Wallace Harrison

Wallace Harrison
Born	September 28, 1895 Worcester, Massachusetts
Died	December 2, 1981(1981-12-02) (aged 86)
Nationality	American
Work
Buildings	United Nations headquarters Exxon Building
Projects	Rockefeller Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Design	Trylon and Perisphere

Wallace Kirkman Harrison (September 28, 1895–December 2, 1981), was an American architect.

Career

The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, seen from Lincoln Center Plaza.

Harrison started his professional career with the firm of Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, participating in the construction of Rockefeller Center. He is best known for executing large public projects in New York City and upstate, many of them a result of his long and fruitful personal relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, for whom he served as an adviser.

Architecturally, Harrison's major projects are marked by straightforward planning and sensible functionalism, although his residential side-projects show more experimental and humane flair. His architectural partner from 1941 to 1976 was Max Abramovitz.

In 1931 Harrison established an 11 acre (45,000 m²) summer retreat in West Hills, New York, which was a very early example and workshop for the International Style in the United States, and a social and intellectual center of architecture, art, and politics. The home includes a 32 foot circular living room that is rumored to have been the prototype for the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. Two other circular rooms complete the center of Harrison's design. Frequent visitors and guests included Nelson Rockefeller, Robert Moses, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, and Fernand Léger, who waited out part of World War II by painting a mural at the bottom of Harrison's swimming pool. Leger also created a large mural for the home's circular living room and sculpted an abstract form to serve as a skylight. Calder's first show is said to have taken place at the home.

Between 1941 and 1943, Harrison designed and built the Clinton Hill Coops, a 12-building coop complex split between two “campuses” along Clinton Ave. in Brooklyn, New York, to house the Brooklyn Navy Yards workers.

Harrison's architural drawings and archives are held by the Drawings and Archives Department of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.

Major projects

UN headquarters in New York City

for work from 1941 through 1976, also see Harrison & Abramovitz

• The Rockefeller Apartments, commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, facing the Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden, 1936
• Trylon and Perisphere for the 1939 New York World's Fair
• The Clinton Hill Co-ops, Brooklyn, New York, 1941–43
• The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, 1951
• Sophronia Brooks Hall Auditorium, Oberlin, Ohio, 1953
• The First Presbyterian Church ("The Fish Church"), Stamford, Connecticut, 1958
• The Time-Life Building at Rockefeller Center, New York City, 1959
• The Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York, his last major project, 1959–1976
• Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College, whose details foreshadow the Metropolitan Opera House, 1962
• lead architect for the United Nations Headquarters complex, coordinating the work of an international cadre of designers, including Sven Markelius, Le Corbusier, and Oscar Niemeyer, 1962
• Erieview Tower, Cleveland, Ohio, 1963
• The New York Hall of Science at the 1964 New York World's Fair
• Hilles Library, Harvard University, 1965
• master plan for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, coordinating the work of Pietro Belluschi, Gordon Bunshaft, Philip Johnson, and Eero Saarinen, and the Metropolitan Opera House for the center, 1966
• master plan for Battery Park City, New York City, 1966
• The Exxon Building at Rockefeller Center, 1971
• The National City Tower, Louisville, Kentucky, 1972

Further reading

• Newhouse, Victoria. Wallace K. Harrison, Architect. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.
• Reich, Cary. The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer 1908-1958. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
• Sudjic, Deyan. The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful - and Their Architects - Shape the World. New York: Penguin, 2005.
• Okrent, Daniel. Great Fortune. Viking Penguin 2003.

See also

• Nelson Rockefeller
• Rockefeller Center
• Lincoln Center

External links

• The Moderns 2007 New York Times article on the Rockefeller Apartments and Harrison as the architect.
• [1] Architectural Record article about the Corning Museum of Glass
• http://streeteasy.com/nyc/building/the-clinton-hill-coops-185_209-clinton-avenue-brooklyn - Article about the Clinton Hill Coops.

Persondata
Name	Harrison, Wallace
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	September 28, 1895
Place of birth	Worcester, Massachusetts
Date of death	December 2, 1981
Place of death