Nagel, Chester E., 1911-

"Chester [Emil] Nagel (1911-) was among the first architects to bring the International Style to Texas. Born in Fredericksburg in 1911, he studied architecture at the University of Texas, graduating in 1934. From 1935 to 1938 he worked as an architect for the National Parks Service, helping to design facilities for Bastrop and Palo Duro state parks.

"In 1939 Nagel received a scholarship to study at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he came in contact with Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. After receiving his Master's degree from Harvard in 1940 he returned to Austin and, inspired by Gropius' ideas, designed one of the first International Style structures in the state, a house for himself and his wife on Churchill Drive.

During the war years, Nagel was assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers in Bastrop, and from 1943 to 1945 he worked as a test engineer on the new Convair B-36 bomber in Ft. Worth. After the war he returned to Austin and collaborated with Dan J. Driscoll on the Barton Springs Bathhouse (1945). In 1946 he was called back to Harvard to be Gropius' assistant and later became an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Design. He gave up his teaching position in 1951 to join The Architect's Collaborative (TAC) and from 1951 to 1953 he headed the TAC offices in Washington. Nagel's designs, many of which were collaborative ventures with Gropius, included the Valley House in Lexington, Massachusetts (1940), the Overholt Thoracic Clinic in Boston (1955), and the American Embassy in Athens (1956). In 1958 he opened his own practice in Massachusetts and during the course of the next decade designed a series of projects in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands as well as several buildings for the Harvard medical and dental schools.

"Over the years Nagel has also taught and lectured at a host of different institutions among them Williams College, MIT, and the University of Texas. In 1974 he served as a visiting critic at the University of Colorado in Boulder and since 1976 has been a visiting professor of architecture at the University of Colorado, Denver campus. He now lives in Denver where he continues to practice."

Quoted from Christopher Long, n.d., article in Alexander Architectural Archive reference files.

From the guide to the Chester E. Nagel collection 1993004, 1993005, 1993006, 1994002, 1994003., c.1939-1971, (Alexander Architectural Archive, The University of Texas at Austin.)