Alfred Lublin flashed over the horizon like a comet before falling to his death.
Not many people crowd in as much as Alf Lublin in 53 years, and not many leave such devoted admirers. People remember Lublin as a designer whose buildings are admired in Norfolk, Washington and abroad.
His life reads like a novel. It touched Williamsburg, Paris, Livorno, Tripoli and many other places before it ended in the wreck of a Scandinavian plane near Ankara, Turkey in January 1960.
His widow and daughter still live in Norfolk. A son who is in the Army was recently stationed at Fort Lee and another daughter lives in Northern Virginia.
I met the architect in Paris when I went to Europe with 114 other Americans in 1956 to invite Queen Elizabeth of England to come to Jamestown the next year. Lublin oversaw a French architectural project and invited Governor and Mrs. Thomas Stanley, Mayor of Norfolk and Mrs. Fred Duckworth and several others in our group to dinner at Maxim. It was an unforgettable occasion.
Among the guests was a frog-faced columnist named Art Buchwald who wrote a ridiculous column that appeared in the Paris edition of The Herald-Tribune the next day about those crazy Virginians who had come all the way to Europe to invite the Queen to come to Virginia. He must have been surprised later when she did.
I learned that Lublin was born in Kassel in 1904 and had set an excellent record in architecture and engineering at the Technical University in Charlottenburg. He was a Jew, and when Hitler came to power in the 1930s, Lublin soon realized the danger. He and his architect Ernst Freud, son of Sigmund, left Germany. Freud settled in England and became famous there. Lublin chose Paris because his mother was French and he spoke the language, but in 1936 he realized that France was also in danger and moved to New York.
There he practiced with a large company, but soon longed to have his own. He spoke to the late William B. Thalhimer of Richmond, who then ran Thalhimer’s business and helped talented Jewish refugees emigrate to the United States and advance their careers. Thalhimer suggested Norfolk, and Lublin and his bride, former Vogue’s Mary Calverley, moved there around 1938.
Virginia’s architecture firm would not recognize Lublin’s European credentials, so he had to take the Richmond state architectural engineering exams. While waiting to take them and get the results, he took on small jobs. One was to create a suburb in Williamsburg for Mrs. Carrie Williams, who owned and developed an area called Indian Springs on Jamestown Road.
Williams had met Lublin in Norfolk, offered him the contract and was delighted with his design. As the widow of a university professor, she single-handedly sold all the tickets. Today the area is one of the best in Williamsburg.
When his exam was graded, Lublin was found to have achieved the third highest grade ever received by the National Architectural Registration Board. He opened his office in Norfolk and soon co-founded Lublin and McGaughy with John McGaughy. It is now the large international company of McGaughy, Marshall and McMillan with offices in several cities in the United States and Europe.
Lublin was a modernist architect from the Bauhaus School of German Design. He particularly admired the work of Walter Gropius, a German contemporary who came to the United States in 1937 and taught at Harvard, and Frank Lloyd Wright. His modernity, his versatile skills as an architect and his ability to speak French, German and Italian soon led to opportunities to work abroad. It wasn’t long before the company had offices in Washington, Paris, Honolulu, Livorno, and Ankara.
“He had a wonderful ear for music and languages,” recalls his wife. He worked in Turkey and also learned Turkish, one of the more difficult languages. His classical training was evident in his ability to read Greek and Latin, and in his knowledge of classical music. He could identify any string quartet by Mozart or Beethoven if he heard a few bars.
The Lublin and McGaughy company designed the Kirn Memorial Library, the Maritime Tower and the Armed Forces Staff College of Norfolk, among others. In collaboration with a German company, she designed the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington and won a prize from the American Institute of Steel Construction for it. In the boom in international companies after the Second World War, the company quickly expanded overseas. Today it is one of the world’s 50 leading consulting firms for architecture and engineering. It is also among the 25 largest in the United States.
A notable quality in Alfred Lublin when I met him in Paris was his love for his adopted Virginia. That was evident that evening at Maxim’s when he was entertaining the Virginia visitors and showing us Art Buchwald.
But the best thing about him was his tolerance of the eccentricities that thrive in men and which often separate them. After tasting the poison of Hitler’s hatred, he developed a civilized tolerance that helped him overcome national barriers with ease and adapt easily to new languages and customs. He might even work with the French, who are a law to themselves.
“I think in French,” he told staff members who complained about the unfathomable Gaulish spirit.
When I pass Indian Springs in Williamsburg, I fondly remember the quirky architect who designed it and who did so many other things.
Parke Rouse is a Williamsburg writer.