Howard Madole Homes Celebrated During Historic Preservation
Week in Sedona, 2003
Reprinted with kindest permission from the City of Sedona Regular
City Council Meeting minutes, Tuesday, May 27, 2003
The highlights of Historic Preservation week were a tour by
Howard Madole and his talk to the public at the library on May
12, 2003.
Howard Madole moved to Sedona with his family in the late 1940's.
His dad bought a piece of ground in west Sedona and the family
decided to build a house for resale. Howard had no formal training
or experience, but he designed an adobe house with large hand
hewn wood framed windows and three special fireplaces. The family
made, one at a time, several thousand adobe bricks on the property,
of their own mud concoction including some recycled asphalt to
add strength to the bricks. The house is in original form on
it's original site off Tranquil Avenue on present day Wesleyan
Church property. It has long been a favorite structure of commission
members.
The Madole family sold this house and then bought another parcel
of land and subdivided. Howard's next design was for a home for
himself in this little settlement. It is the first house
on the left as you encounter the homes on Madole Drive. Howard's
designs were by this time quite modern and included a unique
structural roof design. 2 X 4's were nailed together to create
laminated solid wood roof sections. These sections were, and
still are, supported by a ring of steel at the outside perimeter
of the roof, placing the roof sections in compression
and keeping them in the air. Howard told us that his roof designs
were affordable back then because he bought straight, perfectly
clear pine from the Flagstaff mill for $95/1000 board feet. Howard
was a natural and intuitive innovator and some of his houses
used a buried duct system for cooling.
As we walked up Madole Road while on our tour, homeowners came
out to say hello and
were thrilled to meet the architect of their homes. They were
gratified to learn that there are a few serious Madole affectionados
on the street. Howard designed the original King's Ransom motel
and the Royal Crest Apartments, disappointingly, most of his
architectural elements on both of these have been covered over
by faux Spanish elements. As you can imagine, the streets and
landscaping have changed quite a bit since Howard left here in
the 1960s. Finding some of his houses were a treasure hunt and
spending the afternoon and evening with Howard was a special
treat.
Howard went on to design over 200 structures in Northern Arizona
and at 80 years today he is still a practicing architect with
local and international commissions.
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