Bruce Goff - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Graceland Cemetery is the graveyard of Chicago architecture giants including Ludwig Mies van der Rohr, Louis Sullivan, John Root, William Holabird, Howard Van Doren Shaw, William LeBaron Jenney, George Elmslie, and Bruce Goff.

Goff's cremated remains are interred with a marker designed by protégée Bart Prince that incorporates a glass cullet fragment salvaged from the ruins of Goff's Price House and Studio.

The grave marker plaque is located approximately 20 feet from the simple black granite marker of Mies (visit link) . The two architects continue their marked contrast in death as in life.

Description: Born in Kansas, Bruce Goff spent most of his life practicing in Oklahoma, Chicago, and Texas. A childhood interest in drawing led to an apprenticeship at just 12 years old with a prominent Tulsa, OK architectural firm. Largely self-taught, Goff was advised by both Louis Sullivan and Wright to avoid studying at an architecture school. Wright wrote to Goff, “If you want to lose Bruce Goff, go to school”. Barely in his mid-twenties, Goff designed a most spectacular Art Deco icon, Tulsa's Boston Avenue Methodist-Episcopal Church. In 1934 he moved to Chicago to work for Alfonso Iannelli. He also began teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts. Goff was also an artist and in the 1930s, a composer of modern piano compositions. In addition to his own innate creativity, Goff found inspiration for his work from a variety of sources including Antoni Gaudi, Balinese music, Claude Debussy, Japanese prints, and seashells. While in Chicago, Goff found employment with Libbey-Owens-Ford in the Vitrolite division. At the outbreak of WWII, Goff enlisted, and from 1942 to 1945 served in the Seabees, the land support arm of the Navy, first in the Aleutians and later in California. While a Seabee he was often called on to design buildings and modifications, using only readily available materials. During his tenure as the chair of the school of architecture at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, 1947-1955, Goff solidified his reputation for designing wildly unusual houses; meanwhile, the school's architectural program gained an international recognition under his direction. From 1956-1964 Goff maintained an office in Wright's Price Tower in Bartlesville, OK http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMVBG . He was the very first tenant and only one to take up residence there. In a career that spanned more than six decades, Goff saw almost a hundred and fifty of his architectural designs built in fifteen states. While the majority of his projects were private residences, his portfolio of over 500 designs also includes commercial and civic buildings. In each of these designs, Goff's sensitivity to client, site, space, and material set him apart from the mainstream. Goff countered the famous “Less is more” quote by Mies Van der Rohe with “Not much is not enough” and once referred to the glass boxes of modern architecture as “Mies burgers”. Date of birth: 06/08/1904 Date of death: 08/04/1982 Area of notoriety: Art Marker Type: Plaque Setting: Outdoor Fee required?: No Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Not listed Web site: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
To post a visit log for waymarks in this category, you must have personally visited the waymark location. When logging your visit, please provide a note describing your visit experience, along with any additional information about the waymark or the surrounding area that you think others may find interesting.

We especially encourage you to include any pictures that you took during your visit to the waymark. However, only respectful photographs are allowed. Logs which include photographs representing any form of disrespectful behavior (including those showing personal items placed on or near the grave location) will be subject to deletion.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   12/20/2008 CHI-TOWN ROMEO visited it 04/27/2007 adgorn visited it

View all visits/logs