Architect Jordan Gruzen Focused on New York City

Gruzen

Jordan Gruzen devoted himself to urban architecture in and around New York City. He died on Jan. 27 from cancer. He was 80. In the early 1960s, Gruzen and his college classmate Peter Samton joined Kelly & Gruzen, founded by Gruzen's father in 1936. Gruzen and Samton became partners in 1967. In 2009, Gruzen Samton merged with the nearly 2,800-person IBI Group and is now known as IBI Group-Gruzen Samton. The 50-person New York City office has a portfolio that includes schools, colleges, dormitories, courthouses, transportation terminals, residential complexes, facilities for the elderly and synagogues. Gruzen's New York City work includes residential high-rises at Battery Park City, Stuyvesant High School and the master plan for Long Island University's 22-acre health sciences complex in Brooklyn. "He was the optimist; I was the pessimist," says Samton. "Good architectural firms need both."

Nadine M. Post, ENR's editor-at-large for buildings, is an award-winning journalist with 45 years of experience covering trends, issues, innovations, controversies and challenging projects. Post has written about many industry giants, including 10 ENR Award of Excellence winners. And she has covered disasters, failures and attacks, including the 1993 bombing and the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. Project stories include the redevelopment of the World Trade Center; the 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa; Los Angeles’ Disney Concert Hall; and Seattle's Bullitt Center and Rainier Square Tower. In 1985, Post wrote McGraw-Hill's book Restoring the Statue of Liberty (1986) for the restoration’s architects—Richard S. Hayden and Thierry W. Despont.

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