F. Burrall Hoffman

Francis Burrall Hoffman, Jr. (March 6, 1882 – November 27, 1980) was an American architect best known for his design of Villa Vizcaya, the Italian Renaissance-style estate in Miami, Florida which is now a museum.

He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to F. Burrall and Lucy Hoffman, a couple socially prominent in New York City. (His mother established the National Organization of Catholic Women and helped lead the effort to build the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.) He was educated at Georgetown University and Harvard University from which he was graduated in 1903 and he was also graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts with honors.

He served in France as a Captain for the U.S. Army during World War I.

He died at 98 years of age at his home in Hobe Sound, Florida.His widow "Dolly" (Kimball) Hoffman continued to live in the former home of Henry Kissinger in Georgetown, Washington, D.C..

Hoffman was also the architect for many private homes, apartment buildings and theatres in New York City as well as other buildings and churches across the United States which include Saint Ann's Roman Catholic Church in Lenox, Massachusetts, where his family's summer home was located. His clients included the Astors, Morgans and Vanderbilts. Brendan Gill wrote "Hoffman was one of those architects of the twenties and thirties in the distinguished company of William Adams Delano Welles Bosworth, and John russell Pope, who reverencing the past, contrived to breathe new life into the old conventions. Especially in the design of private houses, their innovations exhibited a gentleness and very welcome playfulness; their sunny drawing rooms, snug libraries, and long parterres seemed to embody the happy maxim of Marcus Aurelius which proclaims that even a palace, life can be lived well." ["House & Garden" December 1983]

Selected works

* 1916 - Villa Vizcaya, Miami, Florida
* 1917-19 - 17 East 90th Street, New York City
* 1929 - 730 Park Avenue, New York City

References

* New York Times obituary, Nov. 29, 1980.
* Dowling, Elizabeth. "American Classiscist: the Architecture of Philip Trammell Shutze". Rizzoli, 2001.
* Curl, Donald W., "The Florida Architecture of F. Burrall Hoffman Jr., 1882-1980," "Florida Historical Quarterly" 76 (Spring 1998), 399-416.