While in college in Texas, J. Willis Hughes read an article about Frank Lloyd Wright and his ideas on organic architecture. That short meeting stayed with him. Roughly twenty years later, Hughes became known as an oil speculator and settled in Jackson, Mississippi. He chose to contact Wright directly. Local people did not believe the famous architect, who was then in his 80s and known for designs such as the Guggenheim Museum, would agree to work on a house. But Wright replied with interest – he even asked the Hughes family to visit his Wisconsin studio so he could learn about their way of life before he started the design.
A bold midcentury modern house in Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood came from this work. Workers finished the house in the early 1950s – it now sells for $2.5 million. This house has not been for sale in forty years. Douglas Adams in addition to David Abner Smith of Crescent Sotheby’s International Realty list the property via this listing.
In 1980, Robert Parker Adams, an architect along with his wife Mary bought the house; they spent years fixing it, and they put in air conditioning. People first called the house the Hughes Residence. They named it Fountainhead. This name referred to Ayn Rand’s book and to the fountain on the land. The house became part of the National Register of Historic Places in the same year – it is one of four houses in Mississippi that Wright designed.
The house follows the Usonian style. It displays many of Wright’s typical features, such as shapes like parallelograms plus triangles. It has Tidewater Red Cypress panels, furniture built into the walls, and concrete floors with a terracotta color. Large windows show the woods outside – these windows open to several terraces, which connect the inside and outside spaces.
A long corridor leads to the bedroom wing, which overlooks what was once a lovely water feature, with a fountain, swimming pool and stream. Initially Wright envisioned it to look like a pond in a forest glade. It will take a little bit of elbow grease to bring back to vision. The property includes an attached carport, and is a rare example of Wright’s work in the Deep South.
