Cooper Hewitt says...
Born in Onex, Switzerland in 1896, William Edmond Lescaze received his formal education at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, graduating in 1919. He emigrated to the United States in 1920, and worked at the Cleveland, Ohio architectural firm Hubbel & Benes before establishing his own practice in New York City in 1923. A major break came in 1929 when George Howe, a Philadelphia architect, invited Lescaze to form a partnership; their firm became Howe & Lescaze. Not long after, the pair began working on a commission for the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building. The downtown Philadelphia structure was completed in 1932 and is largely recognized as the first International Modernist skyscraper and first example of the style of any consequence in the United States (incidentally, the home and studio Lescaze designed for himself is considered the first modern house in New York City). It is interesting to note that many of his commissioned designs were never realized, such as his proposed design for The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1932, a 1939 design for the futuristic “House of 2089,” and a new New York City headquarters and studio for CBS. In addition to practicing architecture and industrial design, Lescaze taught the latter at Pratt Institute in the 1940s.
