Wallace Harrison
American architect (1895–1981)
Wallace Kirkman Harrison (September 28, 1895 – December 2, 1981) was an American architect. Harrison started his professional career with the firm of Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, participating in the construction of Rockefeller Center. He is best known for executing large public projects in New York City and upstate, many of them the fruit of his long friendship with Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
Early life and education
Harrison was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on September 28, 1895. He studied engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and architecture at the Boston Architectural Club. In the 1920s, he attended École des Beaux-Arts and, two years later, won the Rotch Taveling Scholarship in 1922.
Career
Harrison's work in the mid-20th century comprised large, modernist public projects and office buildings. He worked for McKim, Mead & White and Bertram Grovesnor Goodhue from 1916 to 1923, and later formed a series of architectural partnerships. Harrison participated with the architectural teams involved in the construction of Rockefeller Center in New York City, completed in 1939. His brother-in-law was married to John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s daughter, Abigail and Harrison served as a designer and architectural adviser for Nelson Rockefeller, notably in the years when Rockefeller was governor of New York.
The public source identifies “Wallace Harrison” as american architect (1895–1981). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Wallace, Harrison and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3565469. VIAF identifies the subject as 79404254. The Library of Congress control number is n83044635. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1981, 1922 and 1916.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wallace Harrison” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.