Background
He was born on April 8, 1897 in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, United States, the son of Edgar H. Skidmore and Matilda Matheus.
He was born on April 8, 1897 in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, United States, the son of Edgar H. Skidmore and Matilda Matheus.
He graduated in 1917 from Bradley Polytechnic Institute (now Bradley University), Peoria.
In 1921, Skidmore entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he supported himself with scholarships, loans, and funds earned from teaching mechanical drawing. At MIT his drawing ability matured. Ideas that later influenced the nature of his professional practice were nurtured by his design professor, William Emerson, who believed creative imagination was dynamite unless disciplined by structural order and the need for beauty. Skidmore's superior graphic skill stood out among his peers.
He joined the Sixteenth Areo Construction Company, U. S. Army, and was sent to England to build airports for the Allied Expeditionary Force.
After returning to the United States, Skidmore entered the firm of Kruckemeyer and Strong in Cincinnati. His employers encouraged him to undertake advanced architectural studies. After completing his studies in 1924, Skidmore entered the office of Maginnis and Walsh in Boston, where he had been working parttime. While there he competed for the Rotch traveling fellowship, awarded for design ability and personality, and won the competition for 1926. With the $3, 000 prize Skidmore traveled until 1928.
Skidmore extended his tour by traveling to England, where he made measured drawings of cottages and architectural details for Samuel Chamberlain's Tudor Homes of England (1929). He returned to Paris in the spring of 1929, at the request of Raymond Hood, to prepare drawings for the Chicago centennial celebration, an event that profoundly influenced the form and direction of his professional career.
On his return to the United States, he went to Philadelphia to meet Paul Cret, commissioner of the fair. Learning from Hood that the commission members could not agree on the design of the fair, Skidmore proposed to Cret that he be put in charge, in order to resolve their differences. Remarkably, that is what happened. Skidmore, a thirty-two-year-old architect without a design of his own yet built, was made chief of design of the fair renamed "A Century of Progress. "
Nathaniel A. Owings, Skidmore's brother-in-law, had joined him at the fair as a development supervisor. They worked closely during the construction period, and independently when Skidmore was given charge of the design division of the exhibits department and Owings assumed the same duties for the concessions department. After the fair closed, they traveled abroad (1935), agreeing to meet in London at the end of the year.
In London, Skidmore and Owings pledged to share and share alike, to offer a multidisciplined architectural service competent to design and build structures in the vernacular of their own age, extending the clean, uncluttered tradition pioneered by Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Skidmore and Owings opened an office in Chicago in January 1936.
Skidmore became director of the Department of Architecture of Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) and senior professor of design. He taught only in 1936-1937; after that, work for the American Radiator Company took him to New York City, where he established an office.
Skidmore gathered young, bright, and diversified talent around him: Gordon Bunshaft for design, J. Walter Severinghaus for housing, Robert W. Cutler for hospital work, and William S. Brown for prefabrication. The addition of John O. Merrill, architectural engineer, to the Chicago office in 1939 made the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) partnership complete.
Its four offices operated autonomously, but joined forces for national and international clients, with movement of specialists and projects among offices. But, most of all, Skidmore established a climate in which creative talent was developed and rewarded with responsibility and professional recognition. Nevertheless, the New York office had the bulk of the work and prestige clients, and Skidmore implemented and gave focus to their projects. He consulted on designs for the 1939 New York World's Fair, using to advantage contacts made in Chicago. Successful design of the New York City pavilion at the fair resulted in a commission for the Fort Hamilton Veterans' Hospital (1939), which featured a functionalist approach based on the orientation of patient rooms.
During World War II, Skidmore was asked to design the community of Oak Ridge, Tenn. , for the Manhattan Project (1942 - 1945). By the end of the war the original design for 15, 000 inhabitants had been expanded to accommodate 75, 000. SOM employed nearly 500 people and had an on-site office at Oak Ridge, headed by Merrill. Lever House in New York City (1952), a truly collaborative effort of the partnership, broke new ground as a tall, curtain-wall business building, and marked the opening of a new period of skyscraper design. Fittingly, the last design with which Skidmore was associated as an active partner was the commission for the U. S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs (1954 - 1964), which brought to a full circle the architectural career of a corporal in the World War I Areo Service.
He retired in 1955, but remained a consulting partner until his death at Winter Haven, Florida.
From Skidmore's point of view, the architecture should be free from the shackles of the past. Economy of construction, the use of new materials or the new use of traditional materials, and an emphasis on the function of a building were characteristics of the new era.
Quotes from others about the person
"Skid was a very easy-going guy, very bright and tricky enough to get work, but a very pleasant guy and if he had a few drinks, he was very cordial. He was never mean. He couldn't have been nicer to me and the four partners who grew up with him. Skid was the man who had the insight in finding people. Skid picked the first four partners. " - Gordon Bunshaft.
In Paris he met Eloise Owings, a student at the Parsons School for Designing Women, whom he married on June 14, 1930. They had two sons.
Louis Skidmore Jr. retired as an associate partner in Skidmore Owings & Merrill and currently resides in Houston.