Fay Jones School of Architecture Hosts Party to Celebrate Namesake's Birthday

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A birthday party will be held today to celebrate what would have been Fay Jones' 94th birthday. (Photo of Fay Jones courtesy of the Ernie Jacks Collection, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – In anticipation of what would have been the 94th birthday of Fay Jones on Jan. 31, the Fay Jones School of Architecture celebrates today with a birthday cake to be served at 12:30 p.m. in the lobby of Vol Walker Hall on campus.

Selected work by Jones from Special Collections in the University of Arkansas Libraries will be on display during the birthday party. A video sequence of historical information on Jones will be displayed throughout the day on the video monitor in the lobby.

Announcements will be made at 12:45 p.m., including the next holder of the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture, which is supported by the Don and Ellen Edmondson Endowment.

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the spring 2015 John G. Williams Distinguished Visiting Professors, will be in attendance and introduced as well.

Also, the University of Arkansas Libraries’ Special Collections and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Library and Archives have created a collaborative digital exhibit titled “Fay Jones and Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture Comes to Arkansas.” This digital exhibit, which was released to coincide with Jones’ birthday, is available online at the University Libraries digital collections website.

Jones, who died in 2004, attended the earliest architecture classes offered at the University of Arkansas, graduated in the first class of architecture students, and eventually returned to teach for 35 years and serve as the school’s first dean.