Builders: Minimalist house attracting double takes

Joe Rivette was scratching his head for a while trying to figure out what kind of house was going up at the northwest corner of 25th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Weve all been watching that house go up, said Rivette, who has been observing the construction project from a dwelling nearby. It was going OK until they put that roof on it.

But its growing on me now. What I want to know is: Do they have a name for that type of architecture?

Rivette, who has lived in Joplin for 60 years, said he remembers what 25th and Pennsylvania looked like before the tornado in May 2011. The neighborhood today, with its uniform single-story bungalows, cottages and ranch-like houses, is far different from what existed three years ago.

None of those houses that were here before looked alike, he said. You know, I think the tornado robbed Joplin of part of its personality. There were a lot of old and run-down houses from the time Joplin was a mining town. Those houses gave this town personality.

The builders of the spec house, Matt Harris and Matt Robertson, with the Fox Creek Construction Group, want to give 25th and Pennsylvania some of the personality it has lost by challenging conventional thinking about home design in Joplins tornado zone.

We wanted to do something creative instead of building the same houses over and over again, Harris said. We think this minimalist contemporary style will take off because we can keep costs down. We think the younger generation gets it.

We wanted to do something different, and show that you could build for under $100,000 and have something thats on the higher end when youre finished.

Harris said people have told him they are surprised that the city would permit such a nontraditional style in a neighborhood with uniform construction.

We had to battle the city a little over this because it looks different, he said. But they granted us a permit. I dont think they can dictate what it is supposed to look like.

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Builders: Minimalist house attracting double takes