Jacksonville architect Robert C. Broward, an iconoclastic protege of Frank Lloyd Wright who had a 61-year professional career during which he designed 514 projects, died Sunday following a stroke. He was 89.
“He was an original, authentic individual,” said Wayne Wood, lead author of “Jacksonville Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future.” “He didn’t care what people thought about him as much as he cared about what they thought of his ideas.”
As a young architect, Michael Dunlap spent a year working with Mr. Broward, which he described as “a delightful learning experience.
“He was an inspiring man,” Dunlap said. “He is certainly one of our regional treasures. He leaves a great legacy.”
Among Mr. Broward’s signature buildings were Wesley Manor Retirement Village (1960), the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville (1965), the Jacksonville Art Museum (1965), the Southeast Toyota Deerfield Beach office building (1970), the Koger Gallery of Oriental Art (1972), the Calderon residence (1972), the Sawgrass Deer Run Condominiums (1972), the Sawgrass Racquet Club (1972), the Dake residence (1973), the Hall Office Building (1982), the Klein/Kelly residence (1985) and his own riverfront home in St. Nicholas (1993).
A native of Jacksonville, Mr. Broward was part of an old Jacksonville family that included Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, Florida’s governor from 1905-1909 and the man for whom the Dames Point bridge is named. Mr. Broward’s boyhood during the 1930s was spent exploring the woods of what is now San Marco.
“I grew up as a lone child in a large family playing in the woods and learning about Florida, its snakes, raccoons, squirrels, alligators, and large black bass as I made trails through virgin woods that now have skyscrapers looming over their former existence,” he wrote in a biographical essay for the “Friends of Kebyar,” a journal dedicated to “organic architecture,” which devoted an entire issue to Mr. Broward in 1992.
In that same essay he wrote: “I cannot remember when I did not wish to be an architect … In the sixth grade we studied Greece and Rome and I discovered the Acropolis. I made a clay model of it with the Parthenon lording over it all.”
After graduating from Landon High School in 1944, he spent time in the Army Air Corps flying B-17 bombers, before enrolling in Georgia Tech to study architecture. It was while he was there that he saw a journal dedicated to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, probably America’s most famous architect and a champion of organic architecture, a term he coined to describe a philosophy of designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and the environment.
Mr. Broward wrote to Wright and became his student. He served apprenticeships at both of Wright’s compounds, Taliesin East in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. Mr. Broward also spent a summer working on the construction of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, the largest complex of Wright buildings in the world.
The first building Mr. Broward designed was a chapel in West Georgia, which he and a group of Quakers built during the summer of 1949 for a community of sharecroppers. After designing his first residence for a physician in Atlanta in 1950, Mr. Broward moved back to Jacksonville and began building a home for himself in the woods of Northwest St. Johns County, an area then called Switzerland and now known as St. Johns.
He would live there for about four decades, gradually expanding what had begun as little more than a cabin into a home for his wives (he was married four times) and his two children. It had no central heat or air, but its design made it comfortable during most of the year though it could get a bit cold in the winter, Broward said. He coped with an electric blanket.
His first important commission in Jacksonville was to design a “giveaway house” for the 1956 Parade of Homes. That generated enough publicity to effectively launch his career, Mr. Broward later said.
He could be picky about clients.
“I have refused clients when I really needed the money because I knew I couldn’t work with them,” he said in a 1982 interview.
He walked away from a 1963 project to build an elementary school in Mayport because he couldn’t abide interference from School Board members.
“A local tabloid called me a communist,” he said in the 1982 interview. “I couldn’t get work for at least three years after that. I never got paid one red cent because I didn’t want it. Because that would have compromised me.”
“He marched to the beat of a different drummer,” Wood said.
However if Mr. Broward accepted a client, getting to really know that client was part of his process.
