Almost from birth there were huge construction projects ranging form hydroelectric dams to dredging operations to the construction of wharves and docks to visit. I learned to operate a bulldozer (Caterpillar D-7) by age nine. My father was District Engineer of the Omaha District and among other things was the contracting officer for the construction of air bases, entire residential communities, underground command posts and missile launching facilities. He later became Assistant Chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for River and Harbor development worldwide. There were trips with him on his inspection boats, tugs, dredges and inspection aircraft with explanations of what we were seeing.
The fifth year at university was devoted to the development and presentation of a thesis.
Portrait of Hub Miller
by B.B.Thunder
Graduating from the Catholic University of America in Washington DC (as a non-Catholic) with a Bachelor of Architecture degree, there were ideas of building a practice involving institutional clients…. There would be concert halls, art museums, corporate home offices and other large glamorous projects to be created. That was not to be. Instead there was a job with a small design-build outfit where I was sent to the bottom of a pier hole. The area around Dallas is pier-drilling country, the shaft of the hole is drilled, a reamer is then dropped town and expanded to make the flared footing of the foundation. There are many of these in any project, and many trips down to the determined that the specified material had been penetrated for the specified distance. Then there was general construction labor to be done. The scheduling and coordination of all the trades working at the site, and determining compliance with specifications and percentage of completion of work trade by trade had to be done. How much should be retained from their draws? There was time for walking permits through the city, and resolving code and zoning conflicts. Finally there was the drafting room where preparation of actual construction documents commenced.
After that, came work at a large real estate development company that offered a much broader experience. There was more to learn about the economics of apartment, warehouse, shopping center, motel and office building development than seemed possible. With becoming licensed came responsibility for the design of all their projects across the southern tier of states. When the various partners of the developer split up each became clients of a budding architecture practice. By then an NCARB (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards)certificate and architect licenses ranging from Pennsylvania to Washington State hung on the wall. Soon followed an interesting impression of reality…. Successful architects can’t afford to spend time designing buildings and artists lead hard lives. Would it be possible to build myself a trust fund?
What if anything, do all my clients have in common? How do they do what they do……. show personality… dress….. in order to become so successful? Some common threads appeared worthy of imitation. It was show business ……. And tailor made suits… pure acting, but damn if it didn’t work! Having gained valuable experience designing rather large developments, it was time to stretch out wings and do a thousand things, including getting options on two complete city blocks of property in Dallas that was zoned for apartment development. The economics penciled out to three story buildings for the entire area with one-and-a-half cars per unit … type-five construction, and……. Oh yes… money! After convincing someone in Houston to back me for a fifty-percent interest in the development, we launched. His financial statement arrived a few days later and, my oh my, this statement was adequate! Arrangements for permanent financing for the first phase where well along when the summons arrived to go to New York with my attorney to ‘finalize’ the arrangements. Instead there was an important lesson learned in how not go about arranging permanent financing. Fortunately the options ran out before things got sticky.
For my first real outing in the real estate came a charming triplex. The tenants used their living rooms as a toilet. They ripped out the kitchen and bathroom fixtures and tore down the gutters and downspouts to sell. A major grocery chain was assembling property in the area for a store, and my property was the key. They told me later that they had closed the store because the residents of the neighborhood would dynamite the back of the store just to steal a pack of cigarettes.
Assembling some residential lots and pitching a local bank on staking me to a couple of houses on them helped develop some commercial credit. As the final draw was being prepared on the first two, my banker said he’d have to have a look, and when he got there he saw no doors or windows, he had to climb over sawhorses and slog through mud to get in but finally said “ well…. Alright.” On the way out he wondered aloud about all the commotion going on across the street where slabs were being poured as far as the eye could see in both directions…… “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that!” I said.
It was now necessary to attract people with peculiar ability in the several disciplines, and put them in charge of their divisions and let them build the organizations necessary to do the work required of them. It would be my job to secure the business and work with clients, to provide the money and closely monitor the progress of the divisions. New clients came. Some before they’d purchased the land to ask about its highest and best use, what the land was worth, how should the development look? My clients seemed to be sensitive to the land, they wanted to do the very best possible thing with it that they could. Some were able to verbalize about it in astonishing and beautiful ways.
Developers of shopping centers came to me because the primary anchor tenant, usually a major grocery chain, had told them, “The chances of your getting us for your center will be much better if Hub Miller designs it.” Motel chains wanted me to serve as architect and planner for their motel developments. Others wanted me to plan their business parks. The emotional need arose to vacate the FHA apartment out near the airport. There’s got to be someplace to be. Some office buildings are under construction in a couple parts of town. There’s also an apartment house near an office site, another in South Dallas and a garden apartment complex in East Dallas, but there isn’t any room for me. They’re fully rented at market rates, but there’s no cash flow because each is carrying up to three mortgages. There’s a house-building operation north of town, all this architecture and planning work going on from coast to coast, and money’s flowing but there isn’t any for me.
