- November 5, 2024
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Victor Lundy, who designed such Sarasota landmarks as the Blue Pagoda Building, St. Paul Lutheran Church and Galloway's Furniture Showroom, died Nov. 4 at the age of 101.
News of Lundy’s death was posted on social media by the preservation group Docomomo U.S., which said the late designer was a “marvel in how architecture can uplift the spirit.”
Lundy was a leading member of the Sarasota School of Architecture, a group whose existence he was known to deny. The school, which includes such architectural luminaries as Ralph Twitchell, Paul Rudolph, Carl Abbott and Ralph and William Zimmerman, was part of a movement to build innovative homes, schools and churches in the post-World War II era.
Their designs, now referred to as Mid-Century Modern, were built in places like Sarasota, Palm Springs, California; New Canaan, Connecticut; and Columbus, Indiana, to name just a few.
Lundy was honored last year at Architecture Sarasota's 10th MOD Weekend. Several of his buildings are on the registry called "Moderns That Matter: Sarasota 100" recently compiled with input from the community by Architecture Sarasota President Morris (Marty) Hylton III and his team.
In the waning days of Lundy's life, the kudos and awards were still rolling in. In its review of Sarasota Art Museum's recent exhibit, “Modern Masterpiece: Galloway's Furniture Showroom by Victor Lundy," The Wall Street Journal declared the Mid-Century Modern pavilion is to retail what “Notre Dame is to cathedrals."
The exhibition, a collaboration between SAM, owned by Ringling College of Art and Design, and Architecture Sarasota, closed on Oct. 27. Word is that Lundy was able to hear the praise in the Wall Street Journal article when it was read to him.
Lundy was born Feb. 1, 1923 to Russian immigrants in New York City.
He was studying architecture at New York University when he enlisted in the Army Specialized Training Program in 1942. He later joined the 104th Infantry Division and trained at Fort Jackson before being transferred to Cherbourg and Normandy, France. He moved to the Western Front in November 1944, where he was wounded.
His well-received sketches of his military training and wartime experience were donated to the Library of Congress in 2009.
After the war, Lundy earned bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture at Harvard, where he was influenced by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. He arrived in Sarasota in 1951, opened an architecture firm in 1954 and worked here until 1960.
That's when he moved back to New York City. He eventually settled in Houston before becoming vice president of the firm HKS.
On the occasion of Lundy's 90th birthday, the Smithsonian Institution honored him. His Warm Mineral Springs Motel, built in North Port in 1958, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Other noteworthy structures designed by Lundy include "bubble pavilions" for the New York World's Fair of 1964-65; his residence, Lundy House, in Aspen, Colorado (1972); the U.S. Tax Court Building in Washington, D.C. (1974) and the Austin Centre and One Congress Plaza in Austin, Texas (1986-87).
Lundy met his future wife, Anstis Burwell, a fellow artist, in 1955 at an architecture conference in California. They got married in 1960 and had two sons, Nicholas and Mark. Lundy's wife, who died in 2009, introduced the architect to the natural beauty of Colorado.
In his Sarasota buildings, Lundy used wood and glass to create majestic structures. St. Paul and the Blue Pagoda featured sloping roofs while Galloway's Furniture Showroom was a circular palace of wood and glass.
The Blue Pagoda, a 1956 building that was originally the home of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, is now the welcome center at The Bay, Sarasota's waterfront park along Tamiami Trail.
Lundy designed three buildings on the campus of St. Paul Lutheran Church, at 2256 Bahia Vista St. from 1958-69. The church's education building was recently renovated at a cost of $785,000.
Most longtime Sarasota residents remember Galloway's Furniture Showroom from its incarnation as an optical store in 1980s. It was built in 1959 for a Florida furniture manufacturer and closed five years later. It still stands on the grounds of SAM, housed in the old Sarasota High School building.
Ringling College acquired the vacant building because of its proximity to the contemporary art museum, which currently uses it for storage. Designs for possible future uses of the building were part of the recent exhibition.
No doubt Lundy's legacy and his lasting imprint on Sarasota will be a subject of discussion at this year's MOD Weekend, which Architecture Sarasota is hosting from Nov. 14-17. For more information, visit ArchitectureSarasota.org.
