Charles Luckman

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Charles Luckman (1909, Kansas City–January 26, 1999, Los Angeles) was a businessman and an American architect, famous as the "Boy Wonder of American Business" when he was named president of the Pepsodent toothpaste company in 1939 at the age of thirty. Through acquisition, he later became president of Lever Brothers.

During the war, Luckman served on the President's Committee on Civil Rights, and in 1947, President Truman asked him to help feed starving Europe. For this work, he was honored with Britain's Order of St. John, France's Legion of Honor, and Italy's Star of Solidarity.

Luckman had always wanted to be an architect. As a nine-year-old paper boy outside the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City, he asked a customer about the pretty lights and was told they were called "chandeliers." Then he asked, "Who does... Who decides on things like that?" "An architect," came the reply. "He designs the hotel and says to put the chandeliers there." Luckman wrote in his memoir, "Right then and there I decided to become an architect."

He trained at the University of Illinois where he was a member of the Professional Engineering Fraternity Theta Tau, but went into sales after graduating during the depths of the Great Depression. After almost twenty years of great success in business, he helped plan Lever Brothers' New York skyscraper, Lever House, one of the first sealed glass towers that began the curtain wall trend. The complex, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, was innovative in several other ways, as well, including a rare public plaza at ground level.

Reminded of his architectural roots, Luckman resigned the presidency of Lever Brothers, moved to Los Angeles and began practicing architecture with fellow University of Illinois graduate William Pereira c1950. Their partnership led to works such as CBS Television City, but the two went separate ways in 1959. Luckman's firm went on to design the Prudential Center in Boston, the new Madison Square Garden in New York City, Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Aon Center in Los Angeles, and the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

Luckman's autobiography is Twice in a Lifetime: From Soap to Skyscrapers (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1988) 0-393-02584-5.

"Learn to listen to your clients. It's a shocking thought, but your client was smart enough to make enough money to hire you and to afford to build a building. Listen. You just may possibly learn."