Steve Miller, Architect

The Brown County Art Gallery addition. photo by Cindy Steele

Steve Miller

Brown County Architect

Steve Miller at his studio in Nashville. photo by Boris Ladwig

~by Boris Ladwig

When Steve Miller graduated from architecture school in 1972, he returned to his native Nashville with the intention of staying for a year, just to reconnect, before moving to Boulder, Colorado, to focus on timber frame design.

At the time, Miller doubted that a town as little as Nashville could provide enough work to support the fledgling architect.

Fifty years later, at age 77, Miller remains as busy as ever, and people who’ve benefited from his designs say his impact on the community’s architecture can hardly be overstated, as he has designed anything from public spaces in the center of town to homes that appear to have grown straight out of the county’s natural beauty.

“His footprint is all over the town,” said Lyn LetsingerMiller, president of the Brown County Art Gallery and Museum, the expansion of which Miller designed.

Miller said his career choice and his approach to designing structures have their origins in the arts and sciences to which he was exposed while growing up in Brown County.

As a child, in the 1940s and 1950s, he often peeked over the shoulder of Brown County art colony members, which included his grandfather on his mother’s side, Dale Bessire.

Miller sat recently in his studio in downtown Nashville and recalled that when he ventured from his childhood home on North Jefferson Street to stroll to Greasy Creek to look for little turtles and snakes, he often walked through the gardens/studios of Brown County artists such as Adolph and Ada Shulz, and Marie Goth and V.J. Cariani.

Home of the Herrings designed by Miller. photo by Boris Ladwig

Miller said spending time with the artists ingrained in him an appreciation for nature, wildlife, music, and poetry.

He also spent a lot of time with his father, Maurice (Pods) Miller, who had taken over his father’s pharmacy in the building that houses the Hobnob Corner Restaurant.

“I think that’s the blend of the art and science that led me to be an architect,” he said.

His architecture studies at the University of Cincinnati awakened in him a fascination with internationally known architects as well as the era’s writers, artists, and jazz musicians.

After he moved back to Nashville, his connections quickly got him jobs. He worked on a local bank building, the courthouse, a downtown church, the Calvin Place shopping area, and the Brown County Art Guild.

Miller said he was inundated by a flood of work as Nashville went through a growth phase that brought prominent arts and crafts artisans, including blacksmiths and wood workers, who inspired one another. “That was fun and creative,” Miller recalled.

His public works prompted people to ask him to design homes for them in Brown County, and he developed a reputation for residences that he designed to blend into their beautiful Brown County surroundings. Word of mouth spread, and clients came knocking from Bloomington and Columbus.

“I was just in heaven as a young architect,” he said.

Eventually he got so busy he had to expand and hire draughts people and other architects. He moved into his current office, South Jefferson, in the early 1990s.

Miller said the favorite of his designs is the Brown County Art Gallery expansion, in part because of its sound mechanical and structural integrity, but also because of its purpose: education and art. Miller said he also has a personal connection to the project. His grandfather and other artists were still showing at the gallery when Miller was growing up.

“So here they are, on display in an environment that I helped create,” he said. “I feel good being in that space.”

Letsinger-Miller said Steve’s design boosted the gallery’s square footage from 7,000 to near 15,000. The expansion features a multi-purpose area where people hold meetings and host baby showers, but it also needed wall surface on which art can be hung easily, and its flooring needed to be tough enough to withstand the roughly 10,000 annual visitors.

She described Miller as a very warm person who really listens to his clients and thinks a lot about how everything fits together, from the interior and where to place what kinds of light fixtures to the exterior and how things look from different angles and whether the design fits into its surroundings.

Miller said that he is very “right-brained” during the design process, focusing on intuition. Before beginning his sketches, he typically walks around an area to get a feel for the sunlight, the slope, the views and then conjures in his mind something that fits organically into the landscape, something that preserves the site’s natural beauty.

Brown County Inn owner Barry Herring moved to Brown County with his wife, Debbie, about 11 years ago. The couple had some land about 15 minutes north of Nashville where they had a cabin they had used for getaways while living in Chicago, where Herring worked as a shopping center developer. The couple had approached architects in Indianapolis for their Brown County home, and even got designs and a small model, but it didn’t mesh with their vision.

Herring said the couple sat down with Miller, of whom they had heard through word of mouth, and knew after their first meeting that they had found the architect of their dream home.

Herring said that he remembered being impressed by Miller’s sketching skills. Herring and his wife struggled a bit to describe what they wanted, almost as if trying to articulate a feeling, but as they were sitting at a table, Miller began to sketch.

The Herrings’ home looks out over a 10-acre field with a lake. The property also features rolling hills and wooded areas, in which the couple ride golf carts, hunt for mushrooms and ginseng, and tap trees for maple syrup.

These days Miller spends about half his time working on residences and the other half on shops, churches, and other nonresidential structures.

The architect and his wife Anne, a stained glass artist, inherited his grandfather’s home and still live there. Anne creates her glass designs in the more than a hundred-year-old studio where the impressionist painter worked, and where Steve started his career.

The Millers occasionally go scuba diving and sailing in the Caribbean or visiting mountains out West with their children and grandchildren, but they remain firmly rooted in southern Indiana. They still go on hikes in Brown County or look for nests of great blue herons along the Salt Creek.

Miller said he plans to continue designing so long as he remains healthy.

“There’s still more to do,” he said.