Inside

     Built in 1999 on 9.6 acres, Rivergate sits high on a bluff above the James River, about eight miles from downtown Lynchburg. “You can barely see the home from the river,” says Dick Stowers, a family practitioner who, with his wife, Judy, has lived in the house for nearly five years. “You wouldn’t know it’s there.”

     The Stowerses bought the house from its original owner, Gordon Leggett Jr. His father, Gordon Leggett Sr., founded the Leggett Department Store in downtown Lynchburg in 1927—and everyone in the Leggett family, including Gordon Leggett Jr., was involved in the business until it was acquired by Belk in 1996. When Leggett Jr.’s first wife, Patricia Webb, passed away, he decided to sell the home.

     According to Judy Stowers, she and her husband were looking for something “different”—a home that was “refreshing, uncluttered and, of course, with views.” Rivergate is all those things, and more. With its clean lines, open floor plan, ample use of glass and overhangs, the home echoes the visionary Prairie style principles of Wright (1867-1959), who famously changed architect Louis Sullivan’s iconic slogan, “form follows function,” to “form and function are one.”

     Gordon Leggett Jr. did not specifically seek a Wright-style home when he commissioned Rivergate a decade ago. But in hiring Arkansas-based Maurice Jennings to design the place, he found someone who had been strongly influenced by the modernist master. Before starting his own firm in 2006, Jennings worked for 25 years with the late Euine Fay Jones, who had apprenticed with Wright and in his own work embraced many of the principles dear to Wright, including the use of natural or sustainable materials.

     Jennings decided early in life to be an architect, and says he was impressed by Jones’ work while in high school. A few years later, when Jennings was at the University of Arkansas in the early 1970s, he was a student in one of Jones’ architecture classes. The two hit it off, and, in 1976, Jones asked Jennings to join his firm, Fay Jones and Associates Architects. Ten years later, the two men became partners, forming Fay Jones + Maurice Jennings Architects. Jennings describes his experience with Jones, who died in 2004, as “marvelous,” adding, “I was so fortunate to work with him and to have him as a friend.”