Breuer (formerly the Whitney Museum of American Art), the St. Francis de Sales and St. John's Abbey Churches, the Atlanta Central Library, and his second house in New Canaan. Breuer was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects at their 100th annual convention in 1968 at Portland, Oregon. In an ironic timing of events, it coincided with general criticism of one of America's favorite architects for his willingness to design a multi-story office building on top of Grand Central Terminal. The project was never built. It cost him many friends and supporters although its defeat by the US Supreme Court established the right of New York and other cities to protect their landmarks. During his lifetime, Breuer rarely acknowledged the influence of other architects' work upon his own but he had certainly picked up the use of rough board-formed concrete from Le Corbusier and the noble dignity of his second New Canaan house seems to have directly descended from Mies' Barcelona Pavilion. Shortly before his death, he told an interviewer that he considered his principal contribution to have been the adaptation of the work of older architects to the needs of modern society. He died in his apartment in Manhattan in 1981, leaving his wife Connie (died 2002) and his son Tamas. With his permission, his partners kept offices going in his name in Paris and New York for several years but, with their eventual retirement, both are now closed. Breuer's work Breuer donated his professional papers and drawings to Syracuse University library beginning in the late 1960s. The remainder of his papers, including most of his personal correspondence, were donated to the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., between 1985 and 1999 by Breuer's wife, Constance. Legacy The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., held an exhibition in 2007–2008 dedicated to the work of Marcel Breuer titled Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture. Filmmaker James Crump has directed Breuer's Bohemia, a feature documentary film that examines Breuer's experimental house designs in New England following the Second World War. References External links Marcel Breuer Digital Archive at Syracuse University 1902 births 1981 deaths People from Pécs Modernist architects International style architects Brutalist architects Hungarian architects Hungarian Jews Jewish architects American furniture designers Hungarian furniture designers Academic staff of the Bauhaus Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty Hungarian expatriates in Germany Hungarian emigrants to Germany American people of Hungarian-Jewish