We at the Society of Architectural Historians were saddened to learn about the death of Carter Manny, Jr., Chicago architect, writer and former director of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. During Carter’s tenure, the Graham Foundation provided generous seed funding to study the possibility of creating SAH’s Buildings of the United States series in the mid-1980s and provided partial funding for many of the early books in the series in the early-1990s. Among the 1,200 grants that the foundation distributed during Carter’s term as director (1971-1993), few were more important than providing funding to create the Ernest R. Graham Study Center for Architectural Drawings at The Art Institute of Chicago, thereby securing the legacy of architect Ernest R. Graham and providing a home for the Art Institute’s then dispersed collection of world class drawings. Read more about Carter’s life in architecture.
Obituary by Blair Kamin, Chicago Tribune
Chicago architect Carter Manny Jr. was in the news on the day he died — a timely reminder of his searching intelligence and considerable impact on projects that ranged from O'Hare International Airport's original terminals to the FBI Building in Washington, D.C.
Manny had a remarkably varied career, serving as a partner at one of Chicago's top postwar architectural firms, C.F. Murphy Associates, and directing the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, a Chicago organization that makes research grants to architects around the world.
He also crossed paths with leading figures of 20th century art and architecture, among them artist Alexander Calder. To honor the completion of two Calder sculptures in Chicago — the Flamingo stabile in Federal Plaza and Universe, a motorized installation in the lobby of Sears (now Willis) Tower — Manny organized a circus-style parade in 1974 in which the artist participated.
The parade, which featured more than a dozen circus wagons, clowns, unicyclists and multiple marching bands, was back in the news Wednesday — part of an online story that chronicled how Universe is not part of the planned $500 million renovation of Willis Tower and is likely to be removed from the skyscraper.
On that same day, Manny, 98, died at his San Rafael, Calif., home. His stepson, Michael Moran, attributed his death to old age and "a compounding of various conditions."
Longtime Chicago art critic Franz Schulze, who conducted an oral history interview with Manny for the Art Institute of Chicago, called Manny's passing "the death of a giant."
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Read the obituary on the Geisen Funeral Home website
here.
