FVS Architectural Digest

Together, Fountain Valley School’s buildings create a nearly centuryold architectural chronicle. In the following pages, two FVS alumni, Reilly Kaczmarek ’21 and Francis Zhou ’22, capture the campus’ distinctive style through their unique lens.

RK = Photos by Reilly Kaczmarek • FZ = Photos by Francis Zhou

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Fountain Valley School’s iconic architecture dates back to Casa Serena, which was built in the 1920s as a ranch house and is known today as the Hacienda. The architect, Addison Mizner, was famous for his Palm Beach style influenced by traditional Spanish architecture, which he modified for the ranch’s Southwestern location.

The Hacienda was built with lavish materials, including boxed-beam cypress wood ceilings, iron balconies, fine plasterwork with animal motifs, and tiles from Mexico and Spain. The Hacienda established Fountain Valley’s Spanish adobe style, but the Southwestern and pueblo influences in subsequent buildings are the vision of the campus’ first architect, John Gaw Meem.

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RK Meem specialized in pastel colors designed to balance the sunshine and shadows of Southwestern light. He used rounded corners on building exteriors to simulate traditional adobe architecture, and his interiors included adobe corner fireplaces, tin light fixtures and carved wooden doors.

While Meem only designed four FVS buildings—Sage Hall (initially known as First House), Boies Penrose Hall, the Dwight Perry House and the F. Martin Brown apartment complex (affectionately called The Pink Jail)— his philosophy dominated campus architecture from the 1930s onward.

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RK Carlisle Guy, who designed many of the FVS buildings constructed in the 1950s and ’60s, including the old gym (now the Penrose Sports Center), the chapel, Hawley Library and Chase Stone Infirmary, studied under Meem. And Johnson, Nestor, Mortier and Rodriguez, the Santa Fe firm that designed The Frautschi Campus Center, has an architectural aesthetic rooted in Meem’s work.

The Frautschi Center includes traditional Southwestern features like brick floors, viga and latilla ceilings, and adobe fireplaces, but also incorporates the late 20th century “salsa” architecture movement that featured bright colors like fuchsia, turquoise and purple. And because the architects are influenced by Southwestern church design, the Frautschi Center’s entrance is reminiscent of the naves in pueblo-style churches like New Mexico’s Rancho de Taos.

Subsequent buildings have remained true to Fountain Valley’s unique architectural style, creating a campus as distinctive as the Colorado prairie that surrounds it.