Benjamin J. Baldwin ’35 *38

FEW MEN earn the distinction in their chosen fields that came to Ben. And, Ben's field was broad, embracing the design of houses, offices, gardens, furniture, and fabrics. His education, too, was broad. After receiving his B.A. in architecture at Princeton, he trained at the American School of Fine Arts at Fontainebleau, France, and then returned to Princeton for a master's degree in fine arts,

As early as 1940, Ben made a name for himself when his entry in a home furnishings competition was selected for display at New York's Museum of Modern Art. In later years (after a fouryear stint in the Navy) his work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre and was featured in numerous books and magazines.

Ben's collaboration was sought by many of the most respected architects in America, including Edward Barnes, I. M. Pei and Louis Kahn, and he left his mark on such noteworthy works of architecture as the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, New York's Philharmonic Hall, the Yale Center for British Art, and Fort Worth!s Kimball Museum. In 1985, Ben was chosen as a charter member of the Interior Design Hall of Fame, which is administered for the profession by INTERIOR DESIGN magazine.

Ben was a native of Birmingham, but lived most of his working life in Sarasota, Fla., and East Hampton, L.I. (His own gardens in both places were published in HOUSE AND GARDEN). When Ben died on Apr. 4, 1993, the man and his work were memorialized in a twocolumn, twopicture obituary in the N.Y. TIMES, which referred to him as "the dean of American interior architects" and "a leading force in the modern movement of American design." Ben is survived by three sistersand the many beautiful results of his life's work.

The Class of 1935