Edward Larrabee Barnes was born in Chicago on April 22, 1915, to a family he described as "incense-swinging High Episcopalians." His mother, the former Margaret Helen Ayer, won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel "Years of Grace." His father, Cecil, was a lawyer.
Mr. Barnes began studying English at Harvard, switching to art history and finally to the history of architecture. After graduation, in 1938, he taught English for a year at the Milton Academy, in Massachusetts, which he had attended. His visits to the houses that Gropius and Breuer built in nearby Lincoln persuaded him to be an architect, Mr. Blake wrote.
After receiving his architecture degree from Harvard design school in 1942, he served in the Navy. Immediately after the war, he worked in Los Angeles for the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss designing prototypes for mass-produced homes.
When Washington stopped financing that initiative, Mr. Barnes went to Manhattan and opened his own architecture office in 1949. Nearly 500 architects, many of them prominent, were to work for the firm over its 45-year-existence.
In 1944 he married the former Mary Elizabeth Coss, an architect who had worked with Alvar Aalto and others in putting together exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. She survives him, as do his son, John, of Davenport, Calif., and two granddaughters.
He once said that most architectural ideas could be expressed on the back of an envelope.
(from his obituary in the New York Times, September 23, 2004)
Mr. Barnes began studying English at Harvard, switching to art history and finally to the history of architecture. After graduation, in 1938, he taught English for a year at the Milton Academy, in Massachusetts, which he had attended. His visits to the houses that Gropius and Breuer built in nearby Lincoln persuaded him to be an architect, Mr. Blake wrote.
After receiving his architecture degree from Harvard design school in 1942, he served in the Navy. Immediately after the war, he worked in Los Angeles for the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss designing prototypes for mass-produced homes.
When Washington stopped financing that initiative, Mr. Barnes went to Manhattan and opened his own architecture office in 1949. Nearly 500 architects, many of them prominent, were to work for the firm over its 45-year-existence.
In 1944 he married the former Mary Elizabeth Coss, an architect who had worked with Alvar Aalto and others in putting together exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. She survives him, as do his son, John, of Davenport, Calif., and two granddaughters.
He once said that most architectural ideas could be expressed on the back of an envelope.
(from his obituary in the New York Times, September 23, 2004)
Edward Larrabee Barnes was born in Chicago on April 22, 1915, to a family he described as "incense-swinging High Episcopalians." His mother, the former Margaret Helen Ayer, won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel "Years of Grace." His father, Cecil, was a lawyer.
Mr. Barnes began studying English at Harvard, switching to art history and finally to the history of architecture. After graduation, in 1938, he taught English for a year at the Milton Academy, in Massachusetts, which he had attended. His visits to the houses that Gropius and Breuer built in nearby Lincoln persuaded him to be an architect, Mr. Blake wrote.
After receiving his architecture degree from Harvard design school in 1942, he served in the Navy. Immediately after the war, he worked in Los Angeles for the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss designing prototypes for mass-produced homes.
When Washington stopped financing that initiative, Mr. Barnes went to Manhattan and opened his own architecture office in 1949. Nearly 500 architects, many of them prominent, were to work for the firm over its 45-year-existence.
In 1944 he married the former Mary Elizabeth Coss, an architect who had worked with Alvar Aalto and others in putting together exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. She survives him, as do his son, John, of Davenport, Calif., and two granddaughters.
He once said that most architectural ideas could be expressed on the back of an envelope.
(from his obituary in the New York Times, September 23, 2004)
Mr. Barnes began studying English at Harvard, switching to art history and finally to the history of architecture. After graduation, in 1938, he taught English for a year at the Milton Academy, in Massachusetts, which he had attended. His visits to the houses that Gropius and Breuer built in nearby Lincoln persuaded him to be an architect, Mr. Blake wrote.
After receiving his architecture degree from Harvard design school in 1942, he served in the Navy. Immediately after the war, he worked in Los Angeles for the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss designing prototypes for mass-produced homes.
When Washington stopped financing that initiative, Mr. Barnes went to Manhattan and opened his own architecture office in 1949. Nearly 500 architects, many of them prominent, were to work for the firm over its 45-year-existence.
In 1944 he married the former Mary Elizabeth Coss, an architect who had worked with Alvar Aalto and others in putting together exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. She survives him, as do his son, John, of Davenport, Calif., and two granddaughters.
He once said that most architectural ideas could be expressed on the back of an envelope.
(from his obituary in the New York Times, September 23, 2004)
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