Gordon Bunshaft

Gordon Bunshaft, FAIA, is recognized as a leading proponent of modern design in the mid-twentieth century. A partner in the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Bunshaft joined the firm in 1937 and remained for more than forty years; the long list of his notable buildings includes the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.; Lever House in New York; Beinecke Library at Yale University; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Texas; and the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Bunshaft received both his undergraduate (1933) and master’s (1935) degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied in Europe on a Rotch Traveling Scholarship from 1935 to 1937, and worked briefly for Edward Durrell Stone and Raymond Loewy before joining SOM. Bunshaft was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and was the recipient of numerous other honors and awards, including the American Institute of Architects Twenty-five Year Award for Lever House in 1980 and the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988. His papers are archived at Columbia University in the Avery Architecture and Fine Arts Library.