Architects O - Sh

Photo and text….

Jerome Perlstein got his start after architecture school at NYU and Pratt Institute in the office of his father Morris Perlstein. He struck out on his own in 1950 after serving as a draftsman for four years.He designed buildings in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and on Long Island and worked with several other Queens Modern winners including a Forest Hills apartment building co-designed by the Lefrak’s go-to architect Jack Brown. Some of his work has been demolished including the Forest Hills Country Club of 1961, which was demolished in 2004. His 8 Queens Modern projects are mostly rehabilitations of industrial buildings in Long Island City, but also include a restaurant, residence and the aforementioned apartment building. Both the extant Tymon Building and Walter Lippmann Building include striking mid-century details.

Sources:

American Architects Directory, First Edition, 1956. Copyright 1956 R. R. Bowker LLC.

American Architects Directory, Second Edition, 1962. Copyright 1962 R. R. Bowker LLC.

American Architects Directory, Third Edition, 1970. Copyright 1970 R. R. Bowker LLC.

Brown, Kim “Country Club Will Be Demolished After 40 Years in Forest Hills” Queens Chronicle 26 August 2004.

The firm was formed in 1955 by Douglas Persich and James Giacopelli. As existing it closed in 1986 and merged with what is now known today as Anthony S. DiProperzio AIA. Their Queens Modern projects include a round Catholic high school in Rosedale and the largely historicist Villa Bianca Restaurant in Flushing, now a church. The firm has continued to receive Queens Chamber of Commerce Awards through the present day.

Louis Pfohl organized his firm in 1938 and had past experience working for the renowned Chicago firm of Holabird and Root, as well as a manager at Otis Elevator Company. The two buildings he designed that received honorable mention are directly across the street from one another in Long Island City.

Michael Radoslovich was the Director of Architecture for the New York City Board of Education from 1952-1969, overseeing vast growth of the system. He designed some schools himself but also chose prominent architects of the day to design new sites

Stein’s name may not be well-known but his background and list of works is impressive. He studied at Harvard, NYU and the Cooper Union, and worked for major modernists like Gropius & Breuer and Edward Durell Stone, as well as Queens Modern firm S. J. Kessler. He founded his own firm in 1961 after 15 years at Katz, Waisman, Blumenkranz, Stein, Weber. He was responsible for schools, hospitals, and public housing. He wrote a book in 1978, Architecture and Energy, that was an early call for sustainable and energy efficient design. According to his New York Times obituary, he was designing the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, NY at the time of his death in 1990 at the age of 73.

Sources:

American Architects Directory, Second Edition, 1962. Copyright 1962 R. R. Bowker LLC.

Fowler, Glenn. “Richard Stein, Architect Devoted To Conserving Energy, Dies at 73” The New York Times. 19 Apr. 1990. Web.

S. J. Kessler and Sons was formed in 1940 by Samuel J. Kessler, a graduate of the Cooper Union and NY Law School. His son Melvin Kessler and grandson Stuart Kessler were also members of the firm. They are probably most well known for their mid-century housing complex of Washington Square Village with landscapes by Sasaki. They also designed the large affordable housing complex of Park West Village on the Upper West Side. Their Queens Chamber Awards are for three large housing complexes and one small institutional building.

Sources:

American Architects Directory, First Edition, 1956. Copyright 1956 R. R. Bowker LLC.

American Architects Directory, Second Edition, 1962. Copyright 1962 R. R. Bowker LLC.

Stern, Robert A. M., Thomas Mellins and David Fishman. New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial. Monacelli Press, 1995.

Abraham Salkowitz was a Jamaica, Queens-based architect who was active for at least forty years from the early 1940s until the late 1970s. Although not much is known of his firm, he won 9 Queens Chamber prizes and designed many different types of structures from office buildings to synagogues, hospitals to shopping centers. His firm is also listed in a low cost homes trade catalog at Avery Library.