Edward Larrabee Barnes

599 Lexington Avenue, New York City, 1986

Edward Larrabee Barnes (April 22, 1915 – September 22, 2004) was an American architect.

Barnes was born in Chicago, Illinois into a family he described as "incense-swinging High Episcopalians", consisting of Cecil Barnes, a lawyer, and Margaret Helen Ayer, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for the novel Year of Grace. He graduated from Harvard in 1938 after studying English and Art History before switching to architecture, then taught at Milton Academy, before returning to Harvard for further studies under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. He graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1942 and served in the Navy during World War II. After the war he worked for Henry Dreyfuss in Los Angeles designing prototypes for mass-produced homes.

In 1949 Barnes founded Edward Larrabee Barnes Associates in Manhattan. During his long career, Barnes - with his wife Mary Barnes as interior designer - designed office buildings, museums, botanical gardens, private houses, churches, schools, camps, colleges, campus planning, and housing. Many of his buildings are widely recognized, including the Dallas Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, and the IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

Over the years, he also taught at Harvard University, the Pratt Institute, and the University of Virginia, and served as a member of the 'Urban Design Council of New York' and as vice-president of the American Academy in Rome. In 1969, Barnes was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1974. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978.^[1] In 2007 he was posthumously honored with the American Institute of Architects' highest award, the AIA Gold Medal. He also received the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture, the Harvard University 350th Anniversary Medal, and some forty other awards. His Haystack Mountain School of Crafts won the AIA Twenty-five Year Award. He died in Cupertino, California.

Selected projects

• El Monte Renewal Project (master plan and architecture), (San Juan, Puerto Rico), 1964
• Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts (master plan), Deer Isle, Maine, 1962
• State University of New York at Purchase (master plan) 1960s
• State University of New York at Potsdam (master plan) 1960s
• Christian Theological Seminary, 1966
• Dormitories, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont 1966
• Crown Center (master plan), Kansas City, Missouri 1970s
• 28 State Street, Boston, MA, 1969
• Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana 1969
• Walker Art Center, 1971
• Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis, 1971
• Smart Museum, Chicago, 1974
• Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, 1974
• Cochrane-Woods Art Center, Chicago, 1974
• Visual Arts Center, Bowdoin College, 1975
• Cross Campus Library, Yale University, 1976 (Remodeled in 2007 by Thomas H. Beeby, now known as Bass Library)^[2]
• Citigroup Center, New York City (collaboration), 1977
• Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Burlington, Vermont, 1977
• Asia Society building, New York City, 1980
• 1010 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri,1982
• Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 1982
• Dillon, Read & Co. Building, New York City, 1982
• 590 Madison Avenue (former IBM Building), New York City, 1983
• Dallas Museum of Art, 1984
• Old Stone Square, Providence, Rhode Island, 1984 (Purchased in 2005 by Brown University and renamed 121 South Main Street)^[3]
• Gooch-Dillard, University of Virginia, 1984
• Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 1986
• 599 Lexington Avenue, New York City, 1986
• AXA Center, New York City, 1986
• 125 West 55th Street, 1988
• Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, 1989 (expansion)
• Bennington College student housing, 1966
• Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 1990
• Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee, 1990
• Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, Washington, DC, 1992
• Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Shelter Rock, Manhasset, NY, 1993
• Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 1993 (expansion)
• IUPUI University Library, Indianapolis, IN, 1994

References

1. "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 17, 2011.
2. "The Bass Library Grand Opening" (PDF). no•ta be•ne: News from the Yale Library. 22 (2): 1. Fall 2007. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
3. Daivs, Marion (6 Aug 2005). "Brown to buy Old Stone Bank Building for $31.5M". Providence Business News. Retrieved 1 April 2015.

• Edward Larrabee Barnes, Edward Larrabee Barnes: Architect, Rizzoli International Publications, 1995. ISBN 978-0-8478-1821-1.
• "Edward Larrabee Barnes, Modern Architect, Dies at 89", The New York Times, September 23, 2004.
• "Snatched from Oblivion," (with Henry Dreyfuss) Metropolis magazine'', October 2006, p. 56 by Jeffrey Head
• Emporis.com biography

External links

• Edward Larrabee Barnes at the archINFORM database.
• Biography and sample buildings