Walker, Ralph Thomas

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Walker, Ralph Thomas (1889–1973). American architect best known for his Art Deco skyscrapers, including the Barclay-Vesey Telephone Building (1923–6) the Western Union Building (1928–9), and the Irving Trust Building (1928–32), all set-back buildings in NYC. He was an innovative designer of laboratories and of scientific research-centres, including the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ (1937–49), and the Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, IL (1950–2). He published The Fly in the Amber: Comments on the Making of Architecture (1957). His work after the 1939–45 war was not universally admired.

Bibliography

Bosserman (1968);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
R. Walker (1957)