Max Abramovitz, 1908–2004

Max Abramovitz, architect who designed the 1962, much loved (and roundly hated) Avery Fisher (Philharmonic) Hall at New York City’s Lincoln Center, died September 12 in his home in Pound Ridge, N.Y. He was 96.

Born in Chicago, the son of working-class Romanian immigrants, Abramovitz studied architecture at the University of Illinois, Columbia University, and Paris’ Ecole des Beaux Arts. During WWII, he built airfields in China for the Flying Tigers and received the Legion of Merit.

He arguably is best known as one-half of the New York City famed architectural team of Harrison and Abramovitz. He joined Wallace Harrison’s firm in 1935, and quickly became a partner. He and Harrison worked together for 40 years, collaborating on the design of scores of Modern buildings, many of them in New York City. Harrison and Abramowitz’s best known works in the city include The Corning Glass Building, Mobil Building, Exxon Building, the Time & Life Building, and the McGraw-Hill Building. Among Abramovitz’s well known roles in addition to designer of New York skyscrapers were deputy director of planning for the United Nations complex and master planner for Brandeis University. He also designed U.S. embassies in Havana and Rio de Janeiro.

In a memorial, David Chasco, director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign writes, “Mr. Abramovitz was not only an alumnus but also a dear friend to the University of Illinois, the College of Fine and Applied Arts, and the School of Architecture. Mr. Abramovitz’s design genius gave our university both the inspiring Assembly Hall and the exquisite Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and his warm generosity continues to provide support to the School of Architecture through a lecture endowment bearing his name.”

Abramovitz, who is survived by a son, a daughter, and five grandchildren, passed away just as Columbia University launched a major retrospective of his work. The show, "The Troubled Search: The Work of Max Abramovitz," opened at the Wallach Gallery September 15, and will run through December 11.

Edward Larrabee Barnes, 1915–2004

Edward Larrabee Barnes, FAIA, a deeply respected and admired New York City architect who brought the best of Modernism to skyscrapers, campuses, and museums across the globe, died September 21. He was 89.

Barnes earned an MArch from Harvard, where began his explorations of Modernism under Walter Gropius. He traveled throughout Europe on scholarship, then served in the Navy during World War II. For a few years, Barnes worked in Los Angeles for industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, designing prototypes for mass-produced homes. He established his New York City architecture firm in 1949.

Among Barnes’ most notable works are the IBM Headquarters in Manhattan, the Dallas Museum of Art, Minneapolis’ Walker Art Gallery, Washington, D.C.’s Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, and Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine. He worked as a master planner for the Chicago Botanical Garden, New York Botanical Garden, Yale, the State University of New York at Potsdam and Purchase, and Colonial Williamsburg. Barnes also taught at the Pratt Institute in New York City and at Yale.

His Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts, built in 1962, demonstrated his break away from rigid Modernist ethics through a design of a small village’s worth of pitched-roof studios stepping down a steep slope. Haystack captured the 1994 AIA Twenty-five Year Award, and was honored as “an early and profound example of the fruitful and liberating fusion of the vernacular building traditions with the rationality and discipline of Modern architecture.”

Among Barnes’ myriad honors from the AIA are the 1979 Louis Sullivan Award and the 1980 AIA Firm Award. He also received the 1981 Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture from the University of Virginia. “Barnes applied the lessons of Modernism—its respect for contemporary materials, technology, and social responsibility—to create works that nourish us physically, emotionally, and spiritually,” said AIA Executive Vice President/CEO Norman L. Koonce, FAIA.

Barnes is survived by his wife, a son, and two granddaughters.

Copyright 2004 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. Home Page