30 Facts About Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture.

Walter Gropius is a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar.

Walter's great-uncle Martin Gropius was the architect of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin and a follower of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, with whom Walter's great-grandfather Carl Gropius, who fought under Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher at the Battle of Waterloo, had shared a flat as a bachelor.

In 1915 Gropius married Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler.

Walter Gropius and Alma's daughter, named Manon after Walter Gropius's mother, was born in 1916.

Walter Gropius married Ilse Frank, known as Ise, on 16 October 1923; they remained together until his death in 1969.

Ise Walter Gropius died on 9 June 1983 in Lexington, Massachusetts.

In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Walter Gropius joined the office of the renowned architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school.

In 1910, Walter Gropius left the firm of Behrens and together with fellow employee Adolf Meyer established a practice in Berlin.

Walter Gropius was commissioned in 1913 to design a car for the Prussian Railroad Locomotive Works in Konigsberg.

In 1913, Walter Gropius published an article about "The Development of Industrial Buildings," which included about a dozen photographs of factories and grain elevators in North America.

Walter Gropius's career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Walter Gropius was drafted August 1914 and served as a sergeant major at the Western front during the war years and then as a lieutenant in the signal corps.

Walter Gropius was awarded the Iron Cross twice after fighting for four years.

In 1923, Walter Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th-century design and often listed as one of the most influential designs to emerge from Bauhaus.

Walter Gropius collaborated with Carl Fieger, Ernst Neufert and others within his private architectural practice.

Walter Gropius left the Bauhaus in 1928 and moved to Berlin.

Walter Gropius's work was part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Walter Gropius lived and worked in the artists' community associated with Herbert Read in Hampstead, London, as part of the Isokon group with Fry and others for three years, before moving on to the United States with his family.

In designing his house, Walter Gropius used the approach developed at the Bauhaus.

Walter Gropius was so satisfied with the result that she gave more land and financial support to four other professors, two of whom Gropius designed homes for.

Walter Gropius's house received a huge response and was declared a National Landmark in 2000.

Walter Gropius sat on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Visiting Committee at the end of his career.

Walter Gropius was one of several refugee German architects who provided information to confirm the typical construction of German houses to the RE8 research department set up by the British Air Ministry.

In 1945, Walter Gropius was asked by the young founding members of The Architects Collaborative to join as their senior partner.

In 1967, Walter Gropius was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1968.

Walter Gropius died on July 5,1969, in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 86.

Walter Gropius described himself as a "tough old bird", and continued to make progress for about a week.

Mrs Walter Gropius deeded the Walter Gropius House in Lincoln to Historic New England in 1980, now an house museum.

The Walter Gropius House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 and is available to the public for tours.