When Joseph “Jody” Lahendro was newly married and living in South Richmond near the Huguenot Bridge in the early 1980s, he sometimes chatted with an elderly man who strolled through the neighborhood. Often, the topic was Lahendro’s rose garden. Then Lahendro discovered the man was an architect, as was he.
“Oh, you’re Bud Hyland,” Lahendro remembers exclaiming, after the man, Frederick “Bud” Hyland, introduced himself.
Hyland was retired by then, but in the 1950s and 1960s, he had played a central role as one of the few Richmond-based architects working in the Modern style. And before that, he had served an apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright.
Lahendro knew Hyland’s work, and he’d admired it, never knowing that the elder architect was a fellow rose enthusiast.
It’s fitting that Hyland didn’t introduce himself and mention his professional successes earlier, Lahendro said.
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“He was a very modest gentleman who talked mostly about plants,” said Lahendro, a historic preservation architect at the University of Virginia. “He was very casual.”
Today, though, as Midcentury Modern is enjoying a mini-renaissance, Hyland’s reputation is growing. Increasingly, Midcentury Modern aficionados and homebuyers are recognizing – and seeking – his work.
Hyland’s early years
Hyland, who was born in Champaign, Ill., in 1907, studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While there, he met his future wife, Ruth Hibbs, and in 1936, a year after they married, the couple moved to Richmond, Lahendro said. (Why Richmond? Ruth’s brother, Henry, led Richmond Professional Institute – now Virginia Commonwealth University – for 42 years, and she eventually began teaching art education there.)
Hyland served an apprenticeship as an architect with Richmond-based Carneal & Johnston. Then, in 1938, Wright accepted Hyland and his wife as apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship.
Hyland studied architecture (and prepared meals) at Wright’s estate in Spring Green, Wis., from 1938 to 1939, and afterward he returned to Richmond with Ruth to launch his solo career. The United States’ entry into World War II interrupted his plans though, Lahendro said.
Hyland was a construction supervisor for the Defense General Supply Center just south of Richmond before serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in China. He returned to Richmond in 1946 and opened a private architectural practice with an office at 210 East Franklin Street.
In 1949, he designed his first significant project: a house for Ruth and himself – the one near the river, where Lahendro met him decades later.
The house’s design reflects Wright’s influence, particularly with the Usonian houses Wright began designing for middle-income homeowners in 1936. Those shared details include a hidden front entry; a front elevation that features clerestory windows and reveals little of the house’s interior; a flowing, open floor plan; deep overhangs, and a love of natural materials, said Mary Harding Sadler, a historical architect and principal of Sadler & Whitehead Architects PLC.
But the Hyland house’s most significant Wright-like quality might be “its blending of interior and exterior spaces,” Sadler said. “The house is on a sloping site, so you can stand in the living room and look out through the expansive windows into the trees and landscape” beyond the house.
Hyland “used the house very wisely as publicity for his practice, and he started getting commissions for other houses in Richmond,” Lahendro said.
Midcentury, mid-career
As Hyland’s practice grew, his place in Richmond’s architectural record took root. Indeed, while the city’s love affair with the Colonial Revival raged on through the 1950s, Hyland established himself as the city’s first homegrown, Modern residential architect.
“Other well-known Modern landmarks in Richmond were designed by well-known, out-of-town architects who were brought here,” Sadler said. As examples, she cited Richard Neutra’s house for Walter and Inger Rice near the Windsor Farms subdivision, Charles M. Goodman’s designs for the Highland Hills subdivision in Bon Air, and Gordon Bunshaft’s design for the Reynolds Metals Company’s headquarters building in western Henrico County.
By contrast, Hyland worked almost exclusively in his adopted city, often on the leading, affluent edge of its suburban expansion.
In all, Hyland designed at least 24 houses in Greater Richmond, with sizes ranging from 1,800 to more than 6,000 square feet.
Among the standouts are two houses on Charmian Road in Richmond’s Hillcrest neighborhood, and a cluster of houses Hyland designed in the Westham neighborhood near River Road in western Henrico.
And Hyland’s largest project – a 6,600-square-foot house in western Henrico’s Drouin Hill neighborhood – is “as important as any of the true Midcentury Modern homes that exist in Richmond today,” said Andrea Levine, a real estate agent with One South Realty.
Hyland also worked on four commercial projects in Richmond, including the Bear Office Building at 2060 Monument Avenue and the Grove Avenue Apartments at 2100 Grove Avenue in the Fan District.
Hyland’s legacy in the midst of
a Modernist mini-renaissance
Compared to his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright, whose career spanned seven decades, Hyland’s career was relatively short. Ruth Hyland fell ill in the late 1960s, and Hyland semi-retired in 1970 to care for her. He retired fully in 1975.
Hyland differed from Wright in another important way: He was humble, and he listened closely to his clients’ needs.
“He was a gentleman, a lovely, thoughtful man with a wry wit,” Lahendro said. “He was considerate to his clients, and he wanted happy clients, unlike Wright. The fact that he was able to promote and produce Modern architecture in Richmond is remarkable, and it said a lot about the character and integrity of the man.”
In time, after he grew too old to maintain his house, Hyland offered to sell it to Lahendro and his wife. The Lahendros accepted his offer, and Lahendro worked with Hyland to make changes and additions that met Hyland’s approval.
“Unfortunately, he passed away before he could tour it,” Lahendro said. “But he saw pictures.”
Hyland died in 2002.
Today, as the Midcentury Modern style gains new fans among millennials, Hyland’s houses are becoming a sought-after commodity. “Two sales by original owners occurred just this year,” Levine said. “Interestingly, we are probably seeing the last of the original owners’ sales.”
Even so, the turnover rate is low, and the demand is high.
“It’s difficult to predict when the next one is coming, but if a buyer is intent on owning a Hyland-designed home, they need to be patient and ready to jump at the same time,” Levine said. “It could be tomorrow, or it could be two years from now.”
Happily, many of today’s buyers are updating Hyland’s houses with a light touch.
“There seems to be more respect for the architect’s intentions with the renovations occurring today,” Levine said. “It’s important to understand that yesterday’s trends differ from today’s. But the two can be blended to create a truly inspiring home.”
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