Ieoh Ming Pei was a Chinese-American architect. Raised in Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the garden villas at Suzhou, the traditional retreat of the scholar-gentry to which his family belonged. In 1935, he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but he quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier. After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and became a friend of the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1948, Pei was recruited by New York City real estate magnate William Zeckendorf, for whom he worked for seven years before establishing an independent design firm in 1955, I. M. Pei & Associates. In 1966 that became I. M. Pei & Partners, and in 1989 became Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Pei retired from full-time practice in 1990. In his retirement, he worked as an architectural consultant primarily from his sons' architectural firm Pei Partnership Architects.
William Zeckendorf Sr. was a prominent American real estate developer. Through his development company Webb and Knapp — for which he began working in 1938 and which he purchased in 1949 — he developed a significant portion of the New York City urban landscape. Architects I. M. Pei and Le Corbusier designed structures for Zeckendorf's development projects.
L'Enfant Plaza is a complex of four commercial buildings grouped around a large plaza in the Southwest section of Washington, D.C., United States. Immediately below the plaza and the buildings is La Promenade shopping mall.
Society Hill is a historic neighborhood in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, with a population of 6,215 as of the 2010 United States Census. Settled in the early 1680s, Society Hill is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Philadelphia. After urban decay developed between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an urban renewal program began in the 1950s, restoring the area and its many historic buildings. Society Hill has since become one of the most expensive neighborhoods with the highest average income and second-highest real estate values in Philadelphia. Society Hill's historic colonial architecture, along with planning and restoration efforts, led the American Planning Association to designate it, in 2008, as one of the great American neighborhoods and a good example of sustainable urban living.
Holmes Run Acres is a community of 355 houses in Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. Nearly all of the neighborhood is within the Holmes Run Acres Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Charles M. Goodman was an American architect who made a name for his modern designs in suburban Washington, D.C. after World War II. While his work has a regional feel, he ignored the colonial revival look so popular in Virginia. Goodman was quoted in the 1968 survey book Architecture in Virginia as saying that he aimed to "get away from straight historical reproduction."
The year 2008 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Carl Frelinghuysen Gould also spelled Carl Freylinghausen Gould, was an architect in the Pacific Northwest, and founder and first chair of the architecture program at the University of Washington. As the lead designer in the firm Bebb and Gould, with his partner, Charles H. Bebb, Gould was responsible for many notable Pacific Northwest buildings, such as the original Seattle Art Museum and for the campus plan of the University of Washington.
The Washington Park Historic District is a national historic district located in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 24, 2008. It comprises nearly 60 acres (240,000 m2) and is located 4 miles (6.4 km) north of downtown Indianapolis, in the south-central part of the Meridian-Kessler neighborhood. The district includes all properties south of 43rd Street and north of 40th Street, and west of Central Avenue and east of the alley running north and south between Pennsylvania and Meridian Streets; Washington Boulevard runs north-south through the center of the district. It includes 110 contributing buildings, ranging mostly from mansions to small bungalows, and three non-contributing buildings.
The Central Troy Historic District is an irregularly shaped, 96-acre (39 ha) area of downtown Troy, New York, United States. It has been described as "one of the most perfectly preserved 19th-century downtowns in the [country]" with nearly 700 properties in a variety of architectural styles from the early 19th to mid-20th centuries. These include most of Russell Sage College, one of two privately owned urban parks in New York, and two National Historic Landmarks. Visitors ranging from the Duke de la Rochefoucauld to Philip Johnson have praised aspects of it. Martin Scorsese used parts of downtown Troy as a stand-in for 19th-century Manhattan in The Age of Innocence.
Edward Townsend Mix was an American architect of the Gilded Age who designed many buildings in the Midwestern United States. His career was centered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and many of his designs made use of the region's distinctive Cream City brick.
The United States Customhouse is a historic and active custom house at 2nd and William Streets in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Architect Robert Mills designed the custom house in 1834 in a Greek Revival style. It has been used by the U.S. Customs Service ever since, and today serves as a port of entry.
Ehrick Kensett Rossiter was an American architect known for the country homes he designed.
Casa Oppenheimer is a historic house in Ponce, Puerto Rico, designed in 1913 by famed Puerto Rican architect Alfredo B. Wiechers. The house is unique among other historic structures in historic Ponce for its skillful incorporation of front gardens in a very limited urban space. The historic building is located at 47 Salud Street, in the city's historic district, at the northwest corner of Salud and Aurora streets. The house is also known as Casa del Abogado. In April 2019, the house was turned into Casa Mujer by MedCentro, a women's health business concern.
The William Perrin Nicolson House is a historic house built in 1891, located on Piedmont Ave. in Midtown Atlanta, northeast of downtown. The building was designated in 1989 as a historic building by the City of Atlanta, as William Perrin Nicolson House. The building was also listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the William P. Nicolson House.
The James V. Forrestal Building is a low-rise Brutalist office building in Washington, D.C. Originally known as Federal Office Building 5, and nicknamed the Little Pentagon, the Forrestal Building was constructed between 1965 and 1969 to accommodate United States armed forces personnel. It is named after James Forrestal, the first United States Secretary of Defense. It became the headquarters of the United States Department of Energy after that agency's creation in 1977.
The University Apartments, also known as the University Park Condominiums, are a pair of ten-story towers in Chicago, Illinois designed by I. M. Pei and Araldo Cossutta. The project was part of a city initiative to revitalize the residential development in Hyde Park just north of the University of Chicago. Within the Hyde Park neighborhood, they are colloquially known as "Monoxide Island."
Town Center East is an apartment complex in the Southwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., built in 1960–1961. The twin apartment buildings are across the street from Town Center West; both developments are part of the Town Center Plaza mixed-use development. Town Center East, as well as the plaza as a whole, was designed by I.M. Pei on behalf of William Zeckendorf, who worked with the firm Webb and Knapp.
Araldo Cossutta was an architect who worked primarily in the United States. He worked at the firm I. M. Pei & Partners from 1956 to 1973. I. M. Pei has been among the most honored architects in the world. Cossutta was Pei's associate and ultimately his partner in the first phase of Pei's career. He was responsible for some of the firm's best-known designs from that era, including three that have received "landmark" designations in recent years. In 1973 he and Vincent Ponte left Pei's firm to form Cossutta & Ponte, which ultimately became Cossutta and Associates. The new firm designed the Credit Lyonnais Tower in Lyon, France (1977) and the Tower at Cityplace (1988) in Dallas, Texas, among other commissions.
