Architect of Federal Reserve Dies

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Architect of NY's Citicorp Center, Boston's Federal Reserve dies


July 10, 2006

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --Hugh Stubbins Jr., an architect who often used his cocktail napkins to sketch designs for buildings such as Manhattan's Citicorp Center, Boston's Federal Reserve Bank or Congress Hall in Berlin, has died. He was 94.

Stubbins, who died Wednesday of pneumonia at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, designed buildings that now stand coast to coast: from the Senior Center at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, to PacWest Center in Portland, Ore. He also designed Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan's tallest building; the Ronald Reagan President Library in Simi Valley, Calif., and Veterans Stadium, the home of baseball's Philadelphia Phillies and football's Philadelphia Eagles which was torn down two years ago.

"I remember seeing many napkins with the basic design of Citicorp on them, just in doodles," his son, Hugh Stubbins III, told The Boston Globe.

Among his many honors was the Gold Medal for Excellence in Design from Tau Sigma Delta, the National Honorary Fraternity for Architecture and the Allied Arts.

Born in Birmingham, Ala., he graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology and received a master's degree in architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard in 1935, where he later taught. He also founded The Stubbins Associates architectural firm. In retirement, Stubbins divided his time between Cambridge and Ocean Ridge, Fla.
In addition to Hugh, he leaves two other sons, a daughter and nine grandchildren.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press
 
Citigroup Center
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Federal Reserve Building
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Congress Hall in Berlin
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I've always liked the Federal Reserve building. It doesn't look like anything else in the city or really anywhere else I can think of.
 
Always reminded me of that giant AT&T concrete no-window skyscraper in NYC. Not a huge fan.
 
I remember referring to it among friends when I was a kid as "that ladder building".
 
I've never liked this building and am puzzled why so many people are fans of it.
 
I'd say solely because it's not One Beacon St. or One Boston Place. It still gives off a spacey high-tech vibe, but I agree with you Ron, I don't really care for it.
 
There is a great article about the Federal Reserve in this months Architecture Boston Magazine.
 
I've always had a soft spot for Stubbins -- he was Boston's answer to Gordon Bunshaft...Stubbins, like Paul Rudolph, stuck to the modernist ethos when many of his generation were putting Chippendale tops and other exaggerated, ironic ornaments on their buildings...I find his work clean, purposeful and imaginative...

His early residential work represents a regionalist take on the Case-Study Houses in post-war California, and perhaps a nod to Alvar Aalto as well...I had the opportunity to see many of these designs (several unbuilt) in a retrospective while I was an undergrad...My guess is that many have been demolished to make way for McMansions...

Stubbins' better known corporate work often presages the work of the high-tech expressionists (Richard Rogers, Norman Foster); our own Federal Reserve tower is a premonition of Foster's Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, built several years later...Terminal E at Logan (now altered and expanded by SOM) is among the first high-tech buildings in Boston...The arching thin-shell roof of the Congress Hall in Berlin (thanks for the pic DarkFenX) shows the influence of both Eero Saarinen and the great Italian engineer-architect, Pier Luigi Nervi...
 
yes i saw the article in Architecture Boston. it was very favorable of the building.
 
...

i like that this building looks like what it is; it fails miserably at ground level however where the fortress motif kills the streetscape.

The tower is distinctive, and although i don't love it, i don't dislike it. I respect it. I do hope its ground level is someday fixed.
 
LeTaureau said:
^Or an old fashioned washboard

We called it "The Washboard Building" back in the 70s. Never heard it referred to as the ladder building, though.

Hey, Beton Brut. Long time no hear from. Good history lesson for the twee ones. :)

I, too, actually like(d) Stubbins, like I have a fondness (or nostalgia) for the disco era. The sheen and futuristic-ness of his most notable works, mentioned above as well as those pictured, make me smile.
 

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