Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T17:35:12.937Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Henry Klumb: Puerto Rico’s critical modernist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2019

César A. Cruz*
Affiliation:
cacruz@bsu.edu

Extract

In February 1944 a thirty-nine-year-old itinerant architect named Heinrich ‘Henry’ Klumb [1] (1905–1984), moved to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico for what was supposed to be a short-term, public works job with the island’s provincial government, that is, a territorial government that had been established and was largely supervised by the American federal government. At the time of his arrival on the island, Klumb was a one-time German immigrant, a former protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn’s occasional design and business partner during the mid-to-late 1930s, and a moderately successful designer of a variety of projects and building types. These early projects and building types included residences, prototype prefabricated buildings and houses, museum exhibits, furniture pieces, and a number of housing and urban master plans. Over the next forty years he would emerge as Puerto Rico’s most locally well-known and prolific modern architect. His major successes on the island consisted of his public works, university buildings, churches, residences, and office buildings. Outside of Puerto Rico, his association with Frank Lloyd Wright has also generated a measure of interest.

Type
History
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)