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Morris Lapidus

 

(born Nov. 25, 1902, Odessa, Russia — died Jan. 18, 2001, Miami Beach, Fla., U.S.) Ukrainian-born U.S. architect. He went to the U.S. as a child and grew up in New York City. After earning an architectural degree, he worked in New York architectural firms from 1928 to 1942. In 1942 Lapidus moved to Miami Beach, where he ran his own firm until 1986. He designed numerous buildings there in the Art Deco style, including the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc hotels. He designed over 200 hotels worldwide as well as numerous office buildings, shopping centres, and hospitals.

For more information on Morris Lapidus, visit Britannica.com.

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Art Encyclopedia: Morris Lapidus
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(b Odessa, Russia, 25 Nov 1902). American architect of Russian birth. He emigrated to New York with his parents in 1903. He received his architectural training at Columbia University, New York, graduating in 1927. Although the curriculum there was based on orthodox classicism, Lapidus came under the influence of Wallace K. Harrison (1895-1981); he also was inspired by buildings he saw published from the Exposition Internationale des Arts D?coratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris (1925), and especially by Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion. His early experience was in the office of Warren & Whetmore where he worked on the classical ornamentation of the New York Central Office Tower. From 1927 until 1945 Lapidus specialized in the design of shop fronts and shop interiors, as illustrated in his early Parisian Bootery (1928), New York, which was Art Deco. He continued to develop this angular Art Deco mode in store design in his Herbert's Home of Blue White Diamonds (1930), New York, and offices for Swank Jewellers (1931), New York. Another motif with which he began to experiment was that of patterns of light, particularly hidden indirect lighting in interiors, pools of focused light, and signs, especially as they were seen at night; this is seen in his Doubleday Doran Book Shop (1934), New York, and the Schwobilt Clothing Store (1936), Tampa, FL. Gradually his work became more free-flowing and less restricted to straight lines, more in accordance with how he saw people meander through his store interiors; this later style is evident in his Ansonia Shoe Store (1944) and the A. S. Beck Shoe Store (1949), both in New York.

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Architecture and Landscaping: Morris Lapidus
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(1902–2001)

Russian-born American architect. He specialized (1927–45) in the design of shop-fronts and -interiors, including the Parisian Bootery (1928), Herbert's Home of Blue White Diamonds (1930), and the offices of Swank Jewellers (1931), all Art Deco, and all in NYC. He then experimented with theatrical lighting, e.g. at Doubleday Doran Book Shop, NYC (1934), and Schwobilt Clothing Store, Tampa, FL (1936). His flair was again apparent in the designs for the Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami Beach, FL (1952–4), so spectacular it was used in the Bond film Goldfinger. Other works included the Summit (1957–61), and Americana (1964–6) Hotels, both in NYC. He published An Architecture of Joy (1979), Architecture: A Profession and a Business (1967), and other works.

Bibliography

  • Duttmann & M. Schneider (eds.) (1992)
  • Placzek (ed.) (1982)
  • Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Wikipedia: Morris Lapidus
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The Fountainbleau

Morris Lapidus (pronounced LAP-i-dus) (November 25, 1902January 18, 2001) was the architect of curvy, flamboyant Neo-baroque modern hotels that defined the 1950s 'Miami Beach' resort hotel style.

Born in Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) his Orthodox Jewish family fled Russian pogroms to New York when he was an infant. As a young man, Lapidus toyed with theatrical set design and studied architecture at Columbia University. Lapidus worked for the prominent Beaux Arts firm of Warren and Wetmore. He then worked independently for 20 years as a retail architect before being approached to design vacation hotels on Miami Beach.

After a career in retail interior design, his first large commission was the Miami Beach Sans Souci Hotel, followed closely by the Nautilus, the Di Lido, the Biltmore Terrace, and the Algiers, all along Collins Avenue, and amounting to the single-handed redesign of an entire district. The hotels were an immediate popular success. Then in 1952 he landed the job of the largest luxury hotel in Miami Beach, the property he is most associated with, the Fontainebleau Hotel, which was followed the next year by the equally successful Eden Roc and the Americana (later the Sheraton Bal Harbour) in 1956. The Sheraton was demolished by implosion shortly after dawn on Sunday, November 18, 2007.

In 1955 Lapidus created the Ponce de Leon Shopping Center near the plaza in St. Augustine, the Nation's Oldest City. The anchor store, Woolworth's, was the scene of the first sit-in by black demonstrators from Florida Memorial College in March, 1960, and in 1963 four young teenagers, who came to be known as the "St. Augustine Four" were arrested at the same place and spent the next six months in jail and reform school, until national protests forced their release by the governor and cabinet of Florida in January 1964. Martin Luther King hailed them as "my warriors." The Woolworth's door-handles remain as a reminder of the event, and a Freedom Trail marker has been placed on the building by ACCORD, in its efforts to preserve the historic sites of the civil rights movement.

The Lapidus style is idiosyncratic and immediately recognizable in photographs, derived as it was from the attention-getting techniques of commercial store design: sweeping curves, theatrically backlit floating ceilings, 'beanpoles', and the ameboid shapes that he called 'woggles', 'cheeseholes', and painter's palette shapes. His many smaller projects give Miami Beach's Collins Avenue its style, anticipating post-modernism. Beyond visual style, there is some degree of functionalism at work. His curving walls caught the prevailing ocean breezes in the era before central air-conditioning, and the sequence of his interior spaces were the result of careful attention to user experience: Lapidis heard complaints of endless featureless hotel corridors and when possible would curve his hallways to avoid the effect.

The Fontainbleau was built on the site of the Harvey Firestone estate and defining the new Gold Coast of Miami Beach. The hotel provided locations for the 1960 Jerry Lewis film The Bellboy, a success for both Lewis and Lapidus, and the James Bond thriller Goldfinger (1964). Its most famous feature is the 'Staircase to Nowhere', which merely led to a coat check but offered the opportunity to make a glittering descent into the lobby.

"My whole success is I've always been designing for people, first because I wanted to sell them merchandise. Then when I got into hotels, I had to rethink, what am I selling now? You're selling a good time."

His son, architect Alan Lapidus, who worked with his father for 18 years, said, "His theory was if you create the stage setting and it's grand, everyone who enters will play their part."

Lapidus' wife of 63 years, Beatrice, died in 1992. He died nine years later, at the age of 98 in Miami Beach, Florida.

Critical Reception

Lapidus designed 1,200 buildings, including 250 hotels worldwide. The architectural establishment, wedded to its doctrinaire expressions of International Modernism, tried to ignore his work, then characterized it as gaudy kitsch. This abusive critical reception culminated in a 1963 American Institute of Architects (AIA) meeting held at the Americana, where a variety of well-known architects insulted Lapidus to his face, in one of his own hotels.

A 1970 Architectural League exhibit in New York began the serious appraisal of his work. Lapidus tried to ignore the critical panning, but it had an effect on his career and reputation. He burned 50 years' worth of his drawings when he retired in 1984 and remained personally bitter about some aspects of his career. He was rediscovered in the post-modernist era: his autobiography Too Much is Never Enough, 1996, takes a shot at modernist guru Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum 'Less is more.' According to his German biographer Martina Duttmann, he has always been more highly regarded in Europe than in the U.S., where the comparable jet-set futurism is designated "Googie". Today, books published by the AIA such as 'Architect's Essentials of Starting a Design Firm' 2003, refer positively to Morris Lapidus' works.

Projects

Temple Menorah in Miami Beach

List adapted from Works in Lapidus autobiography.

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