Max Abramovitz (May 23 1908, Chicago - September 12, 2004, Pound Ridge, New York) was an architect of the New York City firm Harrison, Abramovitz, & Abbe. His most prominent works include the United Nations Headquarters building, New York; Avery Fisher Hall (at Lincoln Center, originally the Philharmonic Hall, opened 1962), New York; the Corning Glass Center, Corning, New York; the U.S. Steel Tower (aka USX Tower) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the National City Tower in Louisville, Kentucky; and the Tour GAN, La Defense (Paris), France. Abramovitz graduated in 1929 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Architecture. He later received an M.S. from Columbia University's architecture school in 1931. He also was the recipient of a two-year fellowship at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris before returning to the US and becoming partners with Wallace Harrison from 1941-1976. (Abramovitz also received an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Illinois in 1970.) He would go on to design three buildings for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, including the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, completed in 1969; the Hillel building; and Assembly Hall ($8.5M), at its time the world's largest edge-supported dome, which is 400 feet in diameter and rises 128 feet above the floor. Other campus designs by Abramowitz include the Hilles Library, a new home for the Radcliffe College Library at Harvard, the Three Chapels at Brandeis University, and Jerome L. Greene Hall, the main building of Columbia Law School. In 1961, the destruction by fire of the synagogue of congregation of Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo, New York led to a design for a new building by Abramowitz, completed in 1967 images. Max Abramovitz died in September 2004 in Pound Ridge, New York, at the age of 96. His drawings and archives are held by the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia.
External links
- Obituary from New York Times, 15 Sep 2004
- Information on Harrison, Abramovitz, & Abbe - from Emporis.com
- Information on Harrison & Abramovitz (the firm's earlier incarnation) - from Emporis.com
- Max Abramovitz Architectural Records and Papers Collection, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York City
- Architect Max Abramowitz, Designer of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Dies (Architectural Record, September 17, 2004)
