Built upon a tradition
How three architects combined to create
a campus grounded in Cistercian values

[Published in the December 2003 edition of The Continuum, the alumni magazine of Cistercian Prep School in Irving, Texas.]

By David Stewart
The silence in the 1970 board meeting ached with tension. Fr. Denis Farkasfalvy, Cistercian’s brash, 34-year-old headmaster, had just declared his intention to find a new architect to work on the school’s newest project, a gymnasium scheduled to begin construction in 1971.
The school board members were stunned, especially Patrick Haggerty. The chairman of Texas Instruments (and an important benefactor of the school) had insisted on using O’Neil Ford to design the Middle and Upper Schools. The look on his face made it clear that he saw no need to switch architects now.
Bryan Smith, Haggerty’s associate at TI, had enthusiastically supported the idea of using Ford to design the first two buildings.
“Neil’s involvement always promised something creative,” Smith said recently.
“But there were ups and downs with Neil,” added Smith. “You had to sleigh through that. While you usually got a product that was very worthwhile, you had to learn to deal with the eccentricities, like his failing to complete working drawings.”
“The decision to hire another architect for the gym was an evolutionary thing,” Smith suggested. “There were budgetary considerations. Personally, I felt that a gym wouldn’t require Ford’s talents anyway.”
After some reflection, Smith supported the headmaster’s decision to find another architect. But he has never doubted the importance of hiring Ford to design the first two buildings at Cistercian.
“Neil really made the ultimate contribution [to the Cistercian campus] by establishing the present design, structure, and arrangement of the total complex,” Smith said.
The founders’ decision to use Ford on the first two buildings “made a clear statement that this school would be dedicated to excellence,” Smith emphasized. The founders and Ford succeeded with a design that helped persuade parents in the sixties that this school in the wilds of Irving would be special indeed; it is a design that continues to impress prospective parents nearly 40 years later.
“As you enter the campus, you certainly get the feeling that you are entering a special place, part nature preserve, part learning retreat center,” said Scott Prengle, father of Bobby Prengle ’10.
“I am struck by how well the design complements the setting,” said Connie White, mother of Aaron White ’07. “It is clear the founders had an appreciation for the environmental setting. I also think by being modern instead of traditional, it was very forward thinking and progressive. It suggests that fitting in does not have to mean adhering to a traditional mold; instead it means living for the future.”
Duane Landry, the grandfather of Nathan Helms ’07 and John Henry Helms ’10, served as Ford’s project architect on both the Middle School and the Upper School.
“I worked most closely with Fr. Damian on the projects,” Landry remembered. “Abbot Anselm and Fr. Philip Szeitz also were involved.” (Szeitz would leave the priesthood in 1965.)
“The work of Ford and Landry here at Cistercian has held up extremely well,” said David Dillon, who has served as the architectural critic for The Dallas Morning News for 20 years and has written a book on Ford (The Architecture of O’Neil Ford, Celebrating Place). “It is nice, clean, simple. Like much of Ford’s work, it uses a subdued palette with fine but not flashy detailing. There’s lots of natural light and a strong connection with the environment.”
The turquoise, red, and blue light fixtures on the outside of the building are typical of Ford’s work and were made by Martha Mood, a longtime colleague of Ford’s.
“She was a wonderful artist,” Landry said, “Some of her stitcheries and appliqué work sit today in famous collections. The light fixtures were slip cast, and then before they were fired, she punched holes and drew lines in them. Then she’d fire them, paint them and fire them again.”
The architecture of the Middle and Upper Schools feels good, literally.
“To appreciate Ford’s work, you need to go around and touch things,” Dillon said. “His work is very tactile.”
Of course, boys are always happy to touch things and to explore the durability of their surroundings. For nearly 40 years students have enjoyed the feel of Cistercian’s gray carpet, wood-paneled walls, Spanish tile floors, and Mexican brick.
Although Fr. Denis turned to another architect for the gym, Ford’s architectural philosophy would continue to echo through the campus as new buildings were constructed.

ABBOT Denis SAID the gym project resembled a mouse that grew into an elephant. But through the many dramatic evolutions and changes, Fr. Denis insisted on one constant: the gym must include the Mexican brick Ford had used.
“Ford used this brick on many of his buildings,” Dillon said. “O’Neil loved the color and softness of the Mexican brick.” The bricks’ softness results from their being handmade and being dried in the sun instead of fired in a kiln.
“Before accepting delivery of the bricks, Ford insisted that they drop a few from the back of the truck. If half of them broke, they’d be sent back,” Dillon said.
Covered in Ford’s Mexican brick, the gym would bear at least some resemblance to the school buildings next door.
