Roland Wank

Roland A. Wank (1898–1970) was a Hungarian-American

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

, best known for his work for the

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...

in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Wank was educated at the Royal Joseph Technical University in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

. He worked as an architect in

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

until 1924 when he emigrated to the United States. Wank was recruited by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933 as that organization's first chief architect. His first work for them was to design Norris, a settlement for TVA workers. He went on to redesign the Norris Dam itself, taking the existing engineering proposal and simplifying its overall appearance, removing ornament, and pulling the structural masses into a more coherent and dramatic spatial composition. Wank also opened the powerhouse to public view, with a reception room staffed with information officers. Although the original engineers were not pleased, the TVA Board was, and Wank went on to give a distinctively modern look to subsequent TVA projects like the

Fontana Dam Fontana Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Little Tennessee River in Swain County, North Carolina, Swain and Graham County, North Carolina, Graham counties, North Carolina, United States. The dam is operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, whi ...

, the

Chickamauga Dam The Chickamauga Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. The dam is owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the late 1930s as part of a New Deal era initiat ...

, and the Hiwassee Dam. At the Fontana Dam, Wank collaborated with well-known industrial architect Albert Kahn on the design of "A-6" prefabricated house types in the workers' town of Fontana, North Carolina, meant to house 5000 workers. Fontana Village is now a resort. Wank also went on to collaborate with Fellheimer & Wagner as the design architects for the

Cincinnati Union Terminal Cincinnati Union Terminal is an intercity train station and museum center in the Queensgate, Cincinnati, Queensgate neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Commonly abbreviated as CUT, or by its Amtrak station code, CIN, the Railroad terminal, termin ...

building, many corporate buildings in New York and New Jersey, structures for the New Jersey Turnpike and a branch department store (1951) in Montclair, New Jersey for Newark-based Hahne & Company. 1898 births 1970 deaths American architects Architects from the Kingdom of Hungary Immigrants to the United States {{Hungary-architect-stub