Armand Bartos

Armand Phillip Bartos (1910 – December 29, 2005) was an American architect and philanthropist.

Though highly active as a philanthropist, Bartos became primarily known as the co-designer of Shrine of the Book that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls in western Jerusalem. Bartos's various and diverse activities, primarily not architecturally focused, included service as the chairperson emeritus of the SculptureCenter, Long Island City, Queens, New York.

In 1934, Bartos received a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and, in 1935, a master's degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He divorced his first wife to Martha (née Voice Bartos) and subsequently was married to heiress Celeste (née Gottesman, 1913–2013), who had in 1935 married Jerome John Altman. The Bartoses became generous philanthropists, concentrating on culture, particularly twentieth-century art of which they were an avid collectors, filling their Park Avenue (Manhattan) apartment in New York City. Celeste became fabulously wealthy as a result of inheriting the estate of her father, Samuel Gottesman (1885–1956), a Hungarian émigré who had become a pulp-paper merchant and financier.

With Celeste, Bartos had a son, Adam, and, from his first marriage, had sons, Armand Jr. and Michael, and daughter Mary Bartos. Through his marriage to Celeste, his stepdaughter was Jenifer Altman (1941–1991), also a philanthropist and a victim of cancer, and stepson Jonathan Altman.

Armand P. Bartos died at his home in Manhattan on December 29, 2005. He was 95.

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