![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/default-1200x1126.jpg\"\/)
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The architect examining a scheme for the Hollywood Bowl with designer Peter Wexler in 1976Credit: Kathleen Ballard\/Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection\/UCLA Library Special Collections<\/p>\nA tribute to the late, great architect who transformed Los Angeles<\/p>\n
During a career that spanned\u00a0nearly three-quarters of a century, Frank Gehry established himself as the most famous American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright. His major works, including Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, were made possible in part by 3-D design software that allowed the designer to realize never-before-seen forms in steel and titanium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gehry\u2019s family left Canada and migrated to Los Angeles not long after World War II. His parents, Irving and Sadie Goldberg, moved Frank and his sister Doreen into a dingy apartment a few blocks from MacArthur Park. Dad worked in a liquor store while Frank studied engineering at Los Angeles City College and made deliveries part-time. Fans say his style defies classification, but Gehry started out on a traditional path for the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The architect examining a scheme for the Hollywood Bowl with designer Peter Wexler in 1976Credit: Kathleen Ballard\/Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection\/UCLA Library Special Collections<\/p>\n
By the late 1950s, he had graduated from the USC School of Architecture, done stints in the army and at Harvard and worked at two of L.A.\u2019s largest design firms: Pereira & Luckman and Victor Gruen and Associates, the leading designer of shopping malls. \u201cHe was always a little \u2026 crazy,\u201d says architect and historian Alan Hess<\/a>. \u201cHe was willing to try new and different things, even in that very strait-laced commercial world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe only way for him to become a meaningful voice in the cultural story was to break away from that,\u201d adds Silver Lake architect Frank Escher<\/a>. \u201cAnd break away he did.\u201d Escher compares Gehry to Mozart, who threw off the shackles of patronage, allowing his personal genius to shine through.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gehry\u2019s transformation is reminiscent of the TV series Mad Men. That show begins in 1960 with a Brylcreemed Don Draper polishing off an Old Fashioned in a swanky cocktail\u00a0bar, and\u00a0ends with Jon Hamm\u2019s character barefoot and doing yoga on a bluff in Big Sur in 1970. In the 1960s, Gehry left his wife and kids and reinvented himself. He\u00a0established\u00a0a place among the city\u2019s community of artists, rather than with its best-known architects.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe was very astute about how to build a public image,\u201d Escher says. \u201cAt that moment, he was building that persona of \u2018I hang out with artists, I smoke marijuana and I let my hair grow.\u2019\u201d In March 1968,\u00a0Los Angeles\u00a0photographed Gehry at LACMA alongside people like Billy Al Bengston, Judy Chicago, Ed Kienholz and Claes Oldenburg. \u201cPutting Gehry amongst those artists of surfaces and finishes is perfect,\u201d says historian D.J. Waldi<\/a>e. \u201cHe built buildings like those artists built their constructions of metal,\u00a0plastic\u00a0and vinyl. Buildings with the same luscious sense of the surface finish being as significant as other aspects.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n![\"Gehry's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/WDCH_sktch_001-1200x894.jpg\"\/)
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Gehry\u2019s sketch of Disney HallCredit: Courtesy Gehry Partners\u00a0<\/p>\n