“This is why architecture is such a wonderful profession to me — you get to know people better than you ever could otherwise,” he said in a 1986 interview. “To me the greatest reward is to have a client come back later and say, ‘We are so happy.’ ”
Besides getting to know the client, he got to know the property on which the building would be constructed. When he was asked to design the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville on a piece of land located in the woods just off the Arlington Expressway, “I went out and spent the night on that site before I began to work on the project,” he later said.
The resulting building, designed in 1965, “is probably my best building,” Mr. Broward said in a 2011 interview.
“What I always hope for is that when I finish a design and it’s finally built, that it will look like it has always been there,” he said in a 1982 interview. “Even though it may look like a rocket ship, it should look like it has always been there.”
“Bob’s work as an architect is well known and highly respected, each project has its own special character and integrity, derived from a thorough understanding of the client’s needs and budget; designed in an efficient, sustainable, yet organic manner that related completely to the location and site,” architect Peter Rumpel wrote in 2011, successfully nominating Mr. Broward for inclusion in the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.
Besides his work as an architect, Mr. Broward was an adjunct professor of design at the University of Florida, an artist and a writer. He published two books on Jacksonville history, 1984’s “Henry John Klutho: The Prairie School in Jacksonville” and 2011’s “The Broward Family: From France to Florida, 1764-2011.”
The Klutho book helped revive the reputation of the architect who came to Jacksonville in the wake of the fire of 1901 and began designing and building masterpieces, among them the St. James Building, now City Hall. Though he still maintained a downtown office when Mr. Broward moved back to Jacksonville, Klutho had few clients and was largely forgotten. Mr. Broward befriended Klutho, whose Prairie School style of architecture resembled Wright’s style. Mr. Broward was a pallbearer at Klutho’s sparsely attended 1964 funeral.
Besides Mr. Broward’s inclusion as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, his profession’s highest honor, he received dozens of other honors. In 1989 the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects gave him the Award of Honor Design for lifetime achievement. In 2012 he was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.
He is survived by two daughters, Kristanna Broward Barnes of Jacksonville and Elizabeth Nichole Broward Sousa of Denver, and five grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at a date to be determined at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville.
- Charlie Patton at Jacksonville.com
“He was an original, authentic individual,” said Wayne Wood, lead author of “Jacksonville Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future.” “He didn’t care what people thought about him as much as he cared about what they thought of his ideas.”
As a young architect, Michael Dunlap spent a year working with Mr. Broward, which he described as “a delightful learning experience.
“He was an inspiring man,” Dunlap said. “He is certainly one of our regional treasures. He leaves a great legacy.”
Among Mr. Broward’s signature buildings were Wesley Manor Retirement Village (1960), the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville (1965), the Jacksonville Art Museum (1965), the Southeast Toyota Deerfield Beach office building (1970), the Koger Gallery of Oriental Art (1972), the Calderon residence (1972), the Sawgrass Deer Run Condominiums (1972), the Sawgrass Racquet Club (1972), the Dake residence (1973), the Hall Office Building (1982), the Klein/Kelly residence (1985) and his own riverfront home in St. Nicholas (1993).
A native of Jacksonville, Mr. Broward was part of an old Jacksonville family that included Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, Florida’s governor from 1905-1909 and the man for whom the Dames Point bridge is named. Mr. Broward’s boyhood during the 1930s was spent exploring the woods of what is now San Marco.
“I grew up as a lone child in a large family playing in the woods and learning about Florida, its snakes, raccoons, squirrels, alligators, and large black bass as I made trails through virgin woods that now have skyscrapers looming over their former existence,” he wrote in a biographical essay for the “Friends of Kebyar,” a journal dedicated to “organic architecture,” which devoted an entire issue to Mr. Broward in 1992.
In that same essay he wrote: “I cannot remember when I did not wish to be an architect … In the sixth grade we studied Greece and Rome and I discovered the Acropolis. I made a clay model of it with the Parthenon lording over it all.”
