Thorncrown Chapel Joins Architectural Icons

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Time stops when you step into Thorncrown Chapel, the airy glass jewel outside Eureka Springs designed by the late Fay Jones, former dean and professor emeritus of the University of Arkansas School of Architecture. The American Institute of Architects will recognize the timeless quality of Jones’ masterwork with the 2006 Twenty-five Year Award, given to architectural design that has stood the test of time.

With this award Jones’ Thorncrown Chapel joins a distinguished group of architectural landmarks. Other recipients of the AIA Twenty-five Year Award include Philip Johnson’s “Glass House” in New Canaan, Conn.; Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch in St. Louis; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, designed by Jones’ mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Thorncrown Chapel was Jones’ first chapel commission and propelled him to international stature. The chapel received an AIA honor award in 1981 and ranks fourth on the AIA’s list of top 10 buildings in the 20^th century. A member of the UA School of Architecture’s first graduating class and the school’s first dean, Jones chose to continue working and teaching in Fayetteville, designing 140 homes and 15 chapels and churches in 21 states across the United States. At a White House ceremony in 1990, he was awarded the highest professional honor an American architect can receive, the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects. Jones died at home on Aug. 30, 2004, and is survived by his wife Gus and two daughters.

“Fay Jones’ work continues to inspire faculty and students,” said School of Architecture Dean Jeff Shannon. “We were extraordinarily fortunate to have him working in our midst for so many years, and we are pleased to see this recognition of Thorncrown Chapel as a timeless work.”

In his biography of Fay Jones, architecture scholar and critic Robert Ivy praised Thorncrown as “arguably among the twentieth century’s great works of art.”

Jones’ design evolved from the site, eight heavily wooded acres in the Ozark hills. “It was a beautiful spot back in the woods,” he recalled in a 2003 interview. In order to build with minimal disruption, he developed a design made up of many small parts, with “no piece of the building larger than two men could carry along the pathway,” Jones said. The building’s structural members are 2 x 4s, 2 x 6s and 2 x 12s; larger structural elements such as trusses were assembled on the floor slab and raised into place. Jones confined the chapel’s footprint to 24 feet by 60 feet, soaring interior space 48 feet high. He employed a limited palette of materials: Southern pine, oak, native flagstone, steel, and 6,000 square feet of glass that frame ever-shifting patterns of light and shadow. The building was completed at a cost of $200,000 for client James Reed, a retired schoolteacher.

“I know Fay would be so pleased to be included on a list with all of his architectural heroes,” Gus Jones said, adding that they had visited most of the buildings on the list. Jones will accept the honor on behalf of her late husband at the Accent on Architecture Gala in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 11.

For the full list of Twenty-five Year Award recipients visit http://www.aia.org/twentyfiveyear_award.

Thorncrown Chapel is closed to the public in January and February. For directions and visiting hours, visit http://www.thorncrown.com/.