William Alexander Levy

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William Alexander Levy
Personal information
Name William Alexander Levy
Nationality American
Birth date October 21, 1909
Birth place Brooklyn, New York
Date of death June 2, 1997
Place of death West Hollywood, California, USA
Work
Significant buildings Hangover House House in Space (Hollywood Hills) House in Flight (Hollywood Hills)

William Alexander Levy (1909 – 1997), later William Alexander, was an American architect and interior designer.[1]

Early in his career, he was influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. At NYU's new School of Architecture, he studied under Raymond Bossange and Ely Jacques Kahn (1984-1972). One of his art and clay modeling instructors was sculptress Concetta Scaravaglione (1900-1975). In 1933 or 1934, he worked briefly for skyscraper designer Raymond Hood (1883-1934), who also had been an occasional lecturer at NYU. Also at NYU, he had as an instructor of English Thomas Wolfe, who, in 1929, published Look Homeward, Angel, and whose later The Party at Jack's (UNC-Chapel Hill, 1995, pp. 41-42) shows remarkable writing on architecture, perhaps influenced by his association with the NYU School of Architecture and its students. Renovation of dilapidated structures at Fort Schuyler in upstate New York was Alexander's first commission, one funded by the U.S. government. Other chiefly private client commissions followed.

Alexander is best known for the design and building of Hangover House in Laguna Beach, California, commissioned by travel writer Richard Halliburton in 1937. The house had three bedrooms, one for Halliburton, one for Alexander, and one for Paul Mooney, who collaborated with Halliburton on his later writing projects and who managed construction of the house. In 1937, writer Ayn Rand, then unknown, visited Hangover House and Alexander provided her with quotes for her forthcoming novel The Fountainhead (1943). According to Alexander, Rand's descriptions of the Heller House are thinly disguised references to the house. [2]

Later, Alexander assisted composer Arnold Schoenberg in the redesign of his studio in Brentwood, and also designed a house in the Hollywood Hills for scriptwriter David Greggory. He designed interiors for such famous people as Conrad Bercovici, Marcia Davenport, and Christian Dior.

Alexander continued to practice architecture and interior design and by 1950 had moved permanently to West Hollywood. In 1952, Alexander opened The Mart, one of the first art and antique boutiques in Los Angeles, on Santa Monica Boulevard, operating it until 1977. During this period, he occasionally had bit parts in feature films, notably The Shootist, starring John Wayne, and The McMasters, starring Brock Peters, his sometime business partner at The Mart. A developer of the Hollywood Hills and a philanthropist, Alexander became a patron of the arts as well as a world traveler.

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ New York Times Obituaries (June 8, 1997): http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E7DF1639F93BA35755C0A961958260
  2. ^ Wells, Ted. "Hangover House: An Obscure Modern Masterpiece." Ted Wells' Living Simple: Architecture, Design, and Living (March 7, 2007): http://twls.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=190016

[edit] Further reading

  • Max, Gerry. Horizon Chasers: The Lives and Adventures of Richard Halliburton and Paul Mooney. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., April 2007
  • Max, Gerry. Many Mansions. Unpublished monograph on the life and achievement of William Alexander (nee Levy), Aldo Magi Materials in the Thomas Wolfe Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1995-1998.
  • "House for Writer Affords Privacy and Spectacular View," Alexander Levy, B. Arch., Designer, Architectural Record, Building News, pp. 47-51 (with photographs), October, 1938.
  • Wikipedia under Paul Mooney