Dr. Ira N. Kelley House & Office: Unconventional Postmodern Landmarks in Trousdale County

In the early 1980s, Dr. Ira Neeley Kelley, Jr. (1926-2007), a longtime physician at Hartsville, Tennessee, and his wife JoAnn Kelley, hired Alabama architect Robert L. “Bob” Faust (1932-2020) to design a Postmodern hilltop home near Hartsville in rural Trousdale County. Dr. Kelley also hired Faust to design his small Postmodern doctor’s office overlooking the Cumberland River and three Postmodern spec houses, which were never built. Completed from 1985 to 1988, the futuristic and unconventional Postmodern architecture of these rural buildings was unlike any ever built in Tennessee.

A native of Garner, Arkansas, Dr. Kelley attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. His father was a contractor who settled in Ashland City, Tennessee. In 1951, Dr. Kelley married JoAnn Hamilton (b.1930) in Little Rock. Soon thereafter, they relocated to Hartsville, Tennessee, where Dr. Kelley established a successful medical practice. In 1964, he became part-owner of the local Cunningham-Kelley Chevrolet dealership, which sponsored NASCAR driver Clifton B. “Coo Coo” Marlin (1932-2005), the father of NASCAR driver Sterling Marlin. In the late 1970s, Dr. Kelley’s sons established a large berry farm on U.S. 231 on the banks of the Cumberland River. The farm produced strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. In 1988, Dr. Kelley built his doctor’s office at Kelley’s Berry Farm, operated by members of Dr. Kelley’s family.

Bob Faust was an architect and architecture professor at Alabama’s Auburn University from 1968 to 2011. He specialized in the design-build process. While teaching at Auburn, Faust operated a private practice where he designed a small number of innovative and private commissions, mainly in small towns in Alabama. His clients were well-to-do physicians, businessmen, and professors who were looking for unique Modernist designs. Only a handful were actually ever built. For over two decades, he and his wife, Sherry, designed and built townhouse apartments finished in corrugated metal panels. Often using student labor as part of the design-build process, the townouse complex at Auburn was called “Corrugated of Alabama” and also served as his residence.

A native of New Orleans, Faust studied architecture for two years at Tulane University before transferring to the University of Oklahoma where he studied under the legendary and radical Modernist architect Bruce Goff (1902-1982). After graduating in 1956, he served for two years in the U.S. Navy. From 1958 to 1961, Faust was employed by Goff to supervise on-site construction of two futuristic residences on the Mississippi Gulf Coast – the Gutman House in Gulfport and the Gryder House in Ocean Springs. Faust worked from 1964 to 1965 in New Orleans for Albert C. Ledner (1924-2017), a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright, and then taught at Iowa State University before landing at Auburn in 1968, where he taught until his retirement in 2011. While teaching at Iowa State, Faust designed the Zaring Residence and Silverspoon, both of which still stand.

Completed in 1985, Dr. Kelley’s sprawling, hilltop home outside Hartsville incorporated Bruce Goff’s signature organic architectural design elements, such as curvilinear forms inspired by biological references, apertures that look like eyes or gills or fins, and layered screen walls that accentuate geometrical complexity and plan. The home appears to emerge from the hillside like some sort of strange subterranean and mechanical creature. In 1999, Dr. Kelley jokingly told a reporter with the Tennessean that the most common comment about his home was, “What the hell is this?” Some of the architectural details are similar to those Faust used for his townhouses at Auburn.

The following are photographs, drawings, and images of the model for the Dr. Ira N. Kelley House and a spec house as published in 2003 by Robert Faust on his website. Auburn University shared many of these images in 2013 in a retrospective exhibit of Robert Faust’s work. Dr. Kelley’s home is located off Hwy 25 and his office is along U.S. 231 near the Wilson County line. Both are owned by the Kelley family. They are not open to the public.

Robbie D. Jones

Nashville, Tennessee

Sources:

Dagg, Christian. “The Work of Robert L. Faust: A Case Study of Design-Build in the Academy.” 102nd ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings: Globalizing Architecture: Flows and Disruptions, 2014: 541-547.

Faust, Robert L. “Past and Recents Works and Projects.” Auburn University. Website, 2003. Accessed December 27, 2022.

Oliver, John. “The merging of Cunningham and Kelley.” The Hartsville Vidette, July 21, 2022.

University of Oklahoma. “Remembering Robert L. (Bob) Faust, 1932-2020.” Website, 2020. Accessed December 27, 2022.

University of Oklahoma. “Robert L. Faust Architectural Drawings.” WHC M2855. Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Norman, Oklahoma.

Genealogical records found on ancestry.com.