Hoby had a long and fruitful career in Boulder-from 1950 through the early 1990s. His residences (over 90 of them)vary in style, but he tended toward a modern sensibility, using open floor plans, low-pitched roofs, and minimal decoration, with visual interest dependant on creative use of simple matierials and their textures, artful fenestration, and composition of elevations. Like many other 20th century architects, he considered the relationship of the house to its site (inside-outside) to be of great importance. Roofs, especially, seem to have been of interest, and he experimented with several different kinds. Generally low-pitched but rarely flat, they range from simple gables and gablets (hipped with little gables) to shallow butterflies, pyramids, and hyperbolic paraboloids done in concrete or wood. Wide eaves, with their ability to control solar gain and to serve as a transition from inside to out, were often used, and since they were part of the main roof, they made the porch or veranda a natural and organic extension of the house. He also found the gablets useful for clerestory windows, where they could light a living room or loft area.
 
Many of his commercial and institutional structures are extant, and some of them are the most visible buildings in Boulder. Williams Village dominates the view as one enters town on US 36, and Fairview High commands high ground to the southwest. Other projects include sensitive additions to the Boulder County Courthouse, the Boulder Municipal Building, and the large sanctuary addition, with its hyperbolic paraboloid vaults, of the First United Methodist Church. To the east on Arapahoe, he designed not only the office tower for Ball Brothers, but also the delightful single story auxiliary buildings behind to the north.
 
 
 

Hobart D. Wagener (1921-2005)

First United Methodist Church: 1421 Spruce. 1958-59
 
An addition to the older structure, consisting of six bays with four-gabled hyperbolic paraboloid shells. The pitch of the side-facing gables matches that of the older section's roof. The side gables are reenforced with horizontal tie rods, buried between courses of the stained-glass blocks, at the level of their haunches. The transverse gables couldn't have the same ties because they would interfere with the interior space, and thus needed to be thicker in order to contain outward thrusts at the roof's valleys.
This is a delightful and appropriate application of the hyperbolic paraboloid. The interior mirrors the exterior, it is good for covering a large space, and it does that in a very joyful way.
 
Boulder South Fire Station: 2225 Baseline. 1957-58
 
Note the three gables on the right, all hyperbolic paraboloids. They cover an office area, which is completely open. In this case the roof is of wood, with exposed beams on the interior. The west side matches, but at least one of the three sections has been walled off and modified with a conventional dropped ceiling at about eight feet, to serve as a sleeping area.
 
 

The east side of the plates

Centennial Jr. High (Middle School)2205 Norwood Ave. 1957

Here is another project involving folded plates, again over the gym. In this case the north-facing plates were cut with long skylights such as you see in factory roofs from the early 20th century forwards. The openings in the sky-lit plates are strengthened by a series of diagonal truss-like members, and the sky-lights themselves rise above. There were apparently problems with acoustics, leading to the application of sound-absorbant material which was sprayed onto the ceiling. Some of it falls off to this day.
Aside from the visual effects of the flocking, the ceiling has been a bit cluttered by the addition of the lights and their electrical conduits, as well as by the sprinkler system. I suspect that all the clutter was not what the architect and the engineer had in mind. In other areas the school is a delight. The hallways are decorated with varying, and nice, colors of vitreous block (shiny surfaces), and in the photo to the right, note the use-as at Casey-of adjustable sun shades over the windows. Note the newer addition as well, on the left. There is certainly a difference in scale between the late 1950s and what we consider necessary today. I suppose the higher second level facade on the left is hiding HVAC equipment on a roof at about the same height as that on the right.

The Labrot House. 1954

Expansive butterfly roofs supported by exposed beams cover front exterior walls which are brick below and all ribbon window above. The walls are ordered by evenly spaced vertical slots, and the corners are articulated by a little zigzag-a Miesian trick, I think-and Hoby was to use that device later on the Boulder County Courthouse additions. It lets the corner verticals express their load-bearing function, and A curved screening wall with the same horizontal spacing as the wall sections extends off to the north and east. This house was purchased by Cheri Belz, a Boulder architect, in 2006, and she has built a complementary addition to the rear-similar to the original house and turned about 90 degrees, it has the new living/kitchen/dining area above, with garage and auxiliary spaces below. The original carport remains, and old is connected to new by a hallway. For Wagener, the butterfly roof was rare, and he may have done only one other, the Thron House, a year later in 1955.


The Hansson House. 1960

With a "U" plan, this house incorporates some of Wagener's more common elements. The house presents little to the street, with no windows on the ground level (the left side is a carport), and two narrow doors give access to the screened entry court. Once across the court and inside, you can go through to the living room, which has a glass curtain wall giving a view to the south and the Flatirons in the distance. The roof, of double pitch, overhangs the central part of the house by several feet, and the corners, which are re-entrant, even more. The location of the fireplace, at the outside corner of the living room, is exceptional; in other houses it was more usually near the center of the house and separating a living room from some other space.

