Design of 1950s beloved
Frank Austin moved to the Valley from California a few years ago and found he loved the area’s Midcentury architecture.
Last September, the architecture aficionado bought the historic home of Frederick Weaver, who designed some of Phoenix’s iconic mid-20th-century buildings including Arizona State University’s Hayden Library in Tempe.
Austin paid about half a million dollars for the 1951 home in Phoenix’s Encanto Vista neighborhood and then spent another $100,000 renovating it. The Midcenturycool house with brick interior walls and wood ceilings is part of this year’s Modern Phoenix week tours.
“When I went to the open house, I met Fred Weaver’s daughter there,” Austin told me. “She told me about the house they moved away from in the 1980s. I was hooked.”
He worked with a contractor and designed much of the renovation himself, incorporating key designs from the era including chevron patterns and 1950s-era fixtures.
Phoenix really began to grow in the 1950s due to the advent of affordable air-conditioning. The Valley’s architecture from the era didn’t really start to draw a lot of fans until more recently.
Full disclosure, I own a Midcentury home half a mile from Austin’s house. And when I bought it 13 years ago, the buzz about the era’s architecture was much quieter. The listing
agent for the house didn’t even mention it.
But thanks to the Modern Phoenix tour and innovative restaurateurs, rundown 1950s and ’60s buildings and homes across Phoenix have been renovated into to hip places to eat, drink, hang out and live.
“In Midcentury Modern architecture, form follows function,” said Sean Warfield, designer at Phoenix-based DWL Architects, originally called Weaver and Dover because it was founded by the architect of Austin’s home and Richard Dover in 1951.
“Weaver designed this (Austin’s) home, post-war, when designs were focused on the American family – marrying functional spaces with high design elements derived from Bauhaus and International styles, creating what we know as Midcentury Modern,” he said.
Alison King of Modern Phoenix told me the tour has been expanded since it started 13 years ago and is definitely drawing more people who want to see the Valley’s great architecture.
Besides the home tour on Sunday that includes Austin’s house, there was a Friday-night bus ride checking out Mesa’s neon signs at night. On Saturday, tours included “holy houses” showcasing some of the Valley’s Midcentury churches and architect Al Beadle’s cool “Beadle Box” buildings.
King said the number of tickets to Modern Phoenix events are capped so people who buy them can really see the properties and not be crowded out by too big of a group.
One of Weaver’s other Phoenix projects that has become an Arizona architecture icon – the former Valley National Bank building at 44th Street and Camelback Road – was part of Saturday’s Midcentury bank tour. He also designed Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport’s Terminal 2 building.
Many of the tours, including the one of Austin’s Weaver home, sold out early.
But Austin shared many before and after photos of his Weaver-designed home, so you can take a tour from your computer or phone.
I have already gleaned some ideas for my Midcentury home.