Emery Roth
Emery Roth (, 17 July 1871 – August 20, 1948) was an American architect of Hungarian-Jewish descent who designed many of the definitive New York City hotels and apartment buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, incorporating Beaux-Arts and Art Deco details. His sons continued in the family enterprise, largely expanding the firm under the name Emery Roth & Sons. Life and career. Born in Gálszécs, Austria-Hungary (now Sečovce, Slovakia) to a Jewish family, he emigrated to the United States at the age of 13 after his family fell into poverty upon his father's death. He began his  architectural apprenticeship as a draftsman in the Chicago offices of Burnham & Root, working on the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. At the Exposition Roth also designed one of his first solo projects; a pavilion that housed a chocolatier. There he met Richard Morris Hunt, who was impressed with his skills and invited Roth to work in his office in New York. Following Hunt's premature death in 1895, Roth moved to the office of Ogden Codman, Jr., a designer and decorator with a Newport clientele. In the interwar years, the firm of Emery Roth delivered some of the most  influential examples of architecture for apartment houses in the at-the-time fashionable beaux art-style, especially in Manhattan. Many of his most notable projects are located on the Upper West Side, specifically Central Park West which is home to the San Remo, the Beresford, the Ardsley, amongst others. In 1938, Roth included his sons Julian and Richard as partners. Emery Roth & Sons. Despite the fact that Roth's sons, Julian and Richard, had joined the firm many years earlier, it was not until 1947 that the firm's name was changed to Emery Roth & Sons, approximately one year before  Roth's death. Julian (1901–1992) specialized in construction costs and building materials and technology, while Richard (1904–1987) was named the firm's principal architect. In the 1950s and 1960s Emery Roth & Sons became the most influential architectural firm in New York and contributed substantially in changing the appearance of Midtown and Lower Manhattan. In that particular period of time Emery Roth & Sons designed dozens of speculative office buildings, mostly with curtain wall facades, which soon became a ubiquitous feature of the city. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the firm was also hired as associate architects in large-scale projects like the  Pan Am Building (1963), the World Trade Center (1966–1973) and the Citicorp Center (1977). In the early 1960s, Richard Roth's son, Richard Roth, Jr. (b. 1933) became the third generation to join the firm, eventually rising to chief architect CEO and shareholder. As the firm expanded and diversified over six decades, it remained a family business through the 1990s. In 1988 Richard Roth Jr's daughter Robyn Roth-Moise joined the firm as comptroller. Richard Roth Jr's son Richard Lee Roth joined the firm in 1982 and became the chief specification writer for Emery Roth & Sons. Both retired  from the firm when Richard Roth Jr retired and was replaced as the company's CEO in 1993 by Robert Sobel, Roth's cousin. Only three years later, in 1996, the firm ceased to operate, apparently because of financial distress. Emery's great-grandson Richard Lee Roth currently works in the architectural profession and resides in South Florida. The extensive architectural records and papers of both Emery Roth and Emery Roth & Sons are now held in the Department of Drawings & Archives at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.