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Max Abramovitz (1908–2004)
Max Abramovitz's wide-ranging architectural designs include government and corporate centers, university buildings, houses of worship, and performing-arts venues. Born in Chicago, Abramovitz was educated at the University of Illinois and Columbia University. He began his architectural career in New York and in 1945 partnered with Wallace K. Harrison to establish the firm of Harrison and Abramovitz, which was noted for its large institutional projects, such as the United Nations headquarters (1947–53). When his firm won the commission to plan the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, Abramovitz designed the center's Philharmonic Hall (1962; now Avery Fisher Hall). His other major projects include the Three Chapels at Brandeis University near Waltham, Massachusetts (1955), the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia (1961), the Banque Rothschild Building in Paris (1970), and the the East Campus Law School Building at Columbia University (1958–61). |
Marcel Lajos Breuer (1902–81)
Marcel Lajos Breuer was born and educated in Hungary. Between 1920 and 1928 he was first a student and then a master at the Bauhaus furniture-design workshop. It was there that Breuer designed his first tubular steel chair. In 1935 Breuer followed Walter Gropius to England and two years later to Harvard. By the late 1940s Breuer had relocated to New York City, but his first local building, the Whitney Museum of American Art, was not built until 1963–66. Breuer was among the most influential designers of modern suburban homes, most in areas close to New York. | |
Carrère and Hastings
John Carrère (1858–1911) and Thomas Hastings (1860–1929) both studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and worked in the office of McKim, Mead, and White before establishing their own partnership in 1885. The firm was successful in the 1880s and early 1890s, but rose to national prominence by winning the competition for the New York Public Library in 1897. This is one of the most remarkable French-inspired Beaux-Arts public buildings in the country. The firm designed many city and country houses and public buildings. Although they designed a few early tall buildings, the partners were ambivalent about the skyscraper. The office's major skyscrapers were not designed until the late 1910s and early 1920s when, in association with other architects, the office worked on the Cunard Building (1917–21) and the Standard Oil Building (1920–28), which stand across the street from each other on Broadway at Bowling Green. | |
Daniel Chester French (1850–1931)
Daniel Chester French was a leading figure in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century artistic circles in America and is generally regarded as one of the nation's most significant sculptors. French studied art in his native Massachusetts, where he received his earliest commissions, notably the Minute Man, in Concord. In the 1880s, he moved to New York City where he was commissioned to sculpt several significant works of public sculpture. French frequently worked closely with architects in the preparation of sculpture for public buildings. In New York, he worked with Charles McKim on Columbia's Alma Mater; with Cass Gilbert for the design of the Four Continents, which is in front of the U.S. Custom House at Bowling Green; with James Brown Lord at the Appellate Division Courthouse; and with Bruce Price on the Richard Morris Hunt Memorial on Fifth Avenue. French's most famous work is his Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. | |
Cass Gilbert (1859–1934)
In 1899 Cass Gilbert moved to New York from St. Paul, Minnesota, after winning the design competition for the U.S. Custom House. His earliest completed building in New York was the Broadway-Chambers Building (1899–1900), a skyscraper with significant polychromatic terra-cotta, which still stands on the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street. Gilbert designed several other major skyscrapers, including two major buildings clad in Gothic-inspired terra-cotta, the West Street Building (1905–7; seriously damaged by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers) and the Woolworth Building (1910–13). For many years the Woolworth was the world's tallest building and remains one of the most prominent features on the city's skyline. The Custom House (1899–1907) is one of the city's great Beaux-Arts public buildings, characterized by its ornate sculptural exterior. Both the Custom House and the Woolworth Building retain their sumptuous interiors. | |
Wallace K. Harrison (1895–1981)
