A. Hays Town

A. Hays Town
Portrait of A. Hays Town
Born	June 17, 1903 Crowley, Louisiana, United States
Died	January 6, 2005(2005-01-06) (aged 101) Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
Occupation	Architect
Children	A. Hays Town Jr. and Blanche Town Gladney

A. Hays Town (June 17, 1903 – January 6, 2005) was an American architect whose career spanned over sixty-five years. While Town designed commercial and governmental buildings in the style of modern architecture for the first forty years of his career, he became best known for his residential architecture, which was heavily influenced by the Spanish, French, and Creole history of Louisiana. His work was featured in several publications during his lifetime, including Time, Life, Southern Living, and Southern Accents. Today, there are an estimated 1,000 homes remaining that were designed and built by Town, and his distinct style continues to exert an influence on modern southern architecture.

Town was born June 17, 1903, in Crowley, Louisiana, the second son of Joshua Hays and Mary Laboye Town. When Town was in the third grade, his family moved to Lafayette, Louisiana, where his father owned and operated a general merchandise store. From an early age Town showed an artistic proclivity and was encouraged by his father to draw buildings as a form of self-expression. At the age of fourteen, Town designed his first piece of architecture, a remodeling plan for the family home.

Town attended high school in Lafayette at Southwestern Louisiana Institute High School, finishing in 1920. From 1920 to 1922 he was enrolled in the College of Engineering at Southwestern Louisiana Institute, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1922, he entered the School of Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans, graduating in 1926 with a bachelor of science degree in architecture.

Upon obtaining his degree in 1926, Town moved to Jackson, Mississippi where he was employed by the N. W. Overstreet architecture firm. The following year, Town married Blanche Scarff of Abbeville, Louisiana; they would remain together until her death in 1980. Town was soon recognized as one of the most outstanding young modernists in American architecture, and Life featured on its cover one of his designs—a monolithic concrete building in Jackson that houses Bailey Magnet High School. The school, built in 1938, was recently voted a top architectural site by the state chapter of the American Institute of Architects.