After graduating from Landon High School in 1944, he spent time in the Army Air Corps flying B-17 bombers, before enrolling in Georgia Tech to study architecture. It was while he was there that he saw a journal dedicated to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, probably America’s most famous architect and a champion of organic architecture, a term he coined to describe a philosophy of designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and the environment.
Mr. Broward wrote to Wright and became his student. He served apprenticeships at both of Wright’s compounds, Taliesin East in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. Mr. Broward also spent a summer working on the construction of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, the largest complex of Wright buildings in the world.
The first building Mr. Broward designed was a chapel in West Georgia, which he and a group of Quakers built during the summer of 1949 for a community of sharecroppers. After designing his first residence for a physician in Atlanta in 1950, Mr. Broward moved back to Jacksonville and began building a home for himself in the woods of Northwest St. Johns County, an area then called Switzerland and now known as St. Johns.
He would live there for about four decades, gradually expanding what had begun as little more than a cabin into a home for his wives (he was married four times) and his two children. It had no central heat or air, but its design made it comfortable during most of the year though it could get a bit cold in the winter, Broward said. He coped with an electric blanket.
His first important commission in Jacksonville was to design a “giveaway house” for the 1956 Parade of Homes. That generated enough publicity to effectively launch his career, Mr. Broward later said.
He could be picky about clients.
“I have refused clients when I really needed the money because I knew I couldn’t work with them,” he said in a 1982 interview.
He walked away from a 1963 project to build an elementary school in Mayport because he couldn’t abide interference from School Board members.
“A local tabloid called me a communist,” he said in the 1982 interview. “I couldn’t get work for at least three years after that. I never got paid one red cent because I didn’t want it. Because that would have compromised me.”
“He marched to the beat of a different drummer,” Wood said.
However if Mr. Broward accepted a client, getting to really know that client was part of his process.
“This is why architecture is such a wonderful profession to me — you get to know people better than you ever could otherwise,” he said in a 1986 interview. “To me the greatest reward is to have a client come back later and say, ‘We are so happy.’ ”
Besides getting to know the client, he got to know the property on which the building would be constructed. When he was asked to design the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville on a piece of land located in the woods just off the Arlington Expressway, “I went out and spent the night on that site before I began to work on the project,” he later said.
The resulting building, designed in 1965, “is probably my best building,” Mr. Broward said in a 2011 interview.
“What I always hope for is that when I finish a design and it’s finally built, that it will look like it has always been there,” he said in a 1982 interview. “Even though it may look like a rocket ship, it should look like it has always been there.”
“Bob’s work as an architect is well known and highly respected, each project has its own special character and integrity, derived from a thorough understanding of the client’s needs and budget; designed in an efficient, sustainable, yet organic manner that related completely to the location and site,” architect Peter Rumpel wrote in 2011, successfully nominating Mr. Broward for inclusion in the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.
Besides his work as an architect, Mr. Broward was an adjunct professor of design at the University of Florida, an artist and a writer. He published two books on Jacksonville history, 1984’s “Henry John Klutho: The Prairie School in Jacksonville” and 2011’s “The Broward Family: From France to Florida, 1764-2011.”
The Klutho book helped revive the reputation of the architect who came to Jacksonville in the wake of the fire of 1901 and began designing and building masterpieces, among them the St. James Building, now City Hall. Though he still maintained a downtown office when Mr. Broward moved back to Jacksonville, Klutho had few clients and was largely forgotten. Mr. Broward befriended Klutho, whose Prairie School style of architecture resembled Wright’s style. Mr. Broward was a pallbearer at Klutho’s sparsely attended 1964 funeral.
Besides Mr. Broward’s inclusion as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, his profession’s highest honor, he received dozens of other honors. In 1989 the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects gave him the Award of Honor Design for lifetime achievement. In 2012 he was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.
He is survived by two daughters, Kristanna Broward Barnes of Jacksonville and Elizabeth Nichole Broward Sousa of Denver, and five grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at a date to be determined at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville.