In a career spanning more than fifty years, the design style of architect and urban planner Wallace K. Harrison varied from "creative eclecticism" to "commercial modernism," and his projects ranged from multibuilding corporate complexes to private residences. Born into a working-class family in Worcester, Massachusetts, Harrison studied architecture at Columbia University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before becoming a senior partner of Harrison, Fouilhoux, and Abramovitz (later Harrison and Abramovitz) in New York City from 1941 until 1976. Known for his organizational skills, Harrison coordinated the planning of the United Nations headquarters (1947–53) and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (1959–69), where he also designed the new Metropolitan Opera House (1966). Other major projects include buildings at Rockefeller Center (1932–40), the Trylon and Perisphere at the 1939 World's Fair, and the expansion of the Rockefeller Institute (1954–58; now called Rockefeller University). He also worked on the Empire State Plaza (later, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza) in Albany, New York (1965–78). His skyscrapers include the ALCOA building in Pittsburgh (1951–53), the UN Secretariat (1949–50), and the Socony-Mobil Building (1954–56), both in New York City. | |
Heins and La Farge
This architecture firm, founded by George Lewis Heins (1860–1907) and Christopher Grant La Farge (1862–1938), specialized in ecclesiastical and institutional buildings. In 1891 the firm rose to national prominence when it unexpectedly won the competition for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The plans were completed within a year and construction of the Byzantine-Romanesque structure began in 1892. The firm lost the commission, even though the choir had already been built, when the church's board of trustees decided to finish construction in a different style and held a new competition, which was won by an English Gothic design submitted by Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson. The firm's other major projects in New York City include the Fourth Presbyterian Church (now Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church; 1893–94), animal houses at the New York Zoological Gardens in the Bronx (1899–1910), and the stations and control houses of the city's first subway system (1901–4). | |
John Kellum (1809–71)
John Kellum began his architectural career in the office of the Brooklyn architect Gamaliel King and then opened his own office in 1859. His projects include the first permanent building for the New York Stock Exchange (1863–65) and the Cary Building (1856–57; with Gamaliel King), noted for its cast-iron fa–ade. Kellum is best known for the New York County Courthouse (1861–81; completed by Leopold Eidlitz), commonly referred to as the Tweed Courthouse, a building renowned for its Italianate design and notorious for corruption during its construction. | |
Dan Kiley (1912–2004)
Dan Kiley was one of the first modernist landscape architects in the United State. He grew up in Boston, apprenticed himself to a landscape architect, and in 1936 was accepted as a special student into the Harvard Graduate School of Design's program in landscape architecture. Disillusioned by the faculty's conservative curriculum, he left in 1938 without taking a degree, and with two former classmates, Garret Eckbo and James Rose, published a seminal manifesto on modernist landscape architecture. He got his first major commission at the Collier estate in Virginia in 1940, and on the strength of its success, he set up a practice in Washington, D.C., and New Hampshire. In 1942 noted architect Louis Kahn hired him as part of the design team for the Willow Run Housing Project in Michigan. Kiley served with the Army Corps of Engineers in World War II. During his service he visited European gardens and renovated the courtroom where the Nuremberg Trials were held. On returning from Europe, Kiley reopened his office in New Hampshire and later relocated it to Vermont, where he worked for the rest of his life. His most prominent projects in New York City are the North Plaza of Lincoln Center (1960) and Rockefeller University (1970). | |
Minard Lafever (1798–1854)
Minard Lafever made a substantial contribution to American architecture in the pre–Civil War period as both an architect and a writer of influential builders' guides, which promoted Greek-Revival design nationwide. Lafever's influence on New York architecture rests mainly on his many churches, designed in Gothic-Revival, Egyptian-Revival, and Italian-Renaissance-Revival styles. He is also known for several civic commissions, including the grand Greek-Revival main building for Sailors' Snug Harbor (1831–33) on New York's Staten Island. | |
James Brown Lord
Born in New York and educated at Princeton, James Brown Lord received his architectural training in New York City in the office of William A. Potter. After establishing his own practice in the late nineteenth century, he designed many New York buildings, including the Delmonico's Building on Beaver Street (1890–91), the New York Free Circulating Library, Bloomingdale Branch, now the Ukranian Academy of Arts and Sciences (1898), and the New York Public Library, Yorkville Branch (1902). In 1891 he received a commission to design the row houses on the south side of West 138th Street, later known as Striver's Row, as part of a residential development in northern Manhattan. His best-known project was the Appellate Division Courthouse in Manhattan (1896–99), a marble-faced Beaux-Arts structure densely ornamented inside and out by some of the leading decorative artists and sculptors of the time, including Daniel Chester French and Karl Bitter | |
Joseph-François Mangin (1764–1818?)
