Max Abramovitz, architect of the Assembly Hall and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Philharmonic Hall (now named Avery Fisher Hall) within the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex in New York City, the East Campus Law School Building at Columbia University, the Three Chapels at Brandeis University, and the U.S. Steel Building in Pittsburgh, passed away September 12th, 2004 at the age of 96.
Mr. Abramovitz will be greatly missed by the entire community of architects, who now mourn the loss of a truly great talent. We here at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign feel an especially significant loss as Mr. Abramovitz maintained a very close relationship to our university over the course of his entire life and many of us knew Max’s passion for architecture, his intellectual curiosity and warm kindness personally.
Mr. Abramovitz was not only an alumnus but also a dear friend to the University of Illinois, the College of Fine and Applied Arts and the School of Architecture. Mr. Abramovitz’s design genius gave our university both the inspiring Assembly Hall and the exquisite Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and his warm generosity continues to provide support to the School of Architecture through a lecture endowment bearing his name.
Mr. Abramovitz began his long and distinguished architecture career here at the University of Illinois. Mr. Abramovitz often recounted how when he first entered the architecture program he was quite uncertain if he really wanted to be an architect. By the time that he graduated from the architecture program in 1929 he was fully committed to a career in architecture. He continued his architectural studies at Columbia University in New York. Only three years after he left Illinois Mr. Abramovitz received a prestigious fellowship to spend two years studying architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Upon his return to New York City he began a forty-year partnership with Wallace Harrison. Their partnership produced over a hundred buildings—far too many to list here.
While we now mourn the loss of a great architect, we are consoled by the presence of two wonderful buildings on the Urbana-Champaign campus, a generous lecture endowment, and other gifts that will remain to remind us of this generous man who’s life was dedicated to the art of architecture.
Max Abramovitz received a B.A. in architectural engineering (1929) and an honorary doctorate in fine arts (1970) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1963 he was bestowed with the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award by the University of Illinois Alumni Association.
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This text is adapted from comments delivered by Professor Kurt Baumgartner before the first Max Abramovitz Distinguished Lecture of the 2004 school year. Kurt Baumgartner is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture. He has been researching and documenting the work of Max Abramovitz for the last several years. In the course of interviewing Mr. Abramovitz he came to know him as a mentor.
Additional Information
Max Abramovitz Contacts
David Chasco,
Director
School of Architecture
dchasco@uiuc.edu
office: (217) 333-1331
Leanne Courson, Assoc. Director for Development
School of Architecture
lcourson@uiuc.edu
(217) 244-2586
Prof. Kurt Baumgartner
ktbaugma@uiuc.edu
office: (217) 333-7358
