Arnold Brunner was a leading American architect and urban planner from 1885 to 1925. Today, most architects know his name, but few know his work or can even name his many buildings. This year, the 150th anniversary of Brunner's birth, architectural historian Samuel Gruber was awarded the Brunner Grant from the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter to research Brunner's life and work. Brunner is known as the first successful American-born Jewish architect, and an important designer of synagogues and Jewish institutional buildings. But he was also one of the founders of modern urban planning and an important designer of civic architecture in New York City, Cleveland, Harrisburg, Albany, and elsewhere. His work on the Cleveland Plan and other “City Beautiful” projects (which he always called “the City Practical”) helped transform American cities. In New York, in addition to designing over two dozen buildings, he was also influential in developing the first zoning laws.

Brunner’s transition from the H.H. Richardson-inspired architecture of his early career (with Thomas Tryon) to the rigorous classicism and historicism of his mature years is representative of the transition experienced in American architecture between the 1880's and 1920's. In an illustrated lecture, Dr. Gruber will review the highlights of Brunner's career, and place his life and work in the context of Jewish and American values and aesthetics from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age.


Speaker: Samuel D. Gruber (Director of the Jewish Heritage Research Center, Syracuse, NY)

Samuel D. Gruber is Director of the Jewish Heritage Research Center (Syracuse, NY). Dr. Gruber is author of American Synagogues: A Century of Architecture and Jewish Community (Rizzoli, 2003) and Synagogues (Metrobooks, NY, 1999); co-author of Survey of Historic Jewish Sites in the Czech Republic (1995) and Survey of Historic Jewish Sites in Poland (1994, second revised edition, 1995), and a contributor to many publications including Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, (Prestel, 2004). He is a frequent contributor to the Forward newspaper, and the author of numerous reports and articles about medieval architecture, Jewish art and architecture and historic preservation and is presently involved in over thirty research, documentation, conservation, planning and preservation projects worldwide. Dr. Gruber is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and is Rothman Lecturer in Judaic Studies at Syracuse University. He lives in Syracuse, New York, where is President of the Preservation association of Central New York.

In 2006 Gruber was recipient of the Brunner Grant from the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter, and a research grant from the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation to assist in the writing a preservation manual for religious properties.