Myron Goldsmith (September 15, 1918 – July 15, 1996) was an American architect and designer.David W. Dunla

July 17, 1996 New York Times He was a student of

Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...

and

Pier Luigi Nervi Pier Luigi Nervi (21 June 1891 – 9 January 1979) was an Italian engineer and architect. He studied at the University of Bologna graduating in 1913. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946 to 1961 and was known wo ...

before designing 40 projects at

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill SOM, an initialism of its original name Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, is a Chicago-based architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings. In 1939, they were joined by engineer ...

from 1955 to 1983. His last 16 years at the firm he was a general partner in its Chicago office. His best known project is the

McMath–Pierce solar telescope McMath–Pierce solar telescope is a 1.6 m F-number, f/54 reflecting telescope, reflecting solar telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, United States. Built in 1962, the building was designed by American architect Myron Goldsmith ...

building constructed in 1962 at the

Kitt Peak National Observatory The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomy, astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. It is visited by an estimated 100,000 people a year.

Background

Goldsmith was born in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

and graduated in 1939 from the

Illinois Institute of Technology The Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Illinois Tech and IIT, is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the m ...

, where he studied under Mies, whose Chicago office he joined in 1946. He worked there until 1953, when he received a

Fulbright grant The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

to study under Nervi at the University of Rome.

Career

His first major projects at Skidmore were two

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. is a Major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois that operates an extensive domestic and international route network across the United States and six ...

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

s at

San Francisco International Airport San Francisco International Airport is the primary international airport for the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. Owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco, the airport has a San Francisco mailing ...

, one of which used

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is unsupported at one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cantilev ...

ed steel

girder A girder () is a Beam (structure), beam used in construction. It is the main horizontal support of a structure which supports smaller beams. Girders often have an I-beam cross section composed of two load-bearing ''flanges'' separated by a sta ...

s to hold four

DC-8 The Douglas DC-8 (sometimes McDonnell Douglas DC-8) is an early long-range narrow-body jetliner designed and produced by the American Douglas Aircraft Company. Work began in 1952 towards the United States Air Force's (USAF) requirement for a j ...

jetliners. He was a professor of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology beginning in 1961. In his 1987

monograph A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...

he wrote that: "A building should be built with economy, efficiency, discipline and order." At the time of his death, he was a member of a team organized by the institute to design a 120-story office, hotel and commercial structure in Seoul for the Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company. The project, known as "Hankang City," would have been one of the world's tallest buildings at 1,699.48 feet; but the project was canceled and the building was never built.

Projects

* Plaza on Dewitt (1960) *

building (1962) *Brunswick Building (1965) * Oakland Alameda County Coliseum (1966) * The Republic Newspaper Office (1971) in Columbus, Indiana * Ruck-a-Chucky Bridge (unbuilt) planned to cross the

American River The American River is a List of rivers of California, river in California that runs from the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada mountain range to its confluence with the Sacramento River in downtown Sacramento. Via the Sacramento River, it ...

in Auburn, California northeast of Sacramento

Gallery

File:Oakland Coliseum field from Mt. Davis.JPG,

O.co Coliseum Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum, often shortened to the Oakland Coliseum, is a multi-purpose stadium in Oakland, California, United States. It serves as part of the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Complex, located next to Oakland Arena. In 2 ...

File:Memorial Coliseum wide view from north, 2013.jpg, Portland Memorial Coliseum File:Theoraclearena.jpg, Oracle Arena

Exhibitions

The Unknown Mies van der Rohe and His Disciples of Modernism

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

, Chicago (1986)
Myron Goldsmith: Poet of Structure

Canadian Centre for Architecture The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA; ) is a Architecture museum, museum of architecture and research centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 1920, rue Baile (1920, Baile Street), between rue Fort (Fort Street) and rue Saint-Ma ...

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

(1991)

References

External links

Myron Goldsmith pays tribute to

Fazlur Rahman Khan Fazlur Rahman Khan (, ''Fazlur Rôhman Khan''; 3 April 1929 – 27 March 1982) was a Bangladeshi-American structural engineer and architect, who initiated important structural systems for skyscrapers. Considered the "father of Tube (structure) ...

in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
Finding aid for the Myron Goldsmith fonds

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Goldsmith, Myron 1918 births 1996 deaths 20th-century American architects Architects from Chicago Illinois Institute of Technology alumni American expatriates in Italy Skidmore, Owings & Merrill people