- Charlie Patton at Jacksonville.com
Jacksonville architect Robert C. Broward, an iconoclastic protege of Frank Lloyd Wright who had a 61-year professional career during which he designed 514 projects, died Sunday following a stroke. He was 89.
“He was an original, authentic individual,” said Wayne Wood, lead author of “Jacksonville Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future.” “He didn’t care what people thought about him as much as he cared about what they thought of his ideas.”
As a young architect, Michael Dunlap spent a year working with Mr. Broward, which he described as “a delightful learning experience.
“He was an inspiring man,” Dunlap said. “He is certainly one of our regional treasures. He leaves a great legacy.”
Among Mr. Broward’s signature buildings were Wesley Manor Retirement Village (1960), the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville (1965), the Jacksonville Art Museum (1965), the Southeast Toyota Deerfield Beach office building (1970), the Koger Gallery of Oriental Art (1972), the Calderon residence (1972), the Sawgrass Deer Run Condominiums (1972), the Sawgrass Racquet Club (1972), the Dake residence (1973), the Hall Office Building (1982), the Klein/Kelly residence (1985) and his own riverfront home in St. Nicholas (1993).
A native of Jacksonville, Mr. Broward was part of an old Jacksonville family that included Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, Florida’s governor from 1905-1909 and the man for whom the Dames Point bridge is named. Mr. Broward’s boyhood during the 1930s was spent exploring the woods of what is now San Marco.
“I grew up as a lone child in a large family playing in the woods and learning about Florida, its snakes, raccoons, squirrels, alligators, and large black bass as I made trails through virgin woods that now have skyscrapers looming over their former existence,” he wrote in a biographical essay for the “Friends of Kebyar,” a journal dedicated to “organic architecture,” which devoted an entire issue to Mr. Broward in 1992.
In that same essay he wrote: “I cannot remember when I did not wish to be an architect … In the sixth grade we studied Greece and Rome and I discovered the Acropolis. I made a clay model of it with the Parthenon lording over it all.”
After graduating from Landon High School in 1944, he spent time in the Army Air Corps flying B-17 bombers, before enrolling in Georgia Tech to study architecture. It was while he was there that he saw a journal dedicated to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, probably America’s most famous architect and a champion of organic architecture, a term he coined to describe a philosophy of designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and the environment.
Mr. Broward wrote to Wright and became his student. He served apprenticeships at both of Wright’s compounds, Taliesin East in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. Mr. Broward also spent a summer working on the construction of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, the largest complex of Wright buildings in the world.
The first building Mr. Broward designed was a chapel in West Georgia, which he and a group of Quakers built during the summer of 1949 for a community of sharecroppers. After designing his first residence for a physician in Atlanta in 1950, Mr. Broward moved back to Jacksonville and began building a home for himself in the woods of Northwest St. Johns County, an area then called Switzerland and now known as St. Johns.
He would live there for about four decades, gradually expanding what had begun as little more than a cabin into a home for his wives (he was married four times) and his two children. It had no central heat or air, but its design made it comfortable during most of the year though it could get a bit cold in the winter, Broward said. He coped with an electric blanket.
His first important commission in Jacksonville was to design a “giveaway house” for the 1956 Parade of Homes. That generated enough publicity to effectively launch his career, Mr. Broward later said.
He could be picky about clients.
“I have refused clients when I really needed the money because I knew I couldn’t work with them,” he said in a 1982 interview.
He walked away from a 1963 project to build an elementary school in Mayport because he couldn’t abide interference from School Board members.
“A local tabloid called me a communist,” he said in the 1982 interview. “I couldn’t get work for at least three years after that. I never got paid one red cent because I didn’t want it. Because that would have compromised me.”
“He marched to the beat of a different drummer,” Wood said.
However if Mr. Broward accepted a client, getting to really know that client was part of his process.
