Lawrence Modern home

Sargent “Space Home” for sale in Topeka

Los Angeles and San Francisco have their Eichler homes, Kansas City has its Drummonds, and thanks to a little-known builder named John “Church” Sargent, Lawrence, too, has its modern subdivisions. Take a drive down Ousdahl Rd. between 19th and 21st and south of 9th St. on Madeline and Murrow Ct., and you can’t miss them.

Dubbed “Space Homes” when they were built in the mid-1950s, these simple, modest houses channeled California Modern style architecture at affordable prices—most sold for around $15,000 or less—to the Lawrence masses. They have held their value: I recently closed a sale on a 1955 Sargent on Murrow Ct. for $125,000, a net plus when adjusted for inflation.

Space Homes landed so long ago that hardly anyone remembers where they came from. Church Sargent died in 1974, and his Topeka-based business, Jayhawk Construction Co., no longer exists. But Lawrence Modern has been able to piece together enough fragments to form a picture of the man, his company, and his houses.

John “Church” Sargent at his company office sometime in the 1950s

Church Sargent was born in 1897 in Kansas City, Kan., and partnered with his father in the cut stone business in Topeka before World War II. He developed a reputation as a savvy businessman, able to adapt quickly to market signals. When the Great Depression put a virtual freeze on the demand for cut stone, he formed Jayhawk Construction in 1941, positioning himself for the construction boom that followed the war.

Jayhawk Construction’s initial offerings were diminutive ranch houses—about 700-800 sq. ft.—with two bedrooms and one bath. They sold well, but by the mid-1950s, demand fell, and Church was forced to offer another product to remain competitive. (During the building boom, he faced fierce competition from the Moore Bros. tract houses on the other side of town.) Like Joe Eichler and other successful builders at the time, he decided to hire a modern architect to boost curb appeal.

He hired the services of James R. Cushing, an architect who designed military housing and other buildings for the U.S. Air Force and was the lead partner in the Topeka-based firm Cushing, Servis, Van Doren & Hazard.

Interior view of Sargent house on Murrow Ct. in Lawrence

While Cushing’s designs don’t stand out like the marvelous Eichlers, which benefited from a stable of well-known modern architects, they share many of the same grammatical elements: post-and-beam construction, open floor plans, vaulted ceilings illuminated by clerestory light, and honest expression of materials. Their differentiation comes from the architect’s stylistic variations on the theme.

A mid-1950s Topeka newspaper article reports: “It is remarkable that, while the interiors of the houses are the same plan, the exteriors would not be recognized as being the same house. There is a wide difference in roofs, the entrances, finishes, and the colors which make them all seem individually designed homes.”

Kitchen and dining area

Each architect-penned Space home had three bedrooms located on one side of the house across from two bathrooms with a kitchen, dining area, and living room. Kitchens were equipped with modern appliances and metal cabinets (with boomerang pulls) manufactured by the Youngstown Cabinet Company, now highly sought after. The exterior siding was board and batten made of thick pecky cypress, pine, or redwood. Roofs were flat and/or low-sloping A-frames with tar and gravel. A private patio was included on the side or back of the house. These houses are very efficiently designed, practical, and down-to-earth. Though small compared to today’s houses, their openness makes them feel larger, and they are also easy to maintain, making them eminently livable.

It is unfortunate that many Space Homes have been altered over the years with gable roofs, covered-up or removed siding, and other additions that are not sensitive to the original design. But a number of well-preserved examples remain scattered around town. Take a short trip to see them and prepare to enter a time warp when Space Homes invaded Lawrence.

906 Murrow Ct. Flickr photos, click here.
For exterior shots of various Space Homes in Lawrence, click here.

—Tom

Alfred Caldwell taking in the scenery at the Domer residence in Baldwin, Kans., in 1993.

During the early post-World War II period, Lawrence might have seemed far from the centers of innovative modern architecture — Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Philadelphia. In fact, Lawrence was very connected intellectually to these cities and the towering geniuses of modernism—Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, among others—because KU’s program in architecture had turned modern in the 1920s through the influence of Professors George Beal, Joe Kellog, and later through the leadership of Professors John C. Morley and Curtis Besinger. Wright was particularly influential on the school, having befriended George Beal, who went to Taliesin West in the mid-1930s during the summer to collaborate with Wright. Wright then frequently stopped in Lawrence on his annual caravans from Taliesin in Wisconsin to his new winter quarters called Taliesin West near Phoenix. Besinger worked for Wright for 17 years, leaving the fellowship as a senior apprentice, and he not only taught Wrightian principles of modern design but also focused on Japanese architecture, which had influenced Wright’s thinking so much. His book, Working with Mr. Wright: What It Was Like, is a revealing Cambridge University Press publication that everyone interested in Wright should read. Morley, a frequent traveler to the European centers of modernism, made many connections for the school, particularly in Denmark and Scotland, where he taught on Fulbright fellowships and received additional training in modern urban design. From about 1925 to 1975, there was no one on the KU faculty who was not a “modern” architect.

