Delving Deeper

BUILDING BLOCKS
In 1920 William Lescaze came to America after studying architecture in his native Switzerland under Karl Moser. Lured by skyscrapers, machines, and the potential to build at a monumental scale, Lescaze made a pit stop in New York before taking a job in Cleveland at the architecture firm Hubbel and Benes. But stifled by its conservative practices and eager to exercise his own modernist vocabulary, he resigned as soon as he received his first outside commission, for a simple house renovation in New York. Lescaze’s crowning architectural achievement, with then-partner George Howe, was the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building (1932), an elegant slab hailed as the first (and some argue best) International style skyscraper in the United States. While known and practicing primarily as an architect, Lescaze also participated in exhibitions sponsored by such retail establishments as R. H. Macy’s that were intended to promote modern design to Americans. In these venues, he focused on industrial design, embracing a comfortable interpretation of form follows function.