“This is why architecture is such a wonderful profession to me — you get to know people better than you ever could otherwise,” he said in a 1986 interview. “To me the greatest reward is to have a client come back later and say, ‘We are so happy.’ ”
Besides getting to know the client, he got to know the property on which the building would be constructed. When he was asked to design the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville on a piece of land located in the woods just off the Arlington Expressway, “I went out and spent the night on that site before I began to work on the project,” he later said.
The resulting building, designed in 1965, “is probably my best building,” Mr. Broward said in a 2011 interview.
“What I always hope for is that when I finish a design and it’s finally built, that it will look like it has always been there,” he said in a 1982 interview. “Even though it may look like a rocket ship, it should look like it has always been there.”
“Bob’s work as an architect is well known and highly respected, each project has its own special character and integrity, derived from a thorough understanding of the client’s needs and budget; designed in an efficient, sustainable, yet organic manner that related completely to the location and site,” architect Peter Rumpel wrote in 2011, successfully nominating Mr. Broward for inclusion in the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.
Besides his work as an architect, Mr. Broward was an adjunct professor of design at the University of Florida, an artist and a writer. He published two books on Jacksonville history, 1984’s “Henry John Klutho: The Prairie School in Jacksonville” and 2011’s “The Broward Family: From France to Florida, 1764-2011.”
The Klutho book helped revive the reputation of the architect who came to Jacksonville in the wake of the fire of 1901 and began designing and building masterpieces, among them the St. James Building, now City Hall. Though he still maintained a downtown office when Mr. Broward moved back to Jacksonville, Klutho had few clients and was largely forgotten. Mr. Broward befriended Klutho, whose Prairie School style of architecture resembled Wright’s style. Mr. Broward was a pallbearer at Klutho’s sparsely attended 1964 funeral.
Besides Mr. Broward’s inclusion as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, his profession’s highest honor, he received dozens of other honors. In 1989 the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects gave him the Award of Honor Design for lifetime achievement. In 2012 he was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.
He is survived by two daughters, Kristanna Broward Barnes of Jacksonville and Elizabeth Nichole Broward Sousa of Denver, and five grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at a date to be determined at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville.
- Charlie Patton at Jacksonville.com
“He was an original, authentic individual,” said Wayne Wood, lead author of “Jacksonville Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future.” “He didn’t care what people thought about him as much as he cared about what they thought of his ideas.”
As a young architect, Michael Dunlap spent a year working with Mr. Broward, which he described as “a delightful learning experience.
“He was an inspiring man,” Dunlap said. “He is certainly one of our regional treasures. He leaves a great legacy.”
Among Mr. Broward’s signature buildings were Wesley Manor Retirement Village (1960), the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville (1965), the Jacksonville Art Museum (1965), the Southeast Toyota Deerfield Beach office building (1970), the Koger Gallery of Oriental Art (1972), the Calderon residence (1972), the Sawgrass Deer Run Condominiums (1972), the Sawgrass Racquet Club (1972), the Dake residence (1973), the Hall Office Building (1982), the Klein/Kelly residence (1985) and his own riverfront home in St. Nicholas (1993).
A native of Jacksonville, Mr. Broward was part of an old Jacksonville family that included Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, Florida’s governor from 1905-1909 and the man for whom the Dames Point bridge is named. Mr. Broward’s boyhood during the 1930s was spent exploring the woods of what is now San Marco.
“I grew up as a lone child in a large family playing in the woods and learning about Florida, its snakes, raccoons, squirrels, alligators, and large black bass as I made trails through virgin woods that now have skyscrapers looming over their former existence,” he wrote in a biographical essay for the “Friends of Kebyar,” a journal dedicated to “organic architecture,” which devoted an entire issue to Mr. Broward in 1992.
In that same essay he wrote: “I cannot remember when I did not wish to be an architect … In the sixth grade we studied Greece and Rome and I discovered the Acropolis. I made a clay model of it with the Parthenon lording over it all.”
