangement of the built environment and nature.
Nestled under the canopy of oak boughs, the flat roof overhangs complement the natural shading structure of the trees. The idea of analogous, man-made and natural structures becomes evident at the Rockbrook Residence and later becomes a motif throughout many of Meyer’s pieces.. The use of sunshades, porches, pagodas, and other forms of man-made shading devices requisite in mediating the Texas climate.
With the completion of this Rockbrook Residence, reveals a progression within his architectural aesthetic. Whereas Meyer’s Nakoma Residence illustrates a strict adherence to Modernist principles in respect to materials, the Rockbrook Residence begins to convey a greater responsiveness to the indigenous material palette. Composing soft Mexican brick and redwood posts and beams against large expanses of glass, Meyer portrays a domestic project decorous of the North Texas location.
Clark, C. (2010, April 29). Regarding Architect Howard Meyer. Interview presented at Howardmeyer.org.
Howard R. Meyer, architect, was born in New York City on February 17, 1903, the son of Jewish immigrants Emile and Estelle (Freund) Meyer. He studied architecture at Columbia University and graduated in 1928. In 1926, while still a student, he worked in the office of William Lescaze, then one of the leading modern architects on the East Coast. Subsequently, he worked for well-known eclectic architect Bertram G. Goodhue. Meyer married Schon Landman on October 16, 1928; the couple had one son. Inspired by his work in Lescaze's office, Meyer embarked on a yearlong trip to Europe to see the works of the leading modernists. He met Le Corbusier and visited the recently completed Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart. In 1930–31 he supervised the construction of the Albanian-American Institute of the Near Eastern Foundation in Kavajë, Albania, for the New York architectural firm of Thompson and Churchill. He returned to New York after completing the project and in 1932 founded a joint practice with Morris B. Saunders which specialized in interior design and remodeling work.
In 1935, lured by the prospect of work, Meyer moved to Dallas. There in the late 1930s and early 1940s he designed a series of small modern houses, including the Sanger house (1937), the Rose house (1938), and the Zale house (1939). These structures, built in a modified version of the International Style, featured brick and redwood exteriors with open, free-flowing spatial plans. Meyer repeated these themes in his two most important houses, for clients Charles Storey and Ben Lipshy, both built in the late 1940s. These houses, less formal than his earlier work, represent Meyer's attempt to synthesize Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture and the International Style and at the same time to develop an idiom that would respond to the harsh Texas climate. Perhaps the best example of his later style is Temple Emanu-El in Dallas (1953–59); in it Meyer collaborated with noted West Coast architect William W. Wurster, sculptors Gyorgy Kepes and Octavio Medellin, and artist Anni Albers, for a work of unusual sophistication and richness. In 1959 the American Institute of Architects awarded Meyer its award of merit in recognition of work on Temple Emanu-El. During his last years Meyer worked on an extensive renovation of the Lipshy house, now renamed the Clark-Lipshy House, which won an award from the Greater Dallas Preservation League. In addition to his architectural practice, Meyer also served as a consultant to the Public Housing Administration in Fort Worth and Atlanta from 1962 to 1968 and on the Greater Dallas Planning Council from 1967 to 1968. He died of a heart attack in Dallas on January 10, 1988.
Credit | TSHA
In the late 1980's, as his architectural practice was ending and his archive was being transferred to the collection of the University of Texas Alexander Architectural Archive, Meyer's past client Carolyn Clark worked with Dallas filmmaker Jim Murray to produce a short film devoted to Meyer's life and work. The film project was completed in rough form in 1991 but the project lay dormant for a number of years until reinitiated in the spring of 2009 by Mrs. Clark. Working with filmmaker J. Mitchell Johnson and architect W. Mark Gunderson, AIA a new film has been made to current standards which revises major portions of the orginal material and utilizes outtakes unseen in that film.
In recent years, she championed the aesthetic preservation of the work of architect Howard Meyer, specifically the renovation and restoration of Temple Emanu-El, the crown jewel of mid-twentieth century architecture in Dallas.
Carolyn Clark, patron / producer of this film, lived in two exceptional residences in Dallas designed by Howard Meyer- 9612 Rockbrook and 5381 Nakoma. The second residence was designed for the Lipshy family and was carefully restored to original condition in the last years of Meyer's life with his consultation and direction.
Tomorrow’s House (1945) is an out-of-print publication co-authored by Henry Wright, the Managing Editor of Architectural Forum, and George Nelson, a polymath who served as a consultant for the magazine (he is most known for his role as the Director of Design for Herman Miller, a position he began the following year). Both men were self-proclaimed modernists and aimed to synthesize the most economic and usable techniques and materials for building a post-war home. The objective for Tomorrow’s House wasn’t to advertise space-age inspired home design of the future, but instead remind homeowners, architects, and developers to re-center residential designs back toward the needs of those who will actually be using the spaces for living.
Credit | eamesfoundation.org
Co-Author George Nelson with Charles Eames
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