Bill Morris designed just over 50 single family custom homes, all but two of them in NE Ohio. The first was in 1954 when he was 27 years old; a home in Cleveland Heights for his parents which had a narrow brush with demolition but has been entirely restored. The last was in 1994 in Wooster when he was 67 years old; this is still occupied by the original clients Peter and Jill Sanford.
After designing his parents home, Bill worked with a master carpenter, James Fahnestock, to build it. He then spent the next couple years working with Fahnestock to learn carpentry, cabinet-making and other aspects of the building trade. Bill took his first architectural job with Painesville architect Bruce Huston, working in that office for a year. He then worked for 2 years in the office of John Terence Kelly. Kelly was a renowned modern architect who won the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1968.
Bill married Regina Morris in 1954, and they had their first child, Martina in 1955. They lived in a 1918 summer cottage in South Euclid that sat in the floodplain of Euclid Creek.
Bill opened his own office in 1961. As he told his kids later (and often), “The first decision you make is whether to work for yourself, or for someone else.” He worked for himself.
This was Bill’s most active period: he designed 20 houses in 10 years. Several won prizes from the AIA in quick succession, establishing his position as a leading architect in Cleveland. In 1968, 4 of the 20 buildings chosen for the Cleveland AIA Design Excellence award were Morris designs.
The majority of the homes in this period were in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland: Pepper Pike (7), Moreland Hills, Chagrin Falls, Gates Mills, Beachwood, Shaker Heights and South Euclid. But he was also beginning to work in other parts of NE Ohio, with 4 houses in Dayton, and others in Sandusky, Chardon and Walton Hills.
At the end of this decade, he began working with Manny Barenholtz on the Walden community in Aurora. It would become his most well known project.
The first house of the decade was his family home – the summer cottage on the floodplain that had become known as “Morris’ Folly”. Bill designed an addition on stilts (his first take on this approach), and an earthen dam to reduce the flooding. All of this was chronicled in a Cleveland Plain Dealer article in 1961 that is linked below.
The beginning of the 1970s started off at the same pace: 11 houses in the first 5 years.
Then he had his first heart attack in 1977, at 50 years old. Two more followed in the next few years.
He designed 4 houses in latter half of the decade.
Bill designed 6 single family homes in the 1980s.
He had a stroke while driving in 1982 that left him partly paralyzed on his left side. In 1986 he had open heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.
This decade also brought him broad recognition. He was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1983 for his 20 year contribution to architecture in the region, and the Design for Better Living Award for the 1985 Greater Cleveland Home and Flower Show House.
Bill’s last two homes were designed in the 1990s. He also designed a major addition to a third home. The Whitehouse residence was a finalist for the Award of Merit from the Propane Gallery of Architectural Design.
This is an interactive map.
Click the circled numbers to drill down to the individual map pointers for each home (plotted by zipcode).
Hovering over the individual pointer brings up the year, name of original client and city;
Clicking the individual pointer brings up a link to the ebook section with that home.
Bill worked on a wide range of larger developments, from planned communities like Walden in Aurora to the St. Albans church in Cleveland Hts.
This section is in process … stay tuned.
In the 1970s and 1980s Bill put together many visionary designs for large and small developments. They were often glorious designs, and the fact that they weren’t chosen was painful both to Bill, and to those of us who were transported by their possibility. They still stand as testament to what the region, and the country, could have had.
This section is also in process …