French-trained architect Joseph-François Mangin immigrated to the United States in 1794 to practice architecture in New York City. He served as an engineering adviser on the city's fortifications and in 1796 became a city surveyor. In the meantime he practiced architecture. He collaborated with his brother, Charles, to design the Park Theatre (1795–99) and on his own he designed the New York State Prison (1797). He is best known for his collaboration with John McComb Jr. on the design of New York City Hall, which was built by McComb from 1802 to 1811. While McComb concentrated on the interior design of City Hall, Mangin is generally credited with the sophisticated French neoclassicism of the building's exterior. Late in his career he built churches, including the original St. Patrick's Cathedral (1809–15) and the Wall Street or First Presbyterian Church (1810–11). | |
John McComb Jr. (1763–1853)
John McComb Jr. is often said to have been the first professional architect born in New York. With a steady stream of public and private commissions during his 35-year career, he was able to leave his stamp of innovative English neoclassicism on the city's architecture. He is best known for his collaboration with Joseph-François Mangin on the design of New York City Hall, which was built by McComb from 1802–11. His other notable work in New York includes The Grange, Alexander Hamilton's country house (1801–2); the entrance to Castle Clinton in Battery Park (1808–11); Washington Hall, the New York headquarters of the Federalists' Washington Benevolent Society (1809–14); and several churches, among them St. John's Episcopal Chapel (1803–7, with his brother Isaac) Cedar Street Presbyterian Church (1807–8), and Murray Street Presbyterian Church (1811–12). | |
Charles McKim (1847–1909)
Charles McKim was one of the most prominent architects in America at the turn of the twentieth century. He studied at Harvard for one year before deciding to become an architect. He moved to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, and, upon returning to the United States, worked in the office of Henry Hobson Richardson. In the late 1870s, McKim established the firm of McKim, Mead, and Bigelow, which became McKim, Mead, and White in 1879. The firm designed many of the most important buildings in America over the next three decades. McKim was responsible for such masterpieces as the Morgan Library (1801–7), Pennsylvania Station (1902–10), the Harvard Club (1893–94), and the University Club (1896–1900), as well as the plan for Columbia and the design of Low Library and the school's early classroom buildings. McKim was a mentor to younger architects and served as an adviser to many large-scale projects, including the replanning of Washington, D.C., and the establishment of the American Academy in Rome. | |
Jacob Wrey Mould (1825–86)
In 1852 English designer and architect Jacob Wrey Mould immigrated to the United States and practiced architecture in New York, where he is credited with introducing polychromy into American architecture through his Italian-Romanesque design for All Souls' Unitarian Church (1853–55; demolished). His most important architectural works extant in New York include Trinity Church Parish School (1860; now the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava) and the Sheepfold (1870; now the Tavern on the Green restaurant) in Central Park. His exceptional talent for design led him to produce many decorative-arts projects. Although little survives of his work in stained glass, books, textiles, and other items, the carvings he designed for the Bethesda Terrace (1858–70) in Central Park can still be seen today. Mould collaborated with Calvert Vaux not only on structures in Central Park but also on the design of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1870–80; original structure) and the American Museum of Natural History (1874–77; original structure). | |
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903)
