Lasting Legacy: Jonathan L. Foote, 1935-2026

The history of JLF has been hewn by place and experience. Our firm began in a log farmhouse on the banks of the Yellowstone River nearly 50 years ago. An authentic setting for authentic work. Our history is also crafted by people – and foundational to our firm is Jonathan L. Foote, whose initials, JLF, remain our brand.

Jon’s architecture blended into the Montana landscape as if grown from the sites themselves, framed by salvaged century-old barn timbers and floorboards. The first project that sparked the founding of Jonathan L Foote AIA, Architects and Planners (now JLF Architects) in 1979 was a cabin on a Montana ranch. Challenged to match existing log structures homesteaded nearly a century earlier, Jon turned to history and the remnants of original log cabins that were strewn on the property, and the idea to reuse the old materials took hold.

Jon was renowned for his ability to listen to the land. Over time, the lessons from that pioneering project have evolved, but the place-based design-build philosophy – the revival of craft and reverence for regional history, vernacular forms, honest and timeworn handcrafted materials, heritage building techniques, and always, a sensitivity to the land – has endured. Over the course of almost half a century, Jon’s work – and in turn, our own – has sparked an architectural movement.

Raised in the East, Jon attended Yale as an undergraduate, discovering architecture and pursuing it in graduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design, and again at Yale, where he earned a Master of Architecture degree and was exposed to America’s most influential modernists: Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Philip Johnson, and Frank Lloyd Wright. At the same time, he was part of the move toward historic renovation taking place in the 1960s, becoming an early proponent of regional design and historic preservation for private and public works throughout New England.

Jon’s roots here in the West famously date back to a dude ranch vacation in 1946, and then later as he worked on ranches during summers through high school and college, developing his love of the land and the life – and of cutting horses; he was inducted into the National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame. Of his career in the Mountain West, Jon told Western Art & Architecture in 2019, “It’s a delicate dance I’ve been doing for 40 years. I try to capture the spirit but have it be functionally effective in a modern context. I try to capture the feeling without being sentimental.”

It’s hard not to be sentimental about the passing of a friend and mentor – and a visionary architect who has played an outsized role in the work of architects, builders, designers and craftsmen practicing throughout the Mountain West today. At JLF, we’ve all been touched by him. He has formed and shaped where we’ve been … and where we’re headed. “I carry Jon’s mentorship with me to this day,” says Logan Leachman, and John Lauman deems Jon “one of a kind, who changed the landscape forever.” Indeed, his core values are imbedded in JLF’s DNA. Says Paul Bertelli, “Jonathan left an extraordinary legacy.”