Fr. Schott, then president of Jesuit, recommended an architect named Al Salem, who had designed the gym at St. Rita. Salem’s friendly demeanor and willingness to respond quickly helped him develop an immediate bond with the young headmaster. They worked easily together.
Fr. Denis, never renowned for his love of sports, began attending basketball games all over the Metroplex so he could study the benefits and shortcomings of various gymnasium designs.
One of his findings made a major impact on the appearance of the gym. “The windows along the top of many gyms,” Fr. Denis remembered, “forced spectators to shade their eyes during afternoon games. I asked Al to incorporate a shade over the windows.” That feature led to the buildings’ signature white buttresses.
The project, which started out to be just a gym and some locker rooms, grew to include a large art room and a stage with state-of-the-art lighting. The cost of the project grew from around $400,000 to $750,000.
While not possessing the architectural panache of its predecessors, the gym was universally deemed a great success upon its completion. Just as Ford’s architecture on the school buildings had made a statement of excellence, the gym demonstrated that Cistercian was no longer handicapped in athletics, drama, and art. Applications skyrocketed the following spring.
“The gym’s large two-story entrance is not of the same scale as the entrance to the Ford buildings,” David Dillon remarked. “But it is a product of its time. It’s part of the biography of the campus. It’s a period you went through. Sometimes too much emphasis is placed on continuity and coherence.”
Fr. Denis and Al Salem collaborated on several smaller projects (e.g., the connecting structure between the Middle and Upper Schools, the elevator at the monastery). But by 1983 when work began on the school’s next large project, the science center, Fr. Denis had stepped down as headmaster.
Salem would work on the science center with the new headmaster, Fr. Bernard Marton, as well as two 27-year-old fund-raisers, Jere Thompson ’74 and Jim Moroney ’74.
“It was not as simple a process as working with Fr. Denis,” Salem acknowledged.
“We visited Hockaday and St. Mark’s, which had just completed new science centers,” Thompson remembered. They helped the design evolve and grow to include key elements like a computer lab, large lecture hall (now the theater), and teacher offices. What was originally planned as a three-wing structure (one for chemistry, physics, and biology) became a two-story box.
But the decision-makers appear to have been influenced primarily by their years in the hallways and classrooms of Cistercian’s Middle and Upper Schools.
They insisted on Mexican bricks, additional windows with arched openings to provide lots of natural light inside, Spanish tiles, and the same light fixtures that O’Neil Ford had used on the school buildings. Outside, Moroney and Thompson wanted a landscaped courtyard between the science center and the Middle and Upper Schools rather than just a slab of concrete.
All of these elements helped to tie the new building in with the O’Neil Ford buildings and perpetuate a tradition.
Moroney and Thompson proposed that arches be used to connect the new building with the Middle and Upper Schools, at a cost $80,000. The young fund-raisers found the money, and the arches were constructed. “The arches added a certain character and feel the area wouldn’t have had otherwise,” Thompson said.
For the first time, the Cistercian campus had some depth and its first partially enclosed outdoor space.
“This [courtyard] is the kind of space that Ford might have designed,” David Dillon commented on a recent visit. “It has a nice sense of enclosure, yet it is not intimidating. The scale is of a very intimate level.”

Over the din of clanking plates and glasses at the old Dixie House on McKinney Avenue in the spring of 1990, Jere Thompson and Peter Smith ’74 asked Gary Cunningham ’72 if he’d be interested in designing a church at Cistercian.
Thompson had heard Cunningham was making a name for himself and believed that having an alumnus design the church would make a powerful statement. (Thompson’s fundraising pitch promised, “An alumnus will design it, an alumnus (Wade Andres ’75) will build it, and an alumnus (Fr. Peter Verhalen ’73) will say Mass in it.”)
Cunningham expressed great interest to Thompson and Smith and soon met with Abbot Denis. Not long thereafter, the community of monks approved his appointment.
“It was a pretty big deal doing a building for a place where I was basically raised,” Cunningham said, “and for teachers who had a such a big impact on my life. Right from the start, I felt this might be the most significant project of my life. After all, this church would be here for a long time.”
To help ground his new architect in the project, Abbot Denis handed over lots of pictures of Cistercian abbey churches in Europe along with information on the tradition of church building. Cunningham was particularly struck by a Vatican II document.
“It discussed the attitude for building a church,” Cunningham remembered. “The three primary tenets were honesty, craftsmanship, and humility.” All three tenets fit in nicely with Cunningham’s own philosophy of building, which was influenced by the contemporary Cistercian tradition established by O’Neil Ford.
