Victor Lundy, a celebrated architect and skilled artist who rose to prominence as a key player within a climate-responsive style of regional Modernism that emerged from Florida’s Gulf Coast in the early 1940s, died on November 4 in Bellaire, Texas. He was 101.
Lundy at the opening of the Warm Mineral Springs Motel near Venice, Florida. Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Victor A. Lundy Archive, Prints & Photographs Division
Lundy’s notable built works, which extend outside of the Sunshine State and include those generated by his own practice and later with global firm HKS, include the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, locally known as the Blue Pagoda (1956); Warm Mineral Springs Motel (1958), in North Port, Florida; First Unitarian Church (1960) in Westport, Connecticut; the Unitarian Meeting House (1964) in Hartford, Connecticut; the IBM Garden State Office in Cranford, New Jersey (1965, demolished 1990); the United States Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka (1985, demolished in 2023); the U.S. Court Tax Building (1974) in Washington, D.C., and One Congress Plaza in Austin (1987). His inflatable concession pavilions were a crowd-drawing attraction at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair.
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Rendering of the main sanctuary at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Sarasota (1); refreshment stand at the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair (2). Images courtesy Library of Congress, Victor A. Lundy Archive, Prints & Photographs Division; Photo by Louis Checkman (2).
In his forward to the 2019 book Victor Lundy: Artist Architect, Nader Tehrani, founder of Boston-based NADAAA, wrote: “Of the many notable modernists who led productive practices while undertaking extraordinary experimentation, there is no one like Victor Lundy.”
Lundy in military helmet, 1944. Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Victor A. Lundy Archive, Prints & Photographs Division
“Lundy’s built work denies signature in the form of a singular voice; he lets the natural grain of raw matter, the texture of its aggregation, and the malleability of different materials help to determine the aesthetic sensibility of his buildings,” continued Tehrani.
Victor Alfred Lundy was born on February 1, 1923, in New York City to Russian immigrant parents. In 1939, he enrolled at New York University to study Beaux-Arts architecture. Although his education (but not his prolific sketching) was interrupted by a stint in the U.S. 26th Infantry Division during WWII, he returned to the States to continue his studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Per a biographic sketch provided by advocacy and education nonprofit Architecture Sarasota, Lundy was the self-proclaimed “wild man” among his peers at the GSD, establishing himself as an “unconventional designer, employing a highly personal, sculptural approach to form and space making that distinguished his work throughout his long career.”
Sarasota School Architects (Victor Lundy, Gene Leedy, William Rupp, Edward Seibert, Bert Brosmith, and Paul Rudolph). Photo courtesy of Architecture Sarasota
Following an extensive travel fellowship that took him around the world, Lundy landed in Sarasota in the early 1950s where he became a central figure in the nascent design movement known as the Sarasota School of Architecture alongside Ralph Twitchell, Gene Leedy, and most famously, Paul Rudolph. As noted by Architecture Sarasota, his output during this time, which included churches, recreational centers, private residences, schools, and more, “often relied on simple, symmetrical plans based on pure geometries that belie the complex sections and spaces made possible by the laminated wood structural systems.”
Describing Lundy as an “innovator,” Morris “Marty” Hylton III, president of Architecture Sarasota, said in a statement that the organization mourned his passing and emphasized the architect-artist’s critical role in the development of the “highly revered, environmentally responsive, and transformative movement of modernist design adapted to South Florida's Gulf Coast” that emerged from the city.
While his time spent in Sarasota was relatively brief (he relocated back to his hometown of New York in 1960), his impact on the coastal city is indelible. And to this day, his surviving works continue to generate headlines. Just this year, one of his local masterworks, Galloway’s Furniture Showroom (1959), was the subject of a special exhibition at the Sarasota Museum of Art. Although that show closed late last month, it will be remounted as part of Architecture Sarasota’s upcoming annual Sarasota MOD Weekend, held November 14-17.
Galloway’s Furniture Showroom, Sarasota (1959). Photo Courtesy Sarasota Architectural Foundation
Roughly four miles away from the old Galloway’s (now located on the campus of the Ringling College of Art & Design), another Lundy Landmark, St. Paul Lutheran Church (1959), was added to the National Register of Historic Places this past July. His 1962 education building on the St. Paul Lutheran campus, which RECORD had the opportunity to tour alongside architect Toshiko Mori in 2023, also recently emerged from a $775,000 renovation.
U.S. Court Tax Building, Washington, D.C. (1974). Photo courtesy GSA, public domain
Lundy’s buildings outside of Florida also continue to generate interest. In recent months, his former home and studio in Bellaire, Texas, hit the market with an asking price of $1.7 million. The residence, featuring his signature flair for experimentation and use of novel materials (in this case, glue-laminated wood) was completed in 1988. (Lundy moved to the Houston area in the late 1970s with his now late wife, the master watercolorist Anstis Lundy.) As noted by Preservation Houston, the property “reflects Lundy’s passion for precision and spatial sophistication.” Lundy also designed a vacation home for his family in Aspen, Colorado.
Unitarian Meeting House, Hartford, Connecticut (1964). Photo courtesy Carol M. Highsmith Collection, Library of Congress
Among Lundy’s many accolades are several AIA Merit Awards presented throughout the 1950s and 60s and a 1956 Progressive Architecture Award. In 2016, at the age of 94, he returned to Sarasota to receive a lifetime Art and Architecture Award from the Sarasota Architectural Foundation (one of two organizations that later merged to become Architecture Sarasota). Lundy’s archives, comprising more than 56,000 items including his wartime sketchbooks, are held by the Library of Congress. In 2023, in celebration of his 100th birthday, much of this collection was shown as part of a special exhibition. Victor Lundy: Sculptor of Space, a documentary produced by the U.S. General Services Administration profiling Lundy’s life and work, was released in 2014.
Lundy is survived by two sons and their families. Anstis Lundy died in 2009.
