Bruce Alonzo Goff was an American architect, distinguished by his organic, eclectic, and often flamboyant designs for houses and other buildings in Oklahoma and elsewhere.
27 Facts About Bruce Goff
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Bruce Goff's father, Corliss, was the youngest of seven children born to a builder in Cameron, Missouri, who learned to be a watch repairman at an early age, and moved to Wakeeney, Kansas, where he opened his own watch repair business.
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Bruce Goff married a young schoolteacher in 1903 at the home of her parents in Ellis, Kansas.
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Bruce Goff started school in Skiatook, where he was fascinated by a picture of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, his first real exposure to architecture other than frontier structures.
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Bruce Goff's family decided in 1913 to relocate to Denver, Colorado, where the father expected that his fortunes would change for the better.
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Bruce Goff bought a watch shop and opened for business.
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Meanwhile Bruce Goff, displaying the talent of an artistic prodigy, learned to paint from nature.
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The economy did not favor his efforts, and Bruce Goff later remembered going to bed hungry many nights, because his father could not afford enough food for the family.
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Bruce Goff's parents decided to move back to Tulsa in 1915.
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Bruce Goff was largely self-educated and displayed a great talent for drawing.
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Bruce Goff enrolled in the sixth grade at Lincoln Elementary School, where his first art teacher, a Miss Brown, strongly supported his individualistic artistic expression.
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Bruce Goff's father apprenticed him at age 12 to the Tulsa architectural firm of Rush, Endacott and Rush.
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Bruce Goff's employers were impressed with his talent; they soon gave him responsibility for designing houses and small commercial projects.
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Bruce Goff designed the Tulsa Club Building, downtown Tulsa's historic landmark, in 1927.
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In 1934 Bruce Goff moved to Chicago and began teaching part-time at the Academy of Fine Arts.
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Bruce Goff designed several Chicago-area residences and went to work for the manufacturer of "Vitrolite", an architectural sheet glass introduced during the 1930s.
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In March 1942, three months after the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, Bruce Goff enlisted in the US Navy, Naval Construction Branch.
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In March 1944, Bruce Goff was ordered to report to Camp Parks, a naval complex in Dublin, California, east of Oakland, for rehabilitation and reassignment.
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Bruce Goff remained there until he was discharged from the Navy in July 1945.
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Bruce Goff reminded Goff that the same restrictions he had experienced in Alaska would apply here.
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Bruce Goff obtained a teaching position with the School of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma in 1942.
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In 1955, Bruce Goff, who was gay, became the subject of a smear campaign then common in US colleges and universities.
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Bruce Goff relocated his studio to the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which had been designed by his mentor Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Bruce Goff's accumulated design portfolio of 500 projects demonstrates a restless, sped-up evolution through conventional styles and forms at a young age, through the Prairie Style of his heroes and correspondents Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan, then into original design.
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Bruce Goff used imagery from this movie for the music video Celtic Ghosts of German band Kreidler.
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Bruce Goff was active from the 1920s until his death, with several posthumous projects completed by associates.
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Bruce Goff's cremated remains are interred in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois, with a marker designed by Grant Gustafson, one of Goff's students, which incorporates a glass cullet fragment salvaged from the ruins of the Joe D Price House and Studio.