User:JPRiley/Warner

Charles Henry Warner Jr. was born June 9, 1911, in Yonkers, New York, to Charles H. Warner Sr., a lawyer and social worker, and Kate Warner, née Brown.^[1] He was educated at Wesleyan University and Columbia University, graduating from the latter in 1937. He worked for industrial designer Donald Deskey and architect Morris Ketchum Jr. in New York City until 1940, when he was appointed assistant professor of architecture at Cornell University.^[2][3] He returned to the city in 1944 when he was appointed to a similar position at Columbia.^[4] In 1947 he left academia to return to Deskey, but soon left with a colleague, interior designer Harold Eliot Leeds (1919–2002), to form the design firm of Warner–Leeds.^[2] Their work included the interiors of the Paris Theatre (1948) in New York City and those of the Caribe Hilton Hotel (1949) and the Supreme Court Building (1952, NRHP-listed) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The architect for both Puerto Rican projects was Toro, Ferrer y Torregrosa; partner Osvaldo Toro had been Warner's classmate at Columbia. Warner and Leeds dissolved their partnership in 1955.^[5]

Concurrent with his interior design practice, Warner maintained a separate architecture practice. He originally worked out of the Warner–Leeds offices in Manhattan but in 1952 established a second office in Nyack with Walker Field (1921–1959) under the name Warner & Field.^[6] Independently Warner was responsible for the Foss Hill dormitories (1957) of Wesleyan University with Brown, Lawford & Forbes^[7] and with Field the Orangetown Town Hall (1960).^[8] In 1957 Warner reorganized his Manhattan office under the name Warner Burns Toan Lunde with three associates: Robert Burns (1916–1994), Danforth Toan (1918–1913) and Frithjof M. Lunde (1921–2012).^[9] After Field's death the Nyack practice was discontinued, Warner continuing in Manhattan only.^[10]

The firm of Warner Burns Toan Lunde became well known for the design of college and university buildings, especially academic libraries. Warner was the principal designer of the first of these, the Olin Library (1961) of Cornell University.^[11] With Burns he was responsible for Fine Hall (1968) of the Princeton University Department of Mathematics.^[12] Warner's contributions to the Caribe Hilton Hotel (1949) led to additional hotel work, some of it with Toro. In this he was particularly concerned with integrating his designs with the local cultural and historical context. Among his last and largest hotels was the Ramses Hilton (1981) in Cairo, designed in collaboration with Egyptian architect Ali Nassar.^[13] Warner retired from the partnership the year it was completed, though he continued as a full-time design consultant.^[3]

In 1998 the firm was incorporated as WBTL Architects; it was dissolved by the State of New York in 2014.^[14] About the time of its dissolution it and Warner's records were deposited in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library of Columbia University.^[3]

Warner was married in 1937 to Mary Ten Eyck Mosher. Osvaldo Toro, his later collaborator, was his best man.^[15] They had two children, both sons.^[16] He died November 2, 2004, at home in Upper Nyack, New York, at the age of 93.^[17]

Warner was a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and was elected a Fellow in 1976.^[2] He was elected an Associate National Academician of the National Academy of Design in 1979 and was elevated to National Academician in 1994.^[18]

• 1961 Mabel Smith Douglass Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey^[19]
• 1961 Olin Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
• 1963 Malott Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York^[20]
• 1964 Corning Community College, Corning, New York^[21]
• 1964 John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island^[22]
• 1966 Warren Weaver Hall, New York University, New York City^[23]
• 1967 Axinn Library, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York^[24]
• 1968 Club Tower, The Boca Raton Resort, Boca Raton, Florida^[25]
• 1969 Hilton Addis, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia^[26]
• 1969 Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta^[27]
• 1970 Library of Science and Medicine, Busch Campus of Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey^[28]
• 1971 Ruth S. Hartley University Center, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York^[29]
• 1971 Sciences Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island^[30]
• 1973 Robarts Library, University of Toronto, Toronto^[31]
• 1974 Oberlin College Library, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio^[32]
• 1974 Esther Raushenbush Library, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York^[33]
• 1975 Seeley G. Mudd Building, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina^[34]
• 1976 Hammer Health Sciences Building, Columbia University, New York City^[35][36]
• 1976 Robert J. Kibbee Library, Kingsborough Community College, Brooklyn^[37]
• 1982 Steinberg Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia^[38]
• 1983 Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey^[39]
• 1986 Clemens Library, College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, Minnesota^[40]
• 1992 E Building, LaGuardia Community College, Queens^[41]