The Reed House. 1965

Another "U" plan, this time much larger, with an expansive open gabled roof over the gates of the front court. Its profile matches that of the main house roof behind, and from a distance the receding perspective lines of entry roof and house roof match. As in the Hansson House, the living/dining areas, to the west in this case, have the view, and the owners have it, with lots of glass under the main gable. Short screening walls at the front extend to the left and right, widening the street façade and hiding the parking area directly in front of the garage. When you get an architect to design your house you get attention to the site and views, and the original owners certainly did here. The house appears to be carefully oriented for the view from the dining room, and that view is toward a point somewhere between Mount Audubon and Long’s Peak.

The Thompson House. 1967

A “U” plan, again with screened entry court, but with the garage facing the street at the right. A wide but shallow entry hall makes the visitor go either left into the living room and then off to the bedroom area, or right to the kitchen, dining room and library. The living room, lit by high gabled clerestory windows on the front and rear, is separated from the back garden by only glass, and the transition from inside to outside is provided by the sweeping roof below the clerestory. The house backs to the west, with a view of the Flatirons, and the southwest corner of that roof is left open for a view from the living room. The clerestory gables have the thinnest fascia possible-they are the thickness of the 3” roof planks, tar paper and shingles combined. The mullions were kept slender as well, with the thicker 4” ones hiding the longitudinal roof beams. This house was not the Thompsons' first experience with a good local architect; in 1940 they were original owners of one of James Hunter's eight houses in the Floral Park district.

The Bartkus House. 1963

More like a summer cabin, it is square in plan, but with re-entrant corners facing its view, which is through a gap in the hills out to the eastern plains near Boulder. The entry is inset on the west side, with a gap in the roof between the line made by the front walls and the front door a few feet in. After coming into the entry hall one can go around the central fireplace to the right and down a few steps into the living room, with its glass wall roughly east. The two outside corners, sheltered by the roof, are porches for the one bedroom on the left side of the house, and the dining room on the right. Bartkus liked this site and the trees on it, and tried to save as many of them as possible in clearing space for the house. One had to be cut down, and for two of the others they were able to make holes in the eaves. A third drapes one of its branches down into the gap above the entry, and it may be that the gap is there only for the tree. This house, like at least one other Wagener house, was built with in-floor radiant heating.

The Wagener House. 1965

The Wageners' own house, and the last that they built for themselves in Boulder. Square in plan with a sweeping pyramidal roof and a large skylight over the central section of the house. Vi liked to garden, and the square section under the glass was originally a planting bed. The design allowed for the possibility of an atrium open to the sky, and if that had been carried through there would have been glass walls between the atrium and the rest of the house. Most of the living in this house is done on the main floor, with its soaring ceiling, but there are auxiliary rooms (office and guest room) above the entry area. Most of the central planting bed, except for four large areas at its corners, has been covered with a hardwood floor, and is now a living or sitting room surrounded by foliage. The exterior walls are heavily textured with vertical wood strips placed inches apart. The result is to balance the strong horizontal of the eave on the one hand, and to make the wall an organic, muscular element of the facade.

The Last Wagener House. 1995

Built for his son and family, the original idea was based on an Australian cattle station house. Early plans called for a single level, but more space was needed, and so the dormers, which in this case become an importatant design element. The house's strict symmetry, combined with the large dormers, folds in the roof sheets, extended rafters and vertical articulation of the exterior walls, make it look alive and muscular. This house pumps iron in the gym two hours a day. The western facade, with a view of the Flatirons, is typical, as are the corner porch areas. The wide eaves shelter a veranda, which in this case goes almost all the way around the house. As powerful as it is on the outside, the interior is calm and relaxing. And as in earlier houses, you come in through a relatively low-ceilinged entry to a shallow hall, then off either right or left to reach living and other areas.

There were at least 90 residential projects from 1953 through 1994, and many of the ideas visible in the larger works are common in the houses. The roof as a guiding design element, transitional spaces, especially between interior and exterior, use of natural materials (wood and stone or brick), and surface decoration through texture or applied vertical details. Entry courtyards are common, often with a gated screen wall across the front. Once inside the front door, a shallow but wide entry would force the visitor to turn either left or right. In some cases the entry ceiling is lower than what follows, so that one feels a sense of compression on entering, then relief after passing through into the living areas.

  Here are some structures illustrating his interest in thin shells:

Hyperbolic paraboloids, barrel roofs, folded plates, and other thin-shell structures were recent engineering developments dating from the 1930s, but they became very popular for a while in the 1950s and '60s. Felix Candela was a forceful exponent, and the Wageners saw some of his works on a mid-'50s trip to Mexico. A probable local influence was probably Milo Ketchum, the consulting engineer on the Methodist Church, Centennial, and Casey roofs, as well as on some house projects. Ketchum also designed the roof for the gym at Sacred Heart of Jesus, a block north of Casey. His own offices, in central Denver, had barrel roofs, and if you want an idea of how they can be used, look at his roofs on the Wonder Bakery, at 60th & Broadway, just east of I-25.