Gordon Bunshaft

Gordon Bunshaft
Lever House, 1951-1952; Gordon Bunshaft at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 999.
Born	(1909-05-09)May 9, 1909 Buffalo, New York
Died	August 6, 1990(1990-08-06) (aged 81) New York City, New York
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Lafayette High School
Occupation	Architect
Awards	American Institute of Architects Twenty-five Year Award, elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Pritzker Architecture Prize
Practice	Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Buildings	Lever House, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Gordon Bunshaft, FAIA (May 9, 1909 – August 6, 1990), was an American architect, a leading proponent of modern design in the mid-twentieth century. A partner in the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Bunshaft joined in 1937 and remained for more than 40 years. The long list of his notable buildings includes Lever House in New York, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 140 Broadway (Marine Midland Grace Trust Co.) and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Branch Bank in New York; the last was the first post-war "transparent" bank on the East Coast.

Bunshaft was born in Buffalo, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, and attended Lafayette High School. He received both his undergraduate (1933) and his 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 Durell Stone and industrial designer Raymond Loewy before joining SOM. Bunshaft's early influences included Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.

In the 1950s, Bunshaft was hired by the State Department's Office of Foreign Building Operations as a collaborator on the design for several U.S. consulates in Germany.