“Ford’s architecture expresses honesty,” Cunningham said. “For example, you can see the beams. The ceiling is what it is. Ford didn’t hide the structure of a building. I think that’s important so students can see the structure around them and know how it works. Buildings can teach honesty.”
Cunningham’s design for the Abbey Church would be radically honest and straightforward, using limestone blocks as both exterior and interior walls, with no veneers, no plaster, no sheetrock to disguise the structure of the building.
Craftsmanship also jumps out at you in both Ford’s and Cunningham’s work.
“The Vatican II document suggested that in a church, one should ‘avoid perfection,’” Cunningham said. “Elements should be made from human hands and express our humanity. The natural qualities of materials and human craftsmanship should stand out.”
“Ford had a repertory company of craftsman around,” David Dillon said. “One would do nothing but tile, another (like his brother Lynn Ford) nothing but wood and metal.”
In the construction of the Abbey Church, Cunningham employed a wide variety of craftsmen, from the stonemasons who chiseled the 9’ x 6’ x 3’ Champagne limestone blocks to the woodworkers who handmade the pews on the church floor. Cunningham himself along with artist David Sines created the crosses that grace the top of the church (Cunningham etched his name on them) and the Holy Water receptacles. Artist Billy Hassell ’74 designed the tabernacle doors.
“The building is not the most important thing,” Cunningham insisted, however, in reference to humility. “The building is there for the people who occupy it. It is a backdrop to the activity or function of the building. It should not call attention to itself.”
The Middle School and Upper School designs recall very humble “dog-trot houses” (i.e., two sections with an area in the middle to allow for ventilation), according to David Dillon. The design is friendly, not grandiose.
Inside the Abbey Church, attention isn’t drawn to the sophisticated way the roof floats above the floor, but it is easy to sense the light as it changes when clouds glide lazily in front of the sun.
For Cunningham, it was a dream project. “Everything came together in an amazing fashion,” he said. “The builder (Andres Construction Services), the subcontractors, the client, how I was working at the time — everything was aligned. The importance of this project inclined me to become really involved in every detail.”
“I love it,” David Dillon said. “It is one of my favorite churches in the Metroplex. And it was risky. Gary doesn’t always choose the safest route.”
“It really is an abbey church; it has the austere quality of an abbey church from the eighth or ninth century in certain ways — the massiveness of it, the ruggedness, and yet the detailing of it is very delicately modern. The windows are very crisp. I love the roof and the light.”
“We’re so used to seeing stone veneer, architects using limestone that is 3/8” thick at best. It’s almost like wallpaper. Here each block weighs several tons. It creates ancient Biblical associations with the rock and the cave.”
“I tried to fulfill in the Abbey Church,” said Cunningham, “an image of what I saw in this community — permanence, roots that stretch back centuries, and a weighty, stable product.”
“I told Gary at the time it was completed,” Abbot Denis said, “‘I think there will be a time when this church will be among the architectural sites visitors want to see when they come to Dallas.’”

“Cut it in half,” Abbot Denis told Cunningham in 1997 after months had been spent on a large-scale design for the school’s new library. “The scope and budget are not in keeping with the school. It is too ambitious.”
“We knew the budget was creeping upwards,” Cunningham remembered, “but it was the abbot who had the clear vision of what was appropriate for Cistercian. He is the steward of the school and abbey.”
Still, his behavior is often misinterpreted, according to Cunningham.
“The abbot may play a large role in issues, but it is not about him,” he insisted. “It’s about his job as abbot. He takes that very seriously. He is strong and protective. He has a real sense of duty.”
With the project resized, Cunningham focused on the key architectural issues involved in the project.
“The library was the first building on campus that I did. While it involved the same players as the Abbey Church, it was a very different project because of all the issues related to Ford,” Cunningham said.
“I had to respond. How do you build a wall? How do you build a roof, a window? I wanted to build it the same way as Ford would build it. That’s the way I’d do it anyway. For example, solid masonry walls hold the building up.”
But budgetary constraints forced Cunningham to improvise.
“On the window openings in the Middle School, Ford used arches. Since we couldn’t afford to do arches, we poured a concrete beam above the window to support the weight. We left the concrete exposed.” Once again, the tradition of honesty.
As an architectural student at the University of Texas in the seventies, Cunningham had the chance to be instructed by Ford. He and his cohorts also spent many hours “just hanging out” in Ford’s San Antonio office.
“He taught us to be independent-minded. He inspired us to buck the system and to do things differently,” Cunningham remembered. “He was a contrarian.”
To create covered walkways, Cunningham sought the most efficient, least expensive solution: simple columns and concrete slabs. Where possible, the slab roofs were cantilevered from the library itself to eliminate the need for columns (“Columns are expensive,” Cunningham remarked.)
