Lee Lawrie

Lee Oscar Lawrie (October 16, 1877 - January 23, 1963) was one of the United States' foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II. His work includes the details on the Capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska and some of the architectural sculpture and the Atlas figure at New York City's Rockefeller Center.

Contents

1 Biography 2 Other Commissions 3 Photographs 4 References

Biography

Lawrie was born in Rixdorf, Germany, and came to the United States in 1882 as a young child, settling in Chicago. It was there, at the age of 14, that he began working for the sculptor Richard Henry Park.

In 1892 he had the chance to work for many of the sculptors in Chicago, constructing the "White City" for the World Columbian Exposition of 1893. Following the completion of the work at the Expo, Lawrie followed the other mostly East Coast artists back east and settled in as an assistant to William Ordway Partridge. The next decade found him working with other established sculptors: St. Gaudens, Martiny, Proctor, Kitson and others. His work at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition under Karl Bitter, the foremost architectural sculptor of the time, allowed Lawrie to further develop both his skills and his reputation as an architectural sculptor.

It was Lawrie's collaborations with Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Goodhue that brought him to the forefront of architectural sculptors in America. After the breakup of the Cram, Goodhue firm in 1914, Lawrie continued to work with Goodhue until his premature death in 1924, then with his successors.

The Nebraska State Capitol and the Los Angeles Public Library both feature extensive sculptural programs integrated into (rather than applied onto) the surface, massing, spatial grammar and social function of the building. Lawrie's collaborations with Goodhue are arguably the most highly developed example of architectural sculpture in American architectural history.

Commissions related to Goodhue include:

• the Chapel at West Point, West Point, New York (Cram and Goodhue)
• the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, New York City (Cram and Goodhue)
• St. Bartholomew's Church, New York City (Cram and Goodhue)
• the reredos at St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue, New York City (Cram and Goodhue)
• the Nebraska State Capitol, Lincoln, Nebraska (Goodhue)
• the Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles, California (Goodhue)
• the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago (Goodhue)
• Trinity English Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana (Goodhue)
• large relief panels for the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C. (Goodhue)
• Christ Church Cranbrook, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (Goodhue)
• the Church of the Heavenly Rest, New York City (Mayers Murray & Phillip)

After Goodhue's death, Lawrie went on to produce important and highly visible work under Raymond Hood at Rockefeller Center in New York City, but by November 1931 Hood made it known that "There has been entirely too much talk about the collaboration of architect, painter and sculptor," and relegated Lawrie to the role of a decorator.

Over his long career of more than 300 commissions Lawrie's style evolved through Modern Gothic, to Beaux-Arts Classicism and finally into Moderne or Art Deco.

Paradoxically, Lawrie's most recognizable work is not architectural -- it's the freestanding Atlas statue on Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center in New York City. (Some sources credit Lawrie with the design of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt dime of 1946, but it is actually the work of Selma Burke.)

Other Commissions

Other Lawrie commissions include:

• the allegorical relief panels called Courage, Patriotism and Wisdom over the entry doors to United States Senate chamber (done as part of the 1950 Federal-period remodelling of the Senate), Washington, D.C.
• the Education Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
• the Louisiana Capitol Building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• the Peace Memorial at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
• the Fidelity Mutual Life Building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (now part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the sculptural elements of which include the owl of wisdom, the dog of fidelity, the pelican of charity, the possum of protection, and the squirrel of frugality)
• friezes for the Ramsey County Courthouse in Saint Paul, Minnesota
• two Egyptian bas-reliefs for the 1924 Hale Solar Laboratory in Pasadena, California
• the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the bronze doors of the John Adams Building at the Library of Congress Annex, both in Washington, D.C.
• the Harkness Memorial Tower at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
• the Beaumont Memorial Tower at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan
• the Bok Singing Tower in Mountain Lake, Florida

Photographs

References

• Bok, Edward W., America's Taj Mahal - The Singing Tower of Florida, The Georgia Marble Company, Tate, Georgia c. 1929.
• Brown, Elinor L., Architectural Wonder of the World, State of Nebraska, Building Division, Lincoln, Nebraska 1978.
• Fowler, Charles F., Building a Landmark - The Capitol of Nebraska, Nebraska State Building Division, 1981.
• Garvey, Timothy Joseph, Lee Lawrie Classicism and American Culture, 1919 - 1954, PhD. Thesis University of Minnesota 1980.
• Gebhard, David, The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America, John Wiley & Sons, NY, NY 1996.
• Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, Architectural Sculpture of America, unpublished manuscript.
• Lawrie; Lee, Sculpture - 48 Plates With a Forward by the Sculptor, J.H. Hanson Cleveland, Ohio 1936.
• Luebke, Frederick C. Editor, A Harmony of the Arts – The Nebraska State Capitol, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 1990.
• Oliver, Richard, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, The Architectural History Foundation, New York & The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1985.
• Masters, Magaret Dale, Hartley Burr Alexander--Writer-In-Stone, Margaret Dale Masters 1992 .
• Whitaker, Charles Harris,Editor, Text by Lee Lawrie et al Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Architect-and Master of Many Arts, Press of the American Institute of Architects, Inc., NYC 1925.
• Whitaker, Charles Harris and Hartley Burr Alexander, The Architectural Sculpture of the State Capitol at Lincoln Nebraska, Press of the American Institute of Architects, NY 1926.