Wallace Kirkman Harrison (September 28 1895 - December 21981), was an American twentieth-century architect. Harrison started his professional career with the firm of Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, participating in the construction of Rockefeller Center. He is best known for executing large public projects in New York City and upstate, many of them a result of his long and fruitful personal relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, for whom he served as an adviser. Architecturally, Harrison's major projects are marked by straightforward planning and sensible functionalism, although his residential side-projects show more experimental and humane flair. His architectural partner from 1941 to 1976 was Max Abramovitz. In 1931 Harrison established an 11 acre (45,000 m²) summer retreat in West Hills, New York, which was a very early example and workshop for the International Style in the United States, and a social and intellectual center of architecture, art, and politics. The home includes a 32 foot circular living room that is rumored to have been the prototype for the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. Two other circular rooms complete the center of Harrison's design. Frequent visitors and guests included Nelson Rockefeller, Robert Moses, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, and Fernand Léger, who waited out part of World War II by painting a mural at the bottom of Harrison's swimming pool. Leger also created a large mural for the home's circular living room and sculpted an abstract form to serve as a skylight. Calder's first show is said to have taken place at the home. Harrison's architural drawings and archives are held by the Drawings and Archives Department of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.
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Major projects
- Lead architect for the United Nations headquarters complex, coordinating the work of an international cadre of designers, including Sven Markelius, Le Corbusier, and Oscar Niemeyer, among others;
- The Time-Life Building at Rockefeller Center, New York City;
- The Exxon Building at Rockefeller Center;
- Master plan for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (coordinating the work of Pietro Belluschi, Gordon Bunshaft, Philip Johnson, and Eero Saarinen, among others);
- The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center;
- The Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York, his last major project;
- The Rockefeller Apartments in 1936, commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, facing the Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden;
- The Battery Park City complex, New York City;
- LaGuardia Airport;
- The Hopkins Center of 1962, a performing arts, restaurant, and art studio center at Dartmouth College. In detail, it forshadows the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center;
- First Presbyterian Church, ("The Fish Church"), Stamford, Connecticut (1958);
- The New York Hall of Science at the 1964 New York World's Fair;
- Hilles Library, Harvard University;
- National City Tower, Louisville Kentucky;
- Perisphere and Trylon for the 1939 New York World's Fair.
- Erieview Tower,Cleveland,Ohio 1964.
Further reading
- Reich, Cary. The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer 1908-1958. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
- Sudjic, Deyan. The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful - and Their Architects - Shape the World. New York: Penguin, 2005.
See also
External links
- The Moderns 2007 New York Times article on the Rockefeller Apartments and Harrison as the architect.
