Morris Lapidus

Background

Morris Lapidus was born on November 25, 1902, in Odessa, Ukrain. He was the son of Leon and Eva (Sherman) Lapidus. He came to the United States in 1903, and became a naturalized citizen in 1914.

Education

From 1921 to 1923, Morris studied at New York University, and then he received a Bachelor in Architecture from Columbia University in 1927.

Career

Morris began his career by designing commercial buildings and synagogues. He created store fronts with hidden lighting and curved glass windows that paved the way for better displays of merchandise. From 1943 to 1984 he worked independently as an architect and was commissioned to design hundreds of buildings. Lapidus authored three books during his career. His first architectural commission, in 1954, was for the Hotel Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. More than 500 rooms were set on a quarter-circle curve. The lobby contained a terrarium with live alligators and an elegant stairway down from the mezzanine that featured women descending to the lobby while showing off their glamorous gowns and jewelry to the men waiting below. Lapidus believed that when people went on vacation, they wanted to indulge their fantasies of luxury. The ballroom, intended for a casino, could hold 9,000 people. Three Belgium chandeliers hung in the lobby, each one strung with 1,800 crystal strands forming circles or ovals depending on where you were standing. The movie Goldfinger was filmed there; Marilyn Monroe and JFK had suites in the penthouse. Soon after building the Fontainebleau, Lapidus built the Eden Roc and the Americana and then the Americana in New York. He said that he did not care if it was called Baroque or Brooklyn as long as it was glamorous. He went on to design hotels in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, the Catskills (Grossingers and the Concord), and overseas.

By 1985, his work was still criticized, so he closed his office and hired two trucks to cart away his papers, which he then burned. The Summit Hotel, a Lapidus building on 51st Street in New York, was under consideration as a landmark building in 2005. Now named the Metropolitan, it is one of the few remaining Lapidus buildings in New York and may be destroyed. Before he died at age 98 he started working again. His designs finally appreciated, the man whose vision of the American Dream was first formed at Coney Island and Luna Park believed that his ideals could serve as the model for 21st century architecture.

Achievements

• American architect Morris Lapidus is best known as the designer of glamorous postwar resort hotels in Florida, such as the Fontainebleau (1954) and the Eden Roc (1955) in Miami Beach, and the Americana in Bal Harbour (1956). Yet in a remarkable sixty-year career that began in 1926, he designed more than 500 retail stores, hotels, apartment complexes, and stage sets that captured the popular spirit and changing face of Main Street America in the twentieth century.
  
  Lapidus created fantasy environments in which America's middle class, flush with expanding postwar incomes and optimism, could fulfill its desire for glamor, relaxed luxury, and leisure. His signature forms - chevrons, "beanpoles," "woggles," or amoeba shapes, and curving walls and ceilings punctuated by "cheese holes," or cutouts - have become treasured icons of American postwar vernacular architecture. His style, particularly his use of light and color, is said to have greatly influenced modern architecture and such extravagant locales as Las Vegas.
  
  Lapidus was honored by the Society of Architectural Historians in 2000 at the Eden Roc and he was named an American Original by the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in its first national design awards. He received this honor at the White House in 2000.

Works

More photos

• architect

  • Martin's Department Store

    1944

  • Bond Clothing Stores

    1948

  • Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Centre

    1951

  • Fontainebleau Hotel

    1954

  • Eden Roc Miami Beach Hotel

    1955

  • Aruba Hotel

    1955

  • Americana of Bal Harbour Hotel

    2007

  • Deauville Resort

    1950

  • Doubletree Metropolitan Hotel

    1960

  • The Condado Plaza Hilton

    1960

  • The Americana of New York Hotel

    1961

  • InterContinental San Juan

    1961

  • Washington Plaza Hotel

    1962

  • Capitol Skyline Hotel

    1962

  • Crystal House Condominium

    1962

• book

  • Too Much Is Never Enough 1996
  • An Architecture of Joy 1979

Membership

Member Miami Beach Development Commission, 1966-1967. Member Miami Beach Chamber of C. (governor), Kiwanis.

Connections

On February 22, 1929, Morris married Beatrice Perlman. She deceased in 1992. Morris had two children: Richard L. and Alan H.

Father:

Leon Lapidus

Mother:

Eva (Sherman) Lapidus

Spouse:

Beatrice Perlman

Son:

Alan H. Lapidus

Son:

Richard L. Lapidus