William Lescaze

Who was William Lescaze?

William Edmond Lescaze was a Swiss-born American architect, and is one of the pioneers of modernism in American architecture.

Lescaze was born Onex, Switzerland, and completed his formal education at the École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich in Zurich, receiving his degree in 1919, and emigrated to the USA in 1920. He worked for some time at the architectural firm of Hubbell & Benes in Cleveland, Ohio, before setting up his own practice in New York City in 1923. Through the 1920s and 1930s he continued to travel across the Atlantic.

In 1929, Philadelphia architect George Howe invited Lescaze to form a partnership, which was named Howe & Lescaze. Within just a few weeks after joining forces, the duo began work on a large project for downtown Philadelphia. The resulting structure, completed in 1932, was the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, which is today generally considered the first International Modernist skyscraper, and the first International Style building of wide significance in the United States. Lescaze is generally given credit for the design: letters from Howe to Lescaze quote the former insisting to the latter that "the design is definitely yours." The structure replaced the bank's former headquarters in Philadelphia, a classicist structure near Washington Square built in 1897.