Lee Oskar Lawrie: America’s Machine-Age Michelangelo.
Lawrie was the greatest Architectural Sculptor the world has ever known (or never known).
What’s New?
In September 2024, I revisited Washington, D.C., to attend a centennial celebration of the National Academy of Science Building. Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was the architect of the building, and Lee Lawrie created its sculpture; a lot of it.
While in D.C., I also revisited the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress. One of the amazing features of the library is a parade, of scribes from history and from many cultures. Click here for more on these figures.
Photo from the Washington Evening Star, June 20, 1938
Lee Lawrie
Lee Lawrie at the Locust Lane Farm, in the 1950s
30 Rockefeller Plaza
Christ at the entrance of St. Thomas Episcopal on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan
Iconic Atlas, by Lee Lawrie and Rene Chambellan
"The Red Man's Tree of Life" from the Nebraska State Capitol.
Phosphor and Hesper from the Los Angeles Central Public Library, designed by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. Themes by Dr. Hartley Burr Alexander.
The Pasadena California World War One Memorial Flagstaff, at Colorado-- and Orange Grove Boulevards. 1926
The Crown of Bok Tower, in Lake Wales, FL, 1929.
Tank Treads-Motif, from the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Bridge, in Harrisburg, PA, c. 1931
The International Building, Rockefeller Center, This illustration represents the Four Races of Man and the Industrial Powers of the 1930s; the British, the American, and others. The constellations include the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross.
Documenting the Life and Sculpture of Lee Oskar Lawrie (1877-1963)
Few Artists, living or dead, were as prolific as Lee Lawrie. His career spanned from the Gaslight Era—to the dawn of the Space Age.
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Lee Lawrie was a titan in the world of 20th Century American Art, creating Architectural Sculpture from Coast-to-Coast; for Seven Decades.
Among his credits, he was a pioneer of American Art Deco. Yet the world barely knows who he was; or the magnitude of his contribution to 20th Century American Art.
The purpose of this site is to change all that, and to identify, discuss, show and tell of the enormous presence of uncredited of his architectural sculpture, most of which went unsigned, unrecognized and/or largely forgotten.
Unlike most artists, the majority of Lawrie’s work is public art, that cannot be physically collected and displayed in a single gallery. To see it firsthand requires great amounts of travel, and research, such as I have undertaken over the better part of the past two decades.
LeeLawrie.com is the result of nearly two decades of research, travel, photography and writing. It is a virtualmuseum of Lawrie’s Art, in lieu of a single exhibition.