Hub's office Building, Studio and Residence on
Noble Avenue in Dallas
It’s to be my first office and first home ….. on a dream location with large trees next to downtown Dallas…. It’s a 17,000 sq. ft. building in the middle of which is a studio for me, 30’x 32’ and a 20’ceiling with skylights……..
Hub's office Building, Studio and Residence on Noble Avenue in Dallas the studio is down a few steps, has a brick floor and fireplace, and on the north side a glass wall opening onto a high-walled private garden. Beyond the studio and up some steps is my residence which overlooks the same courtyard. The building is in the trimming-out phase, walls taped and bedded but no painting has begun. Up the dark stairway with all my personal belongings on my back to crash on the floor where in the middle of the night bright beams of light swish around the place, and a couple of Dallas Police officers are making inquiries as to who I am. I am, shall we say, a late maturing type, looking at east a decade younger than my years (at the time). What the officers see is a scrawny longhaired teenager. … “I’m the owner.” Roaring hilarity all around… “he’s Crazy all right!”
Fortunately I was able to prove ownership before they could haul me off. Everyone eventually was able to settle in and things started humming. The division heads were building their organizations and the operation grew with almost alarming speed. Being a Gemini meant that in time, a sine-wave pattern established itself, our fortunes rising during the rational phase of my brain cycle, and falling during the irrational phase. The studio was a crossroads and sooner or later everyone passed through. One client would sit at my elbow as I literally designed his far-flung projects as fast as he could talk.
By an odd succession of events a regular commute to Haiti began, and an association with its Minister of Finance while a plan for the city of New Port au Prince unfolded. What did they expected of me, to build it and hand them the keys? It didn’t matter as long as the funds kept moving. Then the arsenal, which happened to be in the basement of the palace, blew up as seems perfectly rational in Haiti, and the grandiose plan blew up as well. Office parks, shopping centers, apartment complexes, motels, office-showroom warehouse developments and even restaurants and automobile dealerships covered the earth…. And oh yes…. A horse slaughter plant. We pioneered the concept of mixed use developments which are visualized as pedestrian islands, all walkways leading to the village center without crossing streets or parking lots. Shopkeepers would live above their shops….. at least half the parking would be underground. The beauty of it is that these pedestrian islands, usually about forty acres, got built exactly as I first visualized them… they look just like the first sketches. It’s not often that developer clients will say “I don’t want to give you any ideas….. just make it the way you think it ought to be.” One might sneer at developer clients, but mine were the best and their confidence will always be remembered.
When some of my clients discovered that I was building for my own account, they wanted me to build for them too. And so began our design-build business. My concept was to go back to the wellhead. We produced all our own construction documents, did our own structural engineering, produced our own shop drawings for steel fabrication. We formed, placed and finished all the concrete with our own people, did our own steel erection, did our own framing, sheetrocking and trim, our own masonry, our own painting, applied our own cement stucco, did our own roofing and concrete paving. We did everything in-house but asphalt, mechanical and elevators.
If institutional clients were not going to come, as obviously they wern’t, then the right had been earned for me to become a paper, or perhaps canvas architect. There was art to be made, imaginary cities to be designed, spiritual mountains to be climbed. There were art galleries and dealers to be cultivated, shows to promote, new concerns to address…….. Then one day I’d say something like….. “Who are all those people in the conference room?” This would signify that a phase change was threatening. My family of full-time employees had grown to a hundred and fifty.
On another occasion the dim awareness that my office building on Turtle Creek was rented to the campaign offices of the opposing candidates for Governor seeped in. The balance of the building was occupied by the national headquarters of a pyramid sales outfit……. while the permanent lender gently inquired as to why the building was still hanging on interim financing a year-and-a-half after its completion. It was easy to tell when a flip to the irrational phase was about to begin because it was always preceded by episodes of longing….. after which cities on the moon, on mars, cities orbiting the earth…. floating on clouds…. flowed.
A friend from the East Coast is here, I’m showing him around….. You……..you…… OWN…all this! How come you ain’t rich dude?” "I am rich." I say. "Could you spare a couple bucks until Friday?"