As a result, dozens of young architects with modern aesthetics, technologies, and building processes graduated from KU during that key 50-year period. They flooded growing architectural firms in Topeka, Lawrence, Wichita, Kansas City, and St. Louis. They built a gigantic array of new structures that followed the tenets of architecture laid down by their professors, who promulgated modern thinking in studios and classrooms. It was impossible for these graduates to imagine building anything but modern buildings until the smoky pretensions of post-modernism began to creep into the plains during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The work of a generation of KU graduates faces the jeopardies of time and ignorance today, and our website brings that work before the public for evaluation and appreciation. These architects are “shadow figures” of modernism, architects who will never be well known but who made significant contributions to our Midwestern architectural landscape.

Main Pavilion, Eagle Point Park, Dubuque, Iowa 1934. Architect: Alfred Caldwell

The subject of shadow figures of modern architecture is important because there were geniuses among them, some of whom came to KU to teach and lecture. One frequent visitor in the late 1980s and in the 1990s was Alfred Caldwell who was a colleague of Wright, Mies, Craig Ellwood, Hilbesheimer, and other leaders. Caldwell was a visiting professor at KU in 1980 and stayed at our home in south Douglas County on a number of occasions. I worked with him from 1980 until the late 1990s. He retired as the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Professor of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago only two years before he died at the age of 95. He was a modern master, the last one, yet he, like our Lawrence architects, is not very well known because the stars overshadowed everyone. Slowly we are learning about them. Architecture could not have done without them!

“Farmhouse” designed by Alfred Caldwell, Bristol, Wisconsin, 1948

For a short account of Caldwell’s work and to see some of the fabulous landscapes and houses he designed, look at the article “The Last Master,” published in Inland Architecture magazine. It’s a synopsis of the book Alfred Caldwell: The Life and Work of a Prairie School Landscape Architect, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1997.

—Dennis Domer

Herman Miller Eames Aluminum Group chair

I confess. I have an addiction to modern chairs. I have accumulated so many that my wife, Terri, often shakes her head in exasperation whenever I bring home my latest acquisition or junk find. “Why did you buy that?” and “Where are you going to put it?” have become the reflex responses. It all started one day in 1998 at an antique store in Helena, Arkansas, while I was visiting a friend in Louisiana. Two seasoned young men were taking a break from refinishing turn-of-the-century furniture, and one of them was sitting in the chair pictured above. I had no idea what the chair was, who made it, or even where I was going to put it, but the unusual shape caught my eye. I asked them if I could give it a spin. One said okay. The chair was surprisingly comfortable. I knew it wasn’t for sale, but I offered $50 cash on a whim anyway. Both quickly declined, saying, “Oh no, it isn’t for sale — this is our sitting chair!” I pressed again to no avail and left, but one of the men followed me out to my truck and said, “We’ll take it.” I loaded it and began my journey back to Lawrence. Little did I know the chair would lead to an obsession with midcentury architecture and, ultimately, to our current home on Owens Lane. When I got back to Lawrence, I showed the chair to a neighbor who confirmed it was an Eames Aluminum Group chair made by a furniture company called Herman Miller. I later learned this model was first released in 1958 and is still sold by the company. It became my office chair at work.

Eames 670/671 Lounge Chair and Ottoman in its natural habitat

Shortly after the Aluminum Group chair purchase, Terri and I were looking through a magazine and saw an Eames 670/671 Lounge Chair and Ottoman. She said, “Oh, I really like that.” I gasped at the price, however, and said I would never spend that much money on a chair. (A new one from Herman Miller costs more than $5,000.) A couple weeks later, I was driving down an alley in Old West Lawrence and spotted an original (Rosewood) Eames 670/671 lounge chair and ottoman near a pair of trash cans. I couldn’t believe it. The leather was ruined, but the shells were in excellent condition. I had them recovered by an upholstery shop in Kansas City for under $1,000. The chair is still in our living room. It’s supremely comfortable, and the smell of the leather and exotic rosewood shells makes sitting in it all the more pleasurable.

Eames 670/671 Lounge Chair and Ottoman & plywood lounge chair

After these two very fortunate furniture finds, I began to scour every garage sale, yard sale, and estate sale in Lawrence on the hunt for more modern furniture. Our home is now filled with vintage furniture and objects — Hans Wegner chairs and tables, George Nelson bubble lamps, an Isamu Noguchi coffee table, pieces by Charles and Ray Eames, and other mod stuff. To make a long story short, my chair fetish sparked an interest in modern design and eventually led to the home we currently live in. It also led to Lawrence Modern. They (the chairs) opened up many doors (literally) for me to meet many wonderful people, photograph beautiful houses, and learn more about our rich history of modernism here in Lawrence.

—Tom