Icons Only: Fay Jones’s Former Protégé Revives a Rare Relic Influenced by FLW’s Usonians

Welcome to Icons Only, a series about loving restorations of historically significant homes.

In 2021, Fayetteville, Arkansas, architect David McKee and his clients were finishing up a renovation when they approached him with an unusual question. They’d bought a nearby Fay Jones–designed home to preserve it, but the 1956 relic, an early commission for the prolific Arkansas modernist, was almost a teardown, with a sagging roof, water damage, and enough holes in the ceiling to give a gang of raccoons easy access. Plunging into the restoration now felt too overwhelming. Did David know anyone who might want to buy the home and revive it?

The local architect and principal of an eponymous firm had plenty of reasons to want to find the right buyer. David worked with Jones for 16 years until the architect’s 1997 retirement. He started as Jones’s apprentice in the ’80s after graduating from the University of Arkansas, where Jones had been one of the first five graduates from the architecture program. Jones himself was an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright. He joined Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship and became a professor at the University of Arkansas in 1953, and throughout the ’50s and early ’60s was the go-to architect for University of Arkansas faculty houses. His Richard D. and Alma Brothers House, designed for the school’s prestigious Schola Cantorum founder, and his wife, an opera singer and professor, blends Jones’s organic aesthetics with a rarity in his work: characteristics based on Wright’s Usonian principles. Historic but in disrepair, the home’s value lay mainly in its acre-plus site just blocks from the university’s Razorback Stadium.

David and his wife, Alice, pondered possibilities for potential buyers until their 33-year-old son Tyler stunned them by saying, "We should buy it!" He proposed he and his wife, Ashley, go in on a joint purchase with his parents to restore the Brothers House as a short-term rental. The idea made sense: David knew the original owners from his university days and had managed transitions between later buyers as part of his work with Jones. For years, David designed and renovated properties the "Fay Way," as in, according to his mentor’s style and approach. Plus, he’s passionate about preserving Jones’ legacy and is the only of his associates still living. "I think the house wanted us to be there," Alice says.

Jones designed the layout to incorporate the three primary areas of Usonian homes—a living space encompassing a library and music room, an open-plan kitchen and dining area, and small bedrooms and baths along a narrow corridor. A fieldstone chimney at the heart of the house is rotated 45 degrees to the horizontal roofline, aligning it with the cardinal directions. The original gold foil ceilings may have been a nod to eccentric modernist Bruce Goff, who hired Jones to teach at the University of Oklahoma in the early ’50s, introduced him to Wright, and became his other great inspiration.

The basement studio initially required walking around the house to enter from the southwest elevation, but that changed when Jones designed an addition to accommodate Richard’s mother in 1968, adding a staircase of layered fieldstone that offers indoor access from the entry and gives the sense of descending into the earth. The remodel also included a bump-out that opened the kitchen to the adjacent bedroom, transforming it into a dining area.

In the late 2000s, David designed a steel stanchion-and-cable balustrade to replace the rotting wood railings and deck on the original balcony for the then owner, who was based abroad and requested that David’s children, Max, Marya, and Tyler, serve as rent-free "house sitters" while they attended University of Arkansas. According to Alice, one of Tyler’s motivations for reviving the Brothers House might have been to repair any damage he potentially caused when he lived there. "We occasionally had to remind Tyler and Ashley that it was a restoration, not a remodel," she says.

The McKees knew they’d need to start by investing in unseen yet critical upgrades for the electrical, plumbing, and mechanical systems. Although they agreed on consensus decision-making, David went rogue during the roof replacement. After removing the shingles, he decided the decking needed to go too—and didn’t stop there. The architect and mason tore down the original chimney, which had always leaked, and rebuilt it with rafters and cross beams at a cost of nearly $20,000. "I did all the flashing myself, so there’s nobody to blame but me if it leaks now," says David. He and Tyler made sure to maintain the roof’s jackknife edge and toothlike detailing under the fascia—a signature Jones element that’s repeated in the cabinets, countertops, and built-in seating he designed inside.

The family aimed to keep fundamental elements of Jones’ interiors—floor-to-ceiling windows and corner-butted panes, and natural materials like wood and stone, for example—while making updates that would enhance the existing spaces for people staying there today. "Fay wasn’t offended by new owners wanting to change things in a house that he’d designed for the way they would use the space," says David. The team updated the wood-paneled bathrooms, removing a "creepy" Jacuzzi and bidet to open up floor space and create room for a walk-in shower. For storage, local carpenters Russ Mavis and Johnny Ridgeway repurposed the corner cabinets salvaged when the McKees closed up the kitchen wall to regain the third bedroom.

The McKees also traded the damaged flooring throughout most of the home for vinyl plank in a blonde wood pattern. They skimmed and painted over the water-damaged foil ceiling, but kept the wood trim that accentuates the surface. They converted the former music room into a dining space with a hexagonal table designed by Jones, and removed a built-in seat at the kitchen counter, replacing it with bar stools.

After completing the restoration this March, the McKees opened the Brothers House to short-term residents on Airbnb and other rental platforms. In May, the city of Fayetteville recognized the McKees’s project with its 2024 Historic Restoration Award. "We had intimate knowledge of the home for so long, all of its foibles and its positives," says Alice. "I don’t think anyone else could have done what we did."

Top photo by Liz Sanders

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Project Credits:

Architect of Record: David W. McKee Architect, PLLC

Builder/General Contractor: David McKee Construction/McKee Properties

Landscape Design: David McKee Construction/McKee Properties

Cabinetry Installation & Repurpose: Russ Mavis and Johnny Ridgeway

Roofing: NWA Roofing