Gene Summers

Vocation

American modernist architect, considered to have been Mies Van Der Rohe's right hand man. He assisted his famed employer in the design of the iconic Seagram Building on Park Avenue on the island of Manhattan in New York City. Later, in private practice, he designed the huge McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, Illinois. From 1973 until 1985 Summers, in association with Phyllis Lambert, worked as a real estate developer in California, where they restored, among other projects, several industrial parks, the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, and the Newporter Resort Hotel in Newport Beach. In 1985 Summers moved to France but returned to Chicago in 1989 to become dean of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a position he held until 1993. Summers was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1972, and later relocated to Healdsburg, California. Summers died on 12 December 2011 in Sebastopol, California at the age of 83. Link to Wikipedia biography