The legacy of architect Emery Young

Architect Emery Young, 83, a champion of modernist architecture, died in early January, leaving a legacy of beautiful homes across Fort Worth and Arlington that were and are as graceful as ballerinas.

His adherence to white box simplicity was deceptive, as in the wrong hands, it could be clumsy and loutish. Young’s deftness with volumes and integration of the landscape was impeccable.

“Modern architecture is the most difficult mode of architectural design to do well,” says Dallas-based architect Max Levy, who worked with Young when they were both on the payroll of Albert Komatsu in Fort Worth. Levy was a teen; Young was the lead designer.

“To be successful, a modern building’s composure, proportion, detail and relation to its setting must all be just so. Emery possessed a benevolent stubbornness in his pursuit of this type of design: the benevolence arose from his belief that modernism could lighten our lives; and the stubbornness was necessary to get us there,” Levy says.

After working for several local firms, including Wyatt C. Hedrick, Young struck out on his own in 1971, opening Emery Young Associates. He was willing to hire young architects with little or no experience. Architect Richard Wintersole’s first job in the business was when he was hired by Young, and he can attest to Young’s insistence on perfection. “He would be at the office every day without exception, then go home to eat lunch. One time, he let it slip that after lunch he would watch soap operas. Then he would go to the job site, and come back to the office late in the afternoon to see what we had accomplished,” he says. “That was in the day when everything was hand-drawn. He’d look over our shoulders and not say anything for the longest time, then say, ‘I think you’re an eighth of an inch off. Start over, do it right.’ What a stickler for detail.”

Once the drawings were to Young’s meticulous standards, building progressed. Among his most noted homes are the ones designed for the Axe family in 1979, Kornfields in 1981 and the Geesbreghts in 1993. Young was close to his clients. When one of the families for whom Minker built a house sold their home, they invited Emery to spend their final dinner with them in the house.

There is a likeness to the houses that makes them seem like a family. They are white, or very light-colored brick on the exterior, and they seem to float across the landscape. The interiors are open and bathed in light.

Young took special care with the kitchens; they were especially well-designed with an abundance of storage space, as he loved to cook. Toward the end of his career, he admitted he no longer subscribed to design periodicals but preferred cooking magazines.

Young was born in the West Texas town of Post and knew from an early age he wanted to be an architect. He graduated from Texas Tech University and then spent two years in the Army. He moved to Fort Worth to begin his professional career and won numerous national and local awards for his design skills and services. Two of his highest achievements were receiving the first AIA Fort Worth Chapter Charles R. Adams Award for Design Excellence in 1979, and being president of the American Institute of Architects in 1975.

Modernism is a rarity in this area; it never did catch on in the South or Southwest as much as it did on the coasts. Here, Young’s homes are a few of the remaining triumphs of the style.

This story was originally published February 3, 2016 at 11:45 AM with the headline "The legacy of architect Emery Young."