Although Frederick Law Olmsted is known as the father of American landscape architecture, he received no formal training in the subject beyond a few science and engineering classes at Yale and a brief apprenticeship to a topographical engineer. It took him a long time to find his vocation. His many endeavors included writing antislavery tracts, practicing experimental farming techniques, chairing a commission to establish wilderness parks, and helping to found the precursor to the Red Cross. His interest in landscape architecture arose during travels in Europe after touring English landscape gardens, an experience recorded in his Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (1852). In 1857 Olmsted was appointed superintendent of a proposed park in the center of New York City, and the following year he collaborated with Calvert Vaux to win the commission for the design of Central Park. He served as the park's chief architect until 1861. Central Park was such a success that commissions for similar projects poured in and, first with Vaux and then independently, Olmsted designed park systems in Boston, Chicago, Montreal, and other cities. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, designed in 1865, perhaps comes closest to realizing his vision. Olmsted's other work includes regional plans and scenic reservations, residential communities, academic campuses, and the grounds of private estates. | |
James Stewart Polshek (1930– )
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, James Stewart Polshek founded Polshek Partnership Architects in 1963, a firm specializing in the design of cultural, educational, governmental, and scientific institutions. The firm's recent projects include the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center (1999–2004), Newseum / Freedom Forum Foundation Headquarters (2000–2005), Brooklyn Museum renovation and expansion (1986–2004), Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space (1997–2000) at the American Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Hall renovation and expansion (1978–2003), and Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University (1995–98). He received a Master of Architecture degree from Yale University Graduate School of Architecture in 1955 and in 1956 was a Fulbright Fellow at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He served as dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation from 1972 to 1988. | |
George B. Post (1837–1913)
George B. Post was one of the most important innovators in the early development of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century skyscraper architecture. His stylistically eclectic buildings combined technical innovations with elegant aesthetic form. After graduating from New York University in 1858 with a degree in civil engineering, he entered Richard Morris Hunt's studio and then two years later formed a partnership with Charles D. Gambrill (1834–80), which lasted until 1867. Afterwards he practiced independently until 1904, when he formed the firm of George B. Post and Sons with his sons William and James. Post made his reputation by designing one of the earliest skyscrapers, the ten-story (230-foot) Western Union Building (1872–75; demolished), New York City. His design for the New York Produce Exchange (1881–84; demolished 1957) included the interior metal-framing that came to be a standard design element in skyscraper construction. Post's other work in New York City includes the original New York Times Building (1888–89), the 26-story St. Paul Building (1895–98; then the city's tallest structure), the New York Stock Exchange (1901–3), and the campus of City College (designed in 1897). | |
Eero Saarinen (1910–61)
As the son of noted Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, who immigrated with his family to the United States in 1923, Eero Saarinen never doubted his architectural vocation. After attending classes in sculpture for a year at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, he studied architecture from 1931 to 1934 at Yale University and then for over a year travelled in Europe, where he came into contact with the European modernism. His interrogation of modernism formed the basis of his own personal style, which reinvigorated austere International Style modern architecture with a sculptural vocabulary based on soaring curves and cantilevered forms. Although he designed several residences and one skyscraper, most of his work consists of buildings for education, government, and industry. His reputation was established with his design of the General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan (1951–55) and enhanced by many later projects, including the Kresge Auditorium and chapel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1953–55); the David S. Ingalls Hockey Rink at Yale (1956–58); the Gateway Arch at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri (1948–65); the Vivian Beaumont Repertory Theater (1958–64) at Lincoln Center, New York; and Washington Dulles International Airport (1958–62), Chantilly, Virginia. His famous Trans World Airlines Terminal at Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport), New York (1956–62), with its soaring intersecting concrete vaults, has received landmark status.