My growth policy prevented me from having much personal cash, which didn’t matter because I’d never had any money anyway. But eventually I did prosper for a little while. To celebrate my personal coming into the black, I called my friend Renate and told her to be ready at seven AM the following morning. She agreed even though she had no idea what was to follow. We visited the Guggenheim, the Whitney and the seedier parts of Brooklyn. On the way across the Upper Harbor from Staten Island in the lowering light we were serenaded by a string quartet right there on the ferryboat. In my minds eye buildings three thousand feet tall loomed ever higher in the sky as we approached the Battery. After a leisurely dinner at Windows on the World we were back in Dallas by midnight. Where did these guys come from? A group of developers was waiting at a hotel, all standing there projecting a conservative and dignified image, one that certainly didn’t last long. They’re in town to check out some commercial property and now we’re streaking along an expressway in my black Lincoln Continental toward the subject property. An atmosphere of raging hyper-excitement builds. Electric windows whirr up and down, windshield wipers scrape on and off even though it isn’t raining. Seat backs are lurching back and forth. “Now on this side you’ll see such and such…. And over there is the famous …..” It’s 140 degrees in the car because the heat button got pushed by mistake. No one notices.
We exit and gather in a tight group on the subject property. “This is the best commercial warehouse location in North Texas.” I begin. “It’s so many minutes to the international airport in that direction, so many minutes to downtown in ¬that direction (at 175 miles an hour). The market here calls for dock-high, front-park, rear-load, five-pallet high facilities. The best way to go is concrete tilt-up with long span angle joists with a bulb-tee poured gypsum roof deck system etc. etc. There’s tremendous competition for this type of space right now, the leases are averaging such and such…… and rising. Land and construction costs are rising too… so now is the time etc…. “
Their incredibly ridiculous chatter is hammering my Gemini brain. They’re talking so fast they can’t absorb every word I’m saying, but they‘re sure getting the spirit of it all.
“Those handsome buildings you see across the expressway over there belong to the Screaming Nightmare Business Park. The entire area was built out in a year-and-a-half reaching 95% occupancy three months after completion.” Their eyes widen. “The open land across the interchange sold last week and will be developed by the Parallelepiped Development Corporation out of ……... They eat the bones and spit out the meat, so they’ve got to know what’s coming down the pike! Now that it’s gone, this property right here is the only developable land this size between here and the swamp. If you like, I can do so and so….. then all you’ll need to do is …… You can close on…. “. I’m interrupted by, “We’ll take it! How much?”
On the way back to the car I’m thinking to myself, ‘We’ll take it!,… how much?’ That’s a novel approach to the purchase of a major piece of commercial development property. I’m an artist! Why do I waste my time this way? Monday morning someone in Texarkana is on the phone saying, “Let’s look at that in-town development property today Hub. I’ll send the plane”…………………………………………
There was New York City after the close of the current civilization. New civilizations must develop. By the nineties, I had chosen New York City as the focus of my emerging Cities of the Mind project. I had locked into my irrational mindset………..
I looked up one day and there was no one there.
When the time came, the auditorium was filled with students, faculty and distinguished guests. The Dean of the School of Architecture sat at the center of a long table that held the entire faculty of the architecture department, and directly across from me. My thesis involved the redesign of a part of Los
Portrait of Hub Miller
by B.B.Thunder
Angeles. We were allotted thirty minutes and time went along, the Dean slid ever farther under the table, his eyes getting larger and larger. When the presentation was finished he said “Do you realize you talked for over an hour? But I wouldn’t have stopped you for anything in the world!”
After that, came work at a large real estate development company that offered a much broader experience. There was more to learn about the economics of apartment, warehouse, shopping center, motel and office building development than seemed possible. With becoming licensed came responsibility for the design of all their projects across the southern tier of states. When the various partners of the developer split up each became clients of a budding architecture practice. By then an NCARB (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards)certificate and architect licenses ranging from Pennsylvania to Washington State hung on the wall. Soon followed an interesting impression of reality…. Successful architects can’t afford to spend time designing buildings and artists lead hard lives. Would it be possible to build myself a trust fund?
What if anything, do all my clients have in common? How do they do what they do……. show personality… dress….. in order to become so successful? Some common threads appeared worthy of imitation. It was show business ……. And tailor made suits… pure acting, but damn if it didn’t work! Having gained valuable experience designing rather large developments, it was time to stretch out wings and do a thousand things, including getting options on two complete city blocks of property in Dallas that was zoned for apartment development. The economics penciled out to three story buildings for the entire area with one-and-a-half cars per unit … type-five construction, and……. Oh yes… money! After convincing someone in Houston to back me for a fifty-percent interest in the development, we launched. His financial statement arrived a few days later and, my oh my, this statement was adequate! Arrangements for permanent financing for the first phase where well along when the summons arrived to go to New York with my attorney to ‘finalize’ the arrangements. Instead there was an important lesson learned in how not go about arranging permanent financing. Fortunately the options ran out before things got sticky.
