The Lexington architect took to midcentury modern during a midlife career change Oftentimes, architects like to say they felt a drive to create, and were inspired from childhood to become the designers of homes, buildings, and cities. Kentucky?s Richard B. Isenhour had no such pretensions about his own practice. He took a long time to come around to the idea of being an architect, going through a midlife career change and teaching himself via work as a building contractor. As he details in a letter he wrote to his wife Lenora before he became an architect, Isenhour sought out a creative, fulfilling job?he later made it happen on his own accord.
?The kind of job I?d like would be one that's creative and always changing, where I can see what I'm accomplishing,? Isenhour wrote. ?I?d like to work on things I can improve.?
By the time he retired from Isenhour Inc. Architects and Builders in the early ?90s, he?d designed more than 100 homes, helping his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, embrace modernist design.
Biography
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Richard Isenhour seemed set to have a successful, middle-class, midcentury life. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he began working as a chemical engineer for DuPont at their Newburgh, New York, plant. He only decided to pursue architecture because he was unsatisfied with his job.
Isenhour didn?t move to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1952 on a whim. His wife?s father, A.R. Henry, ran a construction businesses in town. ...