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Edward Durell Stone (1902–78)
Edward Durell Stone started his career in the 1930s as a modernist, but in the forties he distanced himself from the austere International Style and began to incorporate traditional styles, materials, and decorative elements into his work. Although Stone never received an academic degree, he studied art at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, from 1920 to 1923, and architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1927 he won a two-year scholarship to study and travel in Europe, where he first encountered the modern movement in architecture. His first big chance to apply his new aesthetic came when he was appointed chief designer for the shells of two theaters, Radio City Music Hall (1932) and the Center Theater (1932), and his embrace of the International Style is evident in his work on the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1937–39). His later more decorative style, which combined Middle Eastern–inspired decoration with modern structural elements, reached its apogee in his widely acclaimed U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India (1958) and is also reflected in his controversial Gallery of Modern Art, which formerly housed the Huntington Hartford collection (1959–64) in New York City.
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Calvert Vaux (1824–95)
British-born architect and landscape designer Calvert Vaux was one of the most influential landscape architects in America. He believed urban social conditions could be improved through the use of architecture and landscape design, and throughout his career he designed parks and green spaces that made nature accessible to city dwellers. After immigrating to the United States in 1850, he worked in upstate New York with A. J. Downing before relocating to New York City around 1857 for the purpose of extending his architecture practice and entering the competition to design a park in the center of Manhattan. He and Frederick Law Olmsted worked together on what they called their Greensward Plan, which won the commission for Central Park. The Greensward Plan became the dominant model for park design across the country and established landscape architecture as a profession. Vaux's other New York projects include many public parks, including Prospect Park in Brooklyn, with Olmsted; many buildings for the New York City Children's Aid Society; and the original structures of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1870–80) and the Museum of Natural History (1874–77), with Jacob Wrey Mould.
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Warren and Wetmore
Whitney Warren (1864–1943) and Charles Wetmore (1866–1941) first gained prominence as the designers of the New York Yacht Club (1899–1900) and for their work on Grand Central Terminal (1903–13, with Reed and Stem). In the early decades of the twentieth century, Warren and Wetmore received a succession of commissions for city and country houses from their wealthy friends and relatives. Beginning in 1910 the firm designed tall hotels in the area around Grand Central and became increasingly involved in the design of skyscrapers. The office designed some of the earliest skyscrapers erected in New York following the passage of the comprehensive zoning law of 1916. These included the Heckscher Building (1920–21) and the Aeolian Building (1925–27), both on Fifth Avenue, and the New York Central Building (1927–29) straddling Park Avenue north of Grand Central.
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Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959)
In a career of more than seventy years and hundreds of projects, Frank Lloyd Wright established himself as one of America's most important architects, famous for radical technical and stylistic innovations. Wright was born in Wisconsin and enrolled in the engineering school at the University of Wisconsin but left after only two terms to work in the office of influential modern architect Louis H. Sullivan, who was famous for his credo "form follows function." After seven years with Sullivan, Wright set up his own practice, designing mostly houses and apartment buildings in and around Chicago. Many features of his later work were prefigured in the strikingly original prairie style of his early residential designs, such as the one for the Robie House (1909) in Chicago. Also early in his career Wright designed what many consider his first masterpiece, the Larkin Company Administration Building (1904) in Buffalo. Wright later designed a tremendous variety of commercial and residential projects, including the Imperial Hotel (1916–22) in Tokyo and two masterpieces—the S. C. Johnson and Son Administration Building (1936–39) in Racine, Wisconsin, and his house in Arizona, Taliesin West, started in 1937 and still in the process of remodeling at the time of his death. Taliesin West is one of the best examples of the radical new design style that Wright called Usonian. Houses built in this style were usually relatively small and compact and constructed of modern materials according to a modular system. Perhaps Wright's most famous building is the house Fallingwater (1936–37), which is cantilevered over a waterfall and integrated with the surrounding natural environment. During his astonishingly productive late career, from World War II to his death, Wright designed the S. C. Johnson and Son Laboratory Tower (1950), the Unitarian Church, Madison, Wisconsin (1947), the Price Company Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma (1953), his first and only high-rise office building, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1956–59), one of his few buildings in New York City.
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