For my first real outing in the real estate came a charming triplex. The tenants used their living rooms as a toilet. They ripped out the kitchen and bathroom fixtures and tore down the gutters and downspouts to sell. A major grocery chain was assembling property in the area for a store, and my property was the key. They told me later that they had closed the store because the residents of the neighborhood would dynamite the back of the store just to steal a pack of cigarettes.
Assembling some residential lots and pitching a local bank on staking me to a couple of houses on them helped develop some commercial credit. As the final draw was being prepared on the first two, my banker said he’d have to have a look, and when he got there he saw no doors or windows, he had to climb over sawhorses and slog through mud to get in but finally said “ well…. Alright.” On the way out he wondered aloud about all the commotion going on across the street where slabs were being poured as far as the eye could see in both directions…… “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that!” I said.
It was now necessary to attract people with peculiar ability in the several disciplines, and put them in charge of their divisions and let them build the organizations necessary to do the work required of them. It would be my job to secure the business and work with clients, to provide the money and closely monitor the progress of the divisions. New clients came. Some before they’d purchased the land to ask about its highest and best use, what the land was worth, how should the development look? My clients seemed to be sensitive to the land, they wanted to do the very best possible thing with it that they could. Some were able to verbalize about it in astonishing and beautiful ways.
Developers of shopping centers came to me because the primary anchor tenant, usually a major grocery chain, had told them, “The chances of your getting us for your center will be much better if Hub Miller designs it.” Motel chains wanted me to serve as architect and planner for their motel developments. Others wanted me to plan their business parks. The emotional need arose to vacate the FHA apartment out near the airport. There’s got to be someplace to be. Some office buildings are under construction in a couple parts of town. There’s also an apartment house near an office site, another in South Dallas and a garden apartment complex in East Dallas, but there isn’t any room for me. They’re fully rented at market rates, but there’s no cash flow because each is carrying up to three mortgages. There’s a house-building operation north of town, all this architecture and planning work going on from coast to coast, and money’s flowing but there isn’t any for me.
Hub's office Building, Studio and Residence on
Noble Avenue in Dallas
Hub's office Building, Studio and Residence on Noble Avenue in Dallas the studio is down a few steps, has a brick floor and fireplace, and on the north side a glass wall opening onto a high-walled private garden. Beyond the studio and up some steps is my residence which overlooks the same courtyard. The building is in the trimming-out phase, walls taped and bedded but no painting has begun. Up the dark stairway with all my personal belongings on my back to crash on the floor where in the middle of the night bright beams of light swish around the place, and a couple of Dallas Police officers are making inquiries as to who I am. I am, shall we say, a late maturing type, looking at east a decade younger than my years (at the time). What the officers see is a scrawny longhaired teenager. … “I’m the owner.” Roaring hilarity all around… “he’s Crazy all right!”
Fortunately I was able to prove ownership before they could haul me off. Everyone eventually was able to settle in and things started humming. The division heads were building their organizations and the operation grew with almost alarming speed. Being a Gemini meant that in time, a sine-wave pattern established itself, our fortunes rising during the rational phase of my brain cycle, and falling during the irrational phase. The studio was a crossroads and sooner or later everyone passed through. One client would sit at my elbow as I literally designed his far-flung projects as fast as he could talk.
By an odd succession of events a regular commute to Haiti began, and an association with its Minister of Finance while a plan for the city of New Port au Prince unfolded. What did they expected of me, to build it and hand them the keys? It didn’t matter as long as the funds kept moving. Then the arsenal, which happened to be in the basement of the palace, blew up as seems perfectly rational in Haiti, and the grandiose plan blew up as well. Office parks, shopping centers, apartment complexes, motels, office-showroom warehouse developments and even restaurants and automobile dealerships covered the earth…. And oh yes…. A horse slaughter plant. We pioneered the concept of mixed use developments which are visualized as pedestrian islands, all walkways leading to the village center without crossing streets or parking lots. Shopkeepers would live above their shops….. at least half the parking would be underground. The beauty of it is that these pedestrian islands, usually about forty acres, got built exactly as I first visualized them… they look just like the first sketches. It’s not often that developer clients will say “I don’t want to give you any ideas….. just make it the way you think it ought to be.” One might sneer at developer clients, but mine were the best and their confidence will always be remembered.
