The Early Years of Nathaniel A. Owings A Portrait of the Architect as a Storyteller

Abstract

For three decades, Nathaniel Alexander Owings was one of the most influential architects in the United States. With his brother-in-law Louis Skidmore, Owings was a founding partner of the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. SOM quickly developed into a company that was awarded some of the largest and most prestigious architectural commissions in the nation, and in the world, from the 1930s onward. Nicholas Adams examines Owings’s childhood and young adulthood, as well as his early career, in light of the architect’s autobiography, The Spaces In Between. Adams discovers the stories, and sometimes myths, Owings told about his life, and, more broadly, considers “the narratives corporate architects used to thrive in mid-century America.”