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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 a 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, and schools, “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.”

In a statement mourning the passing of the “architectural innovator,” Morris “Marty” Hylton III, president of Architecture Sarasota, emphasized Lundy’s central 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.

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Renderings of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Dunedin, Florida, (1960) (3); IBM Garden State office building, Cranford, New Jersey (1963) (4). Images courtesy Library of Congress, Victor A. Lundy Archive, Prints & Photographs Division

While Lundy’s 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. To this day, his buildings attract attention. Just this year, one of his local masterworks, Galloway’s Furniture Showroom (1959), was the subject of a an exhibition at the Sarasota Art Museum. 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.

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 in 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 underwent a $775,000 renovation.

Galloway’s Furniture Showroom, Sarasota (1959). Photo Courtesy Sarasota Architectural Foundation

U.S. Court Tax Building, Washington, D.C. (1974). Photo courtesy GSA, public domain

Unitarian Meeting House, Hartford, Connecticut (1964). Photo courtesy Carol M. Highsmith Collection, Library of Congress

“I see architecture as the sublime art, and it is a sacred trust to be able to leave behind records of this highest order of creativity,” wrote Lundy in 2017.

Lundy is survived by two sons and their families.