When some of my clients discovered that I was building for my own account, they wanted me to build for them too. And so began our design-build business. My concept was to go back to the wellhead. We produced all our own construction documents, did our own structural engineering, produced our own shop drawings for steel fabrication. We formed, placed and finished all the concrete with our own people, did our own steel erection, did our own framing, sheetrocking and trim, our own masonry, our own painting, applied our own cement stucco, did our own roofing and concrete paving. We did everything in-house but asphalt, mechanical and elevators.
If institutional clients were not going to come, as obviously they wern’t, then the right had been earned for me to become a paper, or perhaps canvas architect. There was art to be made, imaginary cities to be designed, spiritual mountains to be climbed. There were art galleries and dealers to be cultivated, shows to promote, new concerns to address…….. Then one day I’d say something like….. “Who are all those people in the conference room?” This would signify that a phase change was threatening. My family of full-time employees had grown to a hundred and fifty.
On another occasion the dim awareness that my office building on Turtle Creek was rented to the campaign offices of the opposing candidates for Governor seeped in. The balance of the building was occupied by the national headquarters of a pyramid sales outfit……. while the permanent lender gently inquired as to why the building was still hanging on interim financing a year-and-a-half after its completion. It was easy to tell when a flip to the irrational phase was about to begin because it was always preceded by episodes of longing….. after which cities on the moon, on mars, cities orbiting the earth…. floating on clouds…. flowed.
A friend from the East Coast is here, I’m showing him around….. You……..you…… OWN…all this! How come you ain’t rich dude?” "I am rich." I say. "Could you spare a couple bucks until Friday?"
My growth policy prevented me from having much personal cash, which didn’t matter because I’d never had any money anyway. But eventually I did prosper for a little while. To celebrate my personal coming into the black, I called my friend Renate and told her to be ready at seven AM the following morning. She agreed even though she had no idea what was to follow. We visited the Guggenheim, the Whitney and the seedier parts of Brooklyn. On the way across the Upper Harbor from Staten Island in the lowering light we were serenaded by a string quartet right there on the ferryboat. In my minds eye buildings three thousand feet tall loomed ever higher in the sky as we approached the Battery. After a leisurely dinner at Windows on the World we were back in Dallas by midnight. Where did these guys come from? A group of developers was waiting at a hotel, all standing there projecting a conservative and dignified image, one that certainly didn’t last long. They’re in town to check out some commercial property and now we’re streaking along an expressway in my black Lincoln Continental toward the subject property. An atmosphere of raging hyper-excitement builds. Electric windows whirr up and down, windshield wipers scrape on and off even though it isn’t raining. Seat backs are lurching back and forth. “Now on this side you’ll see such and such…. And over there is the famous …..” It’s 140 degrees in the car because the heat button got pushed by mistake. No one notices.
We exit and gather in a tight group on the subject property. “This is the best commercial warehouse location in North Texas.” I begin. “It’s so many minutes to the international airport in that direction, so many minutes to downtown in ¬that direction (at 175 miles an hour). The market here calls for dock-high, front-park, rear-load, five-pallet high facilities. The best way to go is concrete tilt-up with long span angle joists with a bulb-tee poured gypsum roof deck system etc. etc. There’s tremendous competition for this type of space right now, the leases are averaging such and such…… and rising. Land and construction costs are rising too… so now is the time etc…. “
Their incredibly ridiculous chatter is hammering my Gemini brain. They’re talking so fast they can’t absorb every word I’m saying, but they‘re sure getting the spirit of it all.
“Those handsome buildings you see across the expressway over there belong to the Screaming Nightmare Business Park. The entire area was built out in a year-and-a-half reaching 95% occupancy three months after completion.” Their eyes widen. “The open land across the interchange sold last week and will be developed by the Parallelepiped Development Corporation out of ……... They eat the bones and spit out the meat, so they’ve got to know what’s coming down the pike! Now that it’s gone, this property right here is the only developable land this size between here and the swamp. If you like, I can do so and so….. then all you’ll need to do is …… You can close on…. “. I’m interrupted by, “We’ll take it! How much?”
On the way back to the car I’m thinking to myself, ‘We’ll take it!,… how much?’ That’s a novel approach to the purchase of a major piece of commercial development property. I’m an artist! Why do I waste my time this way? Monday morning someone in Texarkana is on the phone saying, “Let’s look at that in-town development property today Hub. I’ll send the plane”…………………………………………
There was New York City after the close of the current civilization. New civilizations must develop. By the nineties, I had chosen New York City as the focus of my emerging Cities of the Mind project. I had locked into my irrational mindset………..
I looked up one day and there was no one there.
