Albers, Josef (19 March 1888–25 March 1976), painter, designer, and educator, was born in Bottrop, Germany, the son of Lorenz Albers, a house painter and craftsman, and Magdalena Schumacher. He graduated in 1908 from the teachers’ college in Büren and went on to teach in public schools in Bottrop and neighboring Westphalian towns. In the summer of 1908 he traveled to Munich to view modern art in the galleries and the historical collections of the Pinakothek. Albers’s earliest known drawing, ...
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Albers, Josef (1888-1976), painter, designer, and educator
Brenda Danilowitz
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Brown, Glenn (1854-1932), architect
William Bushong
Brown, Glenn (13 September 1854–22 April 1932), architect, was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, the son of Bedford Brown II, a physician, and Mary E. Simpson. Between 1871 and 1873 Brown attended Washington and Lee University, receiving a traditional education in the classics, and at age nineteen returned to Alexandria to become his father’s apprentice in preparation for a career in medicine. Brown soon thereafter discovered an aptitude for design, however, and attended the architecture school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston from 1875 to 1876. While in Boston, he found employment with the contracting firm of Norcross Brothers, builders of much of master architect ...
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Eidlitz, Leopold (1823-1908), architect and architectural theorist
Biruta Erdmann
Eidlitz, Leopold (29 March 1823–22 March 1908), architect and architectural theorist, the son of Adolf Eidlitz (occupation unknown) and Julia (maiden name unknown), was born in Prague, Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia), and studied at the Vienna Polytechnic. He came to the United States in 1843 and found ready acceptance in ...
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Gilman, Arthur Delavan (1821-1882), architect and critic
Margaret Henderson Floyd
Gilman, Arthur Delavan (05 November 1821–11 July 1882), architect and critic, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the son of Arthur Gilman, a prosperous merchant, and his third wife Elizabeth Marquand, widow of Samuel Allyne Otis. After attending Dummer Academy, he entered Trinity (then Washington) College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1838 but withdrew in 1840 due to difficulty with his eyes. After recovering, he briefly studied law, developing the trenchant debating and writing style that shortly emerged in three brilliant articles for the ...
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Kimball, Fiske (1888-1955), architectural historian, architect, and museum director
Lauren Weiss Bricker
Kimball, Fiske (08 December 1888–14 August 1955), architectural historian, architect, and museum director, was born Sidney Fiske Kimball in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Edwin Fiske Kimball, an educator, and Ellen Leora Ripley. Kimball received a B.A. and a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard University in 1909 and 1912, respectively. According to Kimball, the education he and his colleagues received at Harvard caused them to pursue “teaching, writing and editing rather than practice.” Kimball began his career as an architectural educator at the University of Illinois at Urbana, where he was hired as an instructor for the 1912–1913 academic year. During the year Kimball met and married Marie Goebel, the daughter of a professor of German philology at the university. The couple had no children. The university’s nepotism rule prohibited Kimball’s reappointment, so he began the following fall semester as an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Michigan. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Kimball designed resort cottages in Michigan (1913–1915) and a residential tract in Ann Arbor (1914–1917). During this period the Kimballs began their research on the architectural works of ...
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Kocher, A. Lawrence (1885-1969), architect, editor, and scholar of American colonial architecture
Mardges Bacon
Kocher, A. Lawrence (24 July 1885–06 June 1969), architect, editor, and scholar of American colonial architecture, was born Alfred Lawrence Kocher in San Jose, California, the son of Rudolph Kocher, a Swiss-born jeweler and watchmaker, and Anna (maiden name unknown). He received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1909 and his M.A. from Pennsylvania State University in 1916. He studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1909 to 1912. In 1910 he married Amy Agnes Morder. She died of cancer prior to 1932, the year of his marriage to Margaret Taylor. He had two children....