After graduating from Landon High School in 1944, he spent time in the Army Air Corps flying B-17 bombers, before enrolling in Georgia Tech to study architecture. It was while he was there that he saw a journal dedicated to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, probably America’s most famous architect and a champion of organic architecture, a term he coined to describe a philosophy of designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and the environment.
Mr. Broward wrote to Wright and became his student. He served apprenticeships at both of Wright’s compounds, Taliesin East in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. Mr. Broward also spent a summer working on the construction of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, the largest complex of Wright buildings in the world.
The first building Mr. Broward designed was a chapel in West Georgia, which he and a group of Quakers built during the summer of 1949 for a community of sharecroppers. After designing his first residence for a physician in Atlanta in 1950, Mr. Broward moved back to Jacksonville and began building a home for himself in the woods of Northwest St. Johns County, an area then called Switzerland and now known as St. Johns.
He would live there for about four decades, gradually expanding what had begun as little more than a cabin into a home for his wives (he was married four times) and his two children. It had no central heat or air, but its design made it comfortable during most of the year though it could get a bit cold in the winter, Broward said. He coped with an electric blanket.
His first important commission in Jacksonville was to design a “giveaway house” for the 1956 Parade of Homes. That generated enough publicity to effectively launch his career, Mr. Broward later said.
He could be picky about clients.
“I have refused clients when I really needed the money because I knew I couldn’t work with them,” he said in a 1982 interview.
He walked away from a 1963 project to build an elementary school in Mayport because he couldn’t abide interference from School Board members.
“A local tabloid called me a communist,” he said in the 1982 interview. “I couldn’t get work for at least three years after that. I never got paid one red cent because I didn’t want it. Because that would have compromised me.”
“He marched to the beat of a different drummer,” Wood said.
However if Mr. Broward accepted a client, getting to really know that client was part of his process.
“This is why architecture is such a wonderful profession to me — you get to know people better than you ever could otherwise,” he said in a 1986 interview. “To me the greatest reward is to have a client come back later and say, ‘We are so happy.’ ”
Besides getting to know the client, he got to know the property on which the building would be constructed. When he was asked to design the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville on a piece of land located in the woods just off the Arlington Expressway, “I went out and spent the night on that site before I began to work on the project,” he later said.
The resulting building, designed in 1965, “is probably my best building,” Mr. Broward said in a 2011 interview.
“What I always hope for is that when I finish a design and it’s finally built, that it will look like it has always been there,” he said in a 1982 interview. “Even though it may look like a rocket ship, it should look like it has always been there.”
“Bob’s work as an architect is well known and highly respected, each project has its own special character and integrity, derived from a thorough understanding of the client’s needs and budget; designed in an efficient, sustainable, yet organic manner that related completely to the location and site,” architect Peter Rumpel wrote in 2011, successfully nominating Mr. Broward for inclusion in the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.
Besides his work as an architect, Mr. Broward was an adjunct professor of design at the University of Florida, an artist and a writer. He published two books on Jacksonville history, 1984’s “Henry John Klutho: The Prairie School in Jacksonville” and 2011’s “The Broward Family: From France to Florida, 1764-2011.”
The Klutho book helped revive the reputation of the architect who came to Jacksonville in the wake of the fire of 1901 and began designing and building masterpieces, among them the St. James Building, now City Hall. Though he still maintained a downtown office when Mr. Broward moved back to Jacksonville, Klutho had few clients and was largely forgotten. Mr. Broward befriended Klutho, whose Prairie School style of architecture resembled Wright’s style. Mr. Broward was a pallbearer at Klutho’s sparsely attended 1964 funeral.
Besides Mr. Broward’s inclusion as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, his profession’s highest honor, he received dozens of other honors. In 1989 the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects gave him the Award of Honor Design for lifetime achievement. In 2012 he was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.
He is survived by two daughters, Kristanna Broward Barnes of Jacksonville and Elizabeth Nichole Broward Sousa of Denver, and five grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at a date to be determined at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville.
- Charlie Patton at Jacksonville.com
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