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Emery Roth & Sons

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Emery Roth, circa 1930

Emery Roth & Sons (1938-1996) was a family-run architecture firm that had a major influence on the post-war development of Manhattan. In 1938 the architect Emery Roth (1871-1948), renowned for upscale Manhattan apartment buildings like the Beresford and the San Remo, renamed his practice Emery Roth & Sons to reflect the inclusion of his sons Julian and Richard as partners. 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 early 1960s, Richard Roth's son, Richard Roth, Jr. (b. 1933) became the third generation to join the firm, eventually rising to chief architect and shareholder. As the firm expanded and diversified over six decades, it remained a family business through the 1990s.

Emery Roth & Sons continued to design high-rise apartment buildings in Manhattan, as Emery Roth had, but shortly after World War II the firm began to shift its focus to high-rise office buildings. As they became increasingly specialized in commercial space, they worked closely with real estate developers such as the Uris Corporation, Tishman Construction, Diesel Construction, the Durst Organization, and Helmsley-Spear, Inc.

Architecture & Collaborators

Emery Roth & Sons frequently collaborated with other architects on large projects for which they were the architects of record. These projects included the World Trade Center (Minoru Yamasaki), General Motors Office Building (Edward Durell Stone), 1585 Broadway (Gwathmey Siegel & Associates), 7 Hanover Square (Norman Jaffe), the Portland Municipal Building (Michael Graves), 375 Hudson Street (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill - Skidmore, Owings and Merrill ), and the Pan Am Building (Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi).

Over the years the firm consistently provided marketable designs that maximized the net rentable area, a feature highly prized by real estate developers.

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  1. Columbia University Library
    library.columbia.edu
aleeshacallahan, July 18th, 2015
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