Lawrence Bradford Perkins

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/179907244/lawrence-bradford-per...

Lawrence Bradford Perkins was born in 1907 in Evanston, Illinois, the son of noted Prairie School architect Dwight H. Perkins (1867-1941). In 1930 Lawrence received his bachelor's degree in architecture from Cornell University, where he met Philip Will, the man who was to become his partner. In 1935 they opened a practice in Chicago and were soon joined by E. Todd Wheeler, renaming the firm Perkins, Wheeler and Will. The young firm first gained national attention when it associated with Eliel and Eero Saarinen on the design of the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois (1939-40). Perkins, Wheeler, and Will soon established a national reputation as respected school specialists. Perkins retired from the firm in 1972 but by 1974 he had embarked on a new career as an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Perkins was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1953. He died in Evanston in 1997.

Oral History of Lawrence Bradford Perkins:

http://digital-libraries.saic.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/caohp...

Obit:

Lawrence Perkins, 90, Architect Who Loved Building Schools

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Published: December 6, 1997

Lawrence B. Perkins, a prolific architect whose firm, Perkins & Will, grew into one of the nation's largest practices, died on Wednesday at Evanston Hospital in Evanston, Ill. He was 90 and lived in Evanston.

The cause was heart failure, said his son, Lawrence B. Perkins Jr., who heads his own firm, Perkins Eastman Architects, in Manhattan.

In 1935, Mr. Perkins and Philip Will Jr., a classmate from the Cornell University College of Architecture, founded Perkins & Will in Chicago. It now has nearly 500 employees in seven offices around the nation, including Manhattan, and a large international practice.

The young architects attracted national attention in 1940 with the Crow Island School in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, designed in association with Eliel and Eero Saarinen.

No red-brick schoolhouse, Crow Island was a low-slung, one-story modernist structure of beige brick and pine, its horizontal profile broken sharply by an off-center chimney that doubled as a clock tower.

Among some 500 buildings, Mr. Perkins designed the Heathcote Elementary School in Scarsdale, N.Y., and the Central School in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. He also wrote two books on school design and planning, Schools (1949) and Workplace for Learning (1957).

Although schools were his first love, Mr. Perkins's best-known work is probably the First National Bank Building of 1969 in the Loop, Chicago's business district. It was designed in association with C. F. Murphy Associates. The broad sides of this 60-story, granite-clad skyscraper taper gradually upward, forming an elongated A shape.

When it came to the plaza at the base of the First National tower, Mr. Perkins's son said, there was a debate as to whether it should be a flat expanse or, as Mr. Perkins advocated, a sunken and terraced affair, enlivened by fountains, artwork, restaurants and shops. To win the day, his son said, Mr. Perkins told an executive of the First National Bank to pack his bags for a weekend trip. With that, the architect flew the banker down to Mexico City and took him to the National Museum of Anthropology, whose courtyard exemplified what Mr. Perkins had in mind.

O.K., the executive said. Now I understand what you're talking about.

Mr. Perkins retired from the firm in 1972.

Besides his son Lawrence Jr., of Scarsdale, N.Y., Mr. Perkins is survived by his second wife, Joyce; another son, Dwight H. Perkins 2d of Belmont, Mass.; two daughters, Blair Grumman of Evanston, Ill., and Julia E. Califano of Barrington, R.I., two stepdaughters, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.