William Lescaze

The former PSFS Building, now restored and known as Loew's Philadelphia Hotel.

William Edmond Lescaze (Onex, Switzerland, 27 March 1896 – New York, New York, 9 February 1969) was a Swiss-born American architect, and is one of the pioneers of modernism in American architecture.

Lescaze completed his formal education at the École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland, receiving his degree in 1919, and emigrated to the USA in 1920. He worked for some time at the architectural firm of Hubbell & Benes in Cleveland, Ohio, before setting up his own practice in New York City in 1923. Through the 1920s and 1930s he continued to travel across the Atlantic.

In 1929, Philadelphia architect George Howe invited Lescaze to form a partnership, which was named Howe & Lescaze. Within just a few weeks after joining forces, the duo began work on a large project for downtown Philadelphia. The resulting structure, completed in 1932, was the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society (PSFS) Building, which is today generally considered the first International Modernist skyscraper, and the first International Style building of wide significance in the United States. Lescaze is generally given credit for the design: letters from Howe to Lescaze quote the former insisting to the latter that "the design is definitely yours." The structure replaced the bank's former headquarters in Philadelphia, a classicist structure near Washington Square built in 1897.

Lescaze submitted a design for the proposed Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1932. The wood and metal model was donated to the MOMA in 1994.

Lescaze was also the design lead for the 1937 Williamsburg Houses in Brooklyn, a pioneering 20-building modernist housing project modeled on European examples. He later taught industrial design at the Pratt Institute (1943-1945). Among his built works were the CBS West Coast studios Columbia Square on Sunset Boulevard.

External links

• Lescaze, William (1896-1969) -- Philadelphia Architects and Buildings biography
• Critical Cities on Lescaze - analysis of Lescaze's 1934 E48th Street apartment in New York