John Yeon

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John Yeon
Personal information
Name John Yeon
Nationality Flag of the United States United States
Birth date October 29, 1910(1910-10-29)
Birth place Portland, Oregon
Date of death March 13, 1994 (aged 83)
Place of death Portland, Oregon
Work
Significant buildings
Awards and prizes Brunner Prize

John Yeon (October 29, 1910 – March 13, 1994) was an American architect in Portland, Oregon, in the twentieth century. He is regarded as one of the early practitioners of the Northwest Regionalist Style of Modernism. His output was limited, but was influential on later generations of Portland architects.

Contents

[edit] Early life

John Yeon was born in Portland on October 29, 1910, the son of John B. Yeon and Elizabeth Mock Yeon.[1] The elder was a timber businessman and oversaw the building of the Columbia River Highway.[1] The younger Yeon was raised in Portland and attended Allen Preparatory School in that city before leaving for California to attend Stanford University.[1] Yeon attended the college for a single semester before leaving to learn less formally, and never became a licensed architect.[1]

[edit] Architecture

Notable works include the Aubrey R. Watzek House (1937)[2] and the Portland Visitors Information Center (1949), both of which were featured in exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The Watzek house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Yeon also designed museum exhibitions, including those for the Portland Art Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and the Palace of the Legion of Honor.[1]

In 1956, Yeon was awarded the Brunner Prize for architecture by the National Institute of Arts.[1] The University of Oregon awarded him a Distinguished Service Award in 1977, and Lewis & Clark College gave him their annual Aubrey Watzek Award in 1980.[1]

John Yeon died on Sunday, March 13, 1994, in Portland of congestive heart failure.[1]

[edit] Further reading

  • Bosker, Gideon, and Lena Lencek. Frozen Music: A History of Portland Architecture. Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1985.
  • Placzek, Adolf K., ed. "Yeon, John." Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects. New York: Free Press, 1982.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Hortsch, Dan. Nationally-known architectural designer dies. The Oregonian, March 15, 1994.
  2. ^ Leland M. Roth, American Architecture: A History (Boulder: Westview, 2001), 362-363.
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[edit] External links

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