Craig Ellwood

Modern architecture, Architect

1922 – 1992

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Who was Craig Ellwood?

Craig Ellwood was an influential Los Angeles-based modernist architect whose career spanned the early 1950s through the mid-1970s. Although untrained as an architect, Ellwood fashioned a persona and career through equal parts of a talent for good design, self-promotion and ambition. He was recognized professionally for fusing of the formalism of Mies van der Rohe with the informal style of California modernism.

Ellwood was born Jon Nelson Burke in Clarendon, Texas. Along with many others in the 1920s, Ellwood's family moved west, following U.S. Route 66, finally settling in Los Angeles in 1937. There, Ellwood, as Johnnie Burke, attended Belmont High School, where he was class president before graduating in 1940. In 1942, Ellwood and his brother Cleve both joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Ellwood served as a B-24 radio operator, based with Cleve in Victorville, California until his discharge in 1946.

After his discharge, Burke returned to Los Angeles and set up a company with his brother Cleve and two friends from the war, the Marzicola brothers, one of whom had a contractor's license. The four men called their firm 'Craig Ellwood' after a liquor store called Lords and Elwood located in front of their offices. Burke later legally changed his name to Ellwood. In 1948, he joined the firm Lamport Cofer Salzman as a construction cost estimator, having acquired this skill during his work for the Craig Ellwood Company. Ellwood also studied structural engineering through UCLA extension night school for five years. He became increasingly involved in design and architecture, resulting in Ellwood's first commissions, all for residences.

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Born
Apr 22, 1922
Clarendon
Also known as
  • Jon Nelson Burke
  • Johnnie Burke
Siblings
Spouses
Children
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Education
  • Belmont High School
Died
May 30, 1992
Pergine Valdarno

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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