Isaacs, Reginald R., 1911-1986

City planner and educator. Educated at the University of Minnesota (B.Arch. 1935) and Harvard University (M.Arch. 1939). Licensed architect on National Council of Architectural Registration Boards in Washington, D.C., Illinois and Massachusetts. Architect and city planner, 1926-1945; Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning at Harvard, 1953-1978; Norton Professor Emeritus from 1978; and Chairman of Dept. of City and Regional Planning, 1953-1964.

Architect, city and regional planner, educator, and author, Cambridge, Mass.; d. 1986.

Studied architecture at the University of Minnesota and Harvard University under Walter Gropius, and sociology and planning at the University of Chicago. Isaacs was active in numerous architecture, planning and housing projects in Chicago, South America, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. At Harvard, he was named Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning in 1951, chaired the Dept. of City and Regional Planning, 1953-1964, and played a key role in the development of the urban design program. His 2 v. biography of Walter Gropius was published in German (Walter Gropius: Der Mensch und sein Werk) in 1983 and 1984. Walter Gropius: An Illustrated Biography of the Creator of the Bauhaus was edited posthumously and published in 1991.

Architect, city and regional planner, educator, and author, Cambridge, Mass.; d. 1986.

Studied architecture at the University of Minnesota and Harvard University under Walter Gropius, and sociology and planning at the University of Chicago. Isaacs was active in numerous architecture, planning and housing projects in Chicago, South America, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. At Harvard, he was named Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning in 1951, chaired the Dept. of City and Regional Planning, 1953-1964, and played a key role in the development of the urban design program. His 2 v. biography of Walter Gropius was published in German (Walter Gropius: Der Mensch und sein Werk) in 1983 and 1984. Walter Gropius: An Illustrated Biography of the Creator of the Bauhaus was edited posthumously and published in 1991.

Born in Canada in 1911, Reginald R. Isaacs began working in architectural offices at age 14, later coming under the influence of "Beaux-Arts diplomes" at the University of Minnesota and Harvard and subsequently under that of Walter Gropius at Harvard University. He later studied sociology and planning at the University of Chicago under Louis Wirth and Rexford Guy Tugwell.

Isaacs served on the staffs of city planning commissions in Minneapolis, Syracuse, and Chicago, and in the federal government in the National Youth Agency, Public Housing Authority, and Housing and Home Finance Agency. His architectural practice in Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and other cities included the design of housing, colleges, and hospitals. He was director of planning and development for Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, 1945-1953 where Walter Gropius, planner Walter Blucher, and sociologist Louis Wirth collaborated with him as consultants. He was a United Nations expert on regional planning in South America, a planning consultant for the Ford Foundation, the U.S. State Department, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Recommended by Walter Gropius, Isaacs served as the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning at Harvard University from 1953-1978. He was also Chairman of the Graduate School of Design's Departments of City and Regional Planning as well as Landscape Architecture. Throughout his career he lectured at universities throughout the United States and in almost every country of Central and South America and in the Caribbean.

In 1962 Isaacs and Gropius began their collaboration on Walter Gropius: The Man and his Work, until the death of Gropius in 1969. The first volume of the biography was published in German in 1983 with the second volume following in 1984. Isaacs died of a massive heart attack in 1986, never realizing his goal to see an English-language edition which was published posthumously in 1991 by the Estate of Reginald Isaacs.