Taubman, A. Alfred

Adolph Alfred Taubman was born in 1924 in Pontiac, Michigan, to Philip and Fannie Taubman, who immigrated to the United States from Bialystok, Poland. Philip Taubman worked for the Wilson Foundry Company in Iowa, and after World War I he was transferred to Pontiac, Michigan. In the 1920s, he ran several small fruit farms near Pontiac, and later developed small commercial real estate projects and custom homes. The Taubmans had a daughter, Goldye, and three sons, Samuel, Lester, and A. Alfred.

A. Alfred Taubman enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1942, but during his freshman year he left to join the service; he worked in intelligence for the Thirteenth Air Force, serving in the Pacific theater. At the end of the war, Taubman returned to the University, where he studied architecture, joined the Phi Sigma Delta fraternity, and worked at a variety of jobs. During his third year at Michigan, he transferred to Lawrence Technological University, where he continued to study architecture in night classes. He left Lawrence to work as a draftsman for the architect Charles N. Agree and later he worked for the construction firm of O.W. Burke. It was at the University of Michigan and at Lawrence Tech that Taubman developed his sophisticated sense of design and space.

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