Barnes, Edward Larrabee, 1915-2004

Born in Chicago, Edward Larrabee Barnes (1915-2004) attended Milton Academy before studying English and Architectural History at Harvard University. He graduated cum laude in 1938, and after a year of teaching English and Fine Arts at Milton, he returned to Harvard to study architecture at the Graduate School of Design under Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and Marcel Breuer (1902-1981). Upon graduation in 1942 he was awarded the Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. Travel was limited because of the war in Europe, and Barnes spent his fellowship year in Washington as an intern at the Division of Defense Housing. After Pearl Harbor he joined the US Navy in 1942 and served as a naval architect. Following the war and a brief period working for the architect William Wurster in San Francisco, Barnes took a job with the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss to design a mass-producible single-family house that, although never produced, was manufactured and tested in a number of prototypes. In 1947 Barnes returned east with his wife, Mary Cooke, and settled in New York where he established his own architectural practice, which Mary joined after serving as a curator for MoMA from 1947 to 1949. Edward Larrabee Barnes was selected posthumously to receive the American Institute of Architects' 2007 Gold Medal.

From the guide to the Barnes, Edward Larrabee, 1915-2004. The Edward Larrabee Barnes Collection: An Inventory., (Special Collections, Frances Loeb Library, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.)

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