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Magonigle, Harold Van Buren (1867-1935), architect and critic
Kay Fanning
Magonigle, Harold Van Buren (17 October 1867–29 August 1935), architect and critic, was born in Bergen Heights, New Jersey, the son of John Henry Magonigle, the business manager for actor Edwin Booth, and Katherine Celestine Devlin. Magonigle attended public school until the age of thirteen, when, because of financial troubles, his father apprenticed him as a student draftsman to the firm of Vaux & Radford. For almost twenty years he worked as a draftsman in various architectural offices, including Charles C. Haight (1882–1887), Rotch & Tilden (1893), and McKim, Mead & White (1887–1892 and 1896–1897). Magonigle won the Rotch Travelling Scholarship in 1894, which afforded him two years of study in Europe. In 1897 he entered into partnership with the architect Evarts Tracy; from 1899 to 1901 he was the head designer and draftsman for Schickel & Ditmars; and from 1901 to 1904 he practiced with the architect Henry W. Wilkinson. He opened his own office in New York in 1904. He married the painter and designer Edith Marion Day in 1900; they had no children....
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Speyer, A. James (1913-1986), architect and museum curator
Pauline Saliga
Speyer, A. James (27 December 1913–09 November 1986), architect and museum curator, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Alexander Crail Speyer, an investment banker, and Tillie Sunstein, a painter and sculptor. Born into a prominent Pittsburgh family that was actively involved in the arts, Speyer studied painting as a child but, at the urging of his pragmatic father, turned his artistic talents to the practice of architecture as a young adult. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology in his home city, and received a bachelor of science degree in architecture in 1934. Afterward, Speyer continued his dual interest in architecture and painting, and from 1934 to 1937 he studied fine art at the Chelsea Polytechnic in London and at the Sorbonne in Paris....
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Sturgis, Russell (1836-1909), architect and critic
Karin M. E. Alexis
Sturgis, Russell (16 October 1836–11 February 1909), architect and critic, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Russell Sturgis, Sr., a sea captain, and Margaret Dawes Appleton. Sturgis was raised and educated in New York City. After graduating from the Free Academy (later the College of the City of New York) in 1856, he was apprenticed to ...
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Tallmadge, Thomas Eddy (1876-1940), architect, teacher, and author
Sharon Irish
Tallmadge, Thomas Eddy (24 April 1876–01 January 1940), architect, teacher, and author, was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Lewis Cass Tallmadge and Lida M. Eddy. Tallmadge received his architectural education from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a B.S. in 1898. His first job in architecture, in 1898, was as a draftsman in the Chicago office of ...
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Van Brunt, Henry (1832-1903), architect and author
Ingrid A. Steffensen-Bruce
Van Brunt, Henry (05 September 1832–08 April 1903), architect and author, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Commodore Gershom Jacques Van Brunt and Elizabeth Price Bradlee. A voracious reader and constant sketcher during his youth, he graduated from Harvard in 1854. He entered into apprenticeship under Boston architect George Snell soon after leaving Harvard, and he stayed there probably until 1857. Van Brunt remarked in his later years that this early training was not conducted under the most encouraging circumstances, and this fact probably contributed to his lifelong interest in the advancement of architectural education in the United States....
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Warren, Herbert Langford (1857-1917), architect, architectural historian, and founder of the Harvard School of Architecture
Anthony Alofsin
Warren, Herbert Langford (29 March 1857–27 June 1917), architect, architectural historian, and founder of the Harvard School of Architecture, was born in Manchester, England, the son of Samuel Mills Warren, an American of colonial ancestry, and Sarah Anne Broadfield of Bridgenorth, Shropshire, England. Both of Warren’s parents were missionaries. He had his early schooling in Manchester and then studied in Germany from 1869 to 1871. He returned to Manchester and attended Owen’s College from 1871 to 1875, at which time he entered the office of Manchester architect William Dawes as a draftsman. Warren came to the United States in 1876 and from 1877 to 1879 studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received no degree from either Owen’s or MIT. He then entered the office of ...