September 11, 2001
World Trade Center architect was Seattle native, UW graduate
Minoru Yamasaki, designer of New York’s World Trade Center, was born in a Seattle tenement and put himself through the University of Washington by working in Alaskan fish canneries. His most famous work was destroyed today by terrorist attacks, 35 years after the twin towers were completed.
Yamasaki was born on Dec. 1, 1912, to first-generation Japanese parents in a tenement in the Yesler Hill section of Seattle. He studied architecture at the UW, graduating in 1934. According to a New York Times obituary, he put himself through college by spending five summers working in Alaskan fish canneries for $50 a month — plus 25 cents an hour overtime.
In 1960 — three years before he got the commission to design the World Trade Center — he returned to his alma mater to receive the highest honor the UW bestows on its graduates, the Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus Award. He was the first Japanese American to be honored as the alumnus of the year by the UW and the UW Alumni Association.
At that time, he credited UW Architecture Professor Lionel Pries for much of his understanding of “the excitement of architecture.”
After graduating from the UW, Yamasaki moved to New York and wrapped dishes for an importing company while attending night classes at New York University, where he earned a master’s degree. “I was a lot better at wrapping than at bookkeeping, where I was a total failure,” he later remarked.
Yamasaki started his career as a draftsman in New York, leaving in 1945 to become the head designer of a Detroit architectural firm — Smith, Hinchman and Grylls. He later launched his own architectural partnership, Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, in Detroit.
In 1954 he was selected to design the new U.S. Consulate in Kobe, Japan, a breakthrough commission that led to many other works. Among the famous buildings he designed are the Century City Plaza complex in Los Angeles, Seattle’s Rainier Tower and Pacific Science Center, and the civilian air terminal in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. His design for the Lambert-St. Louis Air Terminal won the American Institute of Architects’ First Honor Award in 1951 and started the trend of having top architects design airport buildings.
But his most famous work was the World Trade Towers, which he designed in collaboration with the New York firm of Emery Roth & Sons. At 110 floors each, the twin towers were record-breaking — 43,000 windows, 99 elevators, 1,350 feet tall–the highest structures in New York.
The words he used to describe his work in a 1962 New York Times interview resound today. “Above all, with political turmoil, traffic problems, vast increases in population and the tremendous impact of the machine, we must have serenity. Man needs a serene architectural background to save his sanity in today’s world,” he said.
Yamasaki died on Feb. 6, 1987 in Detroit. He was 73 years old.
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