Lilian Swann Saarinen

Who was Lilian Swann Saarinen?

Lilian Louisa Swann Saarinen was a sculptor and artist, and wife of architect and industrial designer Eero Saarinen. “Lily” was born in New York City to Susan Ridley Sedgwick Swann Hammond and Dr. Arthur Wharton Swann. She studied at the Art Students’ League of NYC with Alexander Archipenko and, later, with Albert Stewart and Heinz Warneke before moving to Michigan where she studied under Carl Milles at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She married Saarinen, whom she met at Cranbrook, in 1939, moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts after their divorce in 1951.

During her early years, Lily spent her summers in Connecticut studying sculpture, and her winters learning to ski with Otto Fürer in St. Anton-Amalberg in Austria. In 1936, she was on the first women’s Olympic Ski Team.

In 1935, Lily illustrated a book called Picture Book Zoo for the Bronx Zoo, and in 1946 she published the children’s book Who Am I?

Lily and Eero had two children: Eric Saarinen, born in 1942, and Susan Saarinen, born in 1945. During her marriage to Eero, Lily participated as a team member of their design group, in the competition for the Westward Expansion Memorial, later known as the “Gateway Arch” in St. Louis. Among them were the Crow Island School reliefs in Winnetka, IL 1938; the reliefs at the Post Office in Carlisle, KY; a sculpture for the Royal Dutch Airlines at JFK Airport in NYC, and a relief at the Harbor National Bank on Franklin St. in Boston.