1. Lee Oscar Lawrie was an American architectural sculptor and an important figure in the American sculpture scene preceding World War II.
14 Facts About Lee Lawrie
1. 2.
Lee Lawrie created a frieze on the Nebraska State Capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska, including a portrayal of the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.
3.
Lee Lawrie created some of the architectural sculpture and his most prominent work, the free-standing bronze Atlas at New York City's Rockefeller Center.
4.
Lee Lawrie's work is associated with some of the United States' most noted buildings of the first half of the twentieth century.
5.
Lee Lawrie completed numerous pieces in Washington, DC, including the bronze doors of the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception south entrance portal, and the interior sculpture of George Washington at the National Cathedral.
6.
Lee Lawrie was born in Rixdorf, Germany, in 1877 and immigrated to the United States in 1882 as a young child with his family; they settled in Chicago.
7.
At the age of 15, in 1892 Lee Lawrie worked as an assistant to many of the sculptors in Chicago, for their part in constructing the "White City" for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
8.
Lee Lawrie received a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Yale University in 1910.
9.
Lee Lawrie was an instructor in Yale's School of Fine Arts from 1908 to 1919 and taught in the architecture program at Harvard University from 1910 to 1912.
10.
Lee Lawrie sculpted numerous bas reliefs for El Fureidis, an estate in Montecito, California designed by Goodhue.
11.
Lee Lawrie was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Academy of Design, and the Architectural League of New York.
12.
Lee Lawrie served on the US Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, DC from 1933 to 1937 and again from 1945 to 1950; it oversees federal public works and artwork in the city.
13.
Lee Lawrie's most noted work is not architectural: it is the freestanding statue of Atlas, on Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center, standing a total 45 feet tall, with a 15-foot human figure supporting an armillary sphere.
14.
Lee Lawrie's Atlas was featured on the cover of The New Yorker magazine for December 20 and 27,2010.