When confronted with the issue on how to “blend” his no-frills covered walkways with the arches that had been built to connect the science building to the Middle School, Cunningham simply “stuck it to,” uh, under the arches.
“I like to take the straightforward, functional approach,” he said.
Cunningham, however, proved far more sensitive to the issue of how the library would interact with the monastery on one side and the campus on the other.
“Since the library was the last building built toward the abbey, we used a copper roof that slopes down,” Cunningham explained. “The library almost disappears into the landscape when viewed from the monastery. That’s important because the monks need to have their peace and quiet away from the school or they’re not going to be good teachers.”
On the school side, the roof slopes up towards the science center, opening the library up to the rest of the campus. The library and science center form a courtyard.
On his tour of the library, critic David Dillon remarked, “O’Neil would have loved this. The exposed beams, the natural light, the materials.”
“It is clearly a modern building,” Dillon added as he walked outside under the cantilevered covered walkway, “but it is not out of character with the other buildings. The way the windows are done, the way the canopy is done are all very much a modernist way of doing things and yet it fits in very nicely with what is here.”

“The gym is my favorite building on campus,” Cunningham said. “It is so simple and so pretty. It does what it is supposed to do. I like the twist with the leaning columns on the covered walkway.”
Cunningham placed the columns perpendicular to the walkway that climbs up a slight incline (4.9 degrees). The columns look “off” when viewed in relation to the thin windows of the gym.
Those thin windows caused a great deal of debate.
“Some clients,” Cunningham commented, “don’t want to listen to new ideas or try anything new. At Cistercian, there are really no constraints. I am free to pursue a vision.”
“We debated about the windows in the gym,” Cunningham said, “but they let me do it. And now they love them.”
The structure appears to have added more to the campus than just one simple building. “It balances the library and contains the science center, forming a third courtyard,” Cunningham said. It results in a feeling of completeness and creates a new complexity to the campus.
“The landscaping was inspired by Fr. Peter’s request for plants that require less water,” he added. “We were all set to go with the more manicured look with Bermuda and Shumard red oaks. But Fr. Peter led us to create a plan of native plants, including buffalo grass, red buds, and cedar elms.
“The native plants will create a much more natural looking environment for the school. In two years, it will appear really rugged and simple, like the building.” (Fr. Peter already is so pleased with the result that he is considering a plan to install more native plants in other areas of the campus.)
Cunningham seems to thrive on such contributions. “The team around me is critical,” he said. “Lonnie Burns has worked with me for eight or nine years. Bang Dang gives me great ideas. And having a company like Andres Construction that can handle changes is great. Rodger Harrison, the project superintendent, wants to do what’s best for Cistercian and as long as we’re making the final product better, Rodger is all for changes.”
“While Abbot Denis may make the final decision, he listens to five or six support people, like Fr. Peter, Peter Smith, Warren Andres ’75, Jere Thompson, and most recently, Pat Villareal. Without these people in the process, the product would be substandard. The project is only as good as the people involved.”
Cunningham also is working with Abbot Denis on plans to preserve the peace and solitude of the abbey. At the heart of the plan is the hill between the school and the monastery.
“The hill separates the school from the abbey, it preserves the peace of the abbey,” said Cunningham. “It also marks this place as something special. It should be preserved.”
The abbot is attempting to zone the hill so that nothing can be built on it. There is, however, talk of constructing a mausoleum for the monks within the hill.
So, Cunningham continues to build upon the Cistercian architectural tradition pioneered by O’Neil Ford, one that is sensitive to the mission of the school and to the environment.
“While they have very little in common visually,” reflected David Dillon, “O’Neil and Gary both share a love for materials. They also share a spirit. In Gary’s office, they really like to make stuff. He likes to have artisans around and work collaboratively. It’s an arts and crafts style. And that’s exactly the way Ford used to work.”
“They also share a real passion for architecture. It’s not some abstract, technical exercise,” Dillon added. “It is about your soul. It’s the most wonderful thing you can do with your life.”
Most recently, Cunningham worked with Abbot Denis and Andres Construction to renovate the west wing of the abbey.
“I know that Gary has no higher goal than to do the best for this community,” Abbot Denis stressed. “He wants this community to be as comfortable as possible. And in open meetings with the monks, he’ll remind us that the architecture should maintain the humility of the community. He watches over us.”
“It’s the Cistercian vision,” Cunningham said. “The monks set the tone. This is about Cistercian; it’s not about us. The architecture is only important so that the monks can do their work.
“I feel good about helping them,” he added. “but I don’t do it for that reason. I do it because it is needed. And I know how much they’re needed.”