Robert D. Kohn

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The New York architect Robert D. Kohn, president of the American Institute of Architects in 1930-32, is best known for his temples and other structures for the Reform Jewish congregations of New York, notably the discreetly modernist Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York on Fifth Avenue (1927-29) [1] and for the New York Society for Ethical Culture, of which he had been a member since early youth. His work at Congregation Emanuel-El blends a conservative modernism with Neo-Romanesque precedents, stripped of their literal historicisms. The west end of Emanu-El, facing Central Park, is a single vastly-scaled entrance porch, infilled with stained glass under a round-headed arch. Buttressed wall permit an interior free of support, with a roof 103 feet above the floor.

He built the hall for the Society for Ethical Culture (Central Park West and 64th Street, 1911) and had formerly collaborated with Carrère and Hastings on the Ethical Culture school building (1902), which backs it, the Society having had the forethought to buy the whole blockfront in 1899. "Like Christian Science, the Ethical Culture movement was searching for its own form - it had no historic precedents from which to draw. Kohn's exterior, all Bedford limestone, took its cornice and base course lines from the adjacent school, but nothing else. Instead of the school's broad window facing Central Park, the meeting house has wide, limestone expanses, like a mausoleum, and simply, blocky detailing." (Stern et al.)

His first building of note was the Vienna Sezession-detailed New York Post Building (1906-07), on Vesey Street, facing St. Paul's Chapel and its churchyard, one of the few Art Nouveau structures in New York (but see Emery Roth). Stacks of convex copper-framed windows press forward between unrelieved limestone piers; in the uppermost several floors, Caricature figures by Gutzon Borglum of newspaper editors support in its upper floors, where the detail is concentrated.

In Cleveland, Ohio, he designed the Tower Press Building (1908), dominated by a 40m octagonal tower.

For Macy's he constructed the massive addition (1924) and at the same time, in Brooklyn, a refined neoclassic limestone-faced store for the upscale retailer, A. I. Namm & Son, working in partnership, as he often did, with Charles Butler (Municipal Art Society landmark status, 2005).

In the Fieldston section of the Bronx, he was the architect, with Clarence S. Stein, for the building housing the Ethical Culture Fieldston School (1926).

He worked in association with his brother, Victor H. Kohn, who died in New York, 4 May 4 1910, aged thirty-eight. In 1918 he was a founding member of the Technical Alliance, organized for the purpose of undertaking an energy survey of North America, for the reconsideration of the workings of the entire social system; their work was continued by Technocracy Inc.

His wife was the sculptor, Estelle Rumbold, sister of Dr. Frank M. Rumbold, of St. Louis. Their father was Dr. Thomas F. Rumbold.

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  1. ^ He worked in partnership with Charles Butler and Clarence Stein on this project, which cost an estimated $7.5 million dollars. The associate architects were Mayers Murray & Phillip.

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