Roger Montgomery

Roger Montgomery (1925 – 2003) was an urban designer, architect, and educator.

Biography

He was born in New York City to parents Graham Livingston and Anne Cook and lived in Greenwich Village until 1930, when he moved to Port Washington, Long Island. Mr. Livingston died suddenly from a heart attack in 1942. In 1945 he was accepted into the army, where he served in an intelligence unit in occupied Germany has a radio operator. On April 23, 1949 Roger married Oberlin College graduate Mary Hoyt. Roger has three sons, Richard Wallace (born 1956), Thomas Vinton (1958), and Peter George (1965). In 1957 Roger was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Roger Montgomery dies from cancer on October 25, 2003.

Training

Roger attended a John Dewey-influenced grade school in Port Washington, which emphasized mechanical skills over traditional subjects such as reading and writing. In high school he was voted ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ and ‘The Great Orator’. He was excused from military service in 1941 because of a punctured eardrum and subsequently enrolled in Oberlin College, but was dismissed from the college in 1945. Roger began his architectural work in 1948 as an apprentice in Springfield Ohio and is soon successful, in part because of a shortage of architects and large post-war boom in construction. From 1955 to 1956 Roger attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Accomplishments

• 1957: Began position as professor of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. Also named founding Director (1957-1963) of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, one of the nation’s first building and neighborhood preservation groups.
• 1960: Started the architectural practice of Schnebli, Anselevicius, and Montgomery (SAM) that designed the Washington University Law School Building (in 1972).
• 1961: Works for the Kennedy Administration as the first Urban Design Office in the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency (later the HUD).
• 1964: Named founding Director of Washington University’s Urban Renewal Design Center and planned and designed ‘Towne South’, a community outside of St. Louis
• 1965: Named founding Director of the Urban Housing Foundation, Inc. (1965-1967).
• 1967: Hired as an architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
• 1968: Named a juror from the Progressive Architecture P/A Design Awards.
• 1967-1972: Serves as west coast editor for Architecture Forum magazine.
• 1973: Publishes Housing in America (co-authored with Daniel Mandelker), a survey of housing economics, race, and land use issues. Also publishes A Guide to Architecture in San Francisco and Northern California (co-authored with David Gebhard and Sally Woodbridge).
• 1977: Publishes a guide to the architecture and vernacular buildings of Oregon.
• 1980s: During this period Roger’s serves as President of the California Council of Architectural Education, and the National Board of Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility. Additionally, Roger serves on boards for a number of voluntary organizations related to the design professions including Planners for Equal Opportunity, Planners Network and Northern California Non-Profit Housing Coalition. In the Bay Area, Roger advises City and County boards in Berkeley, Alameda County, Santa Clara and San Francisco. Roger is also named Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs and later Acting Dean.
• May 1, 1989: Named Dean of the College of Environmental Design, a position he holds until January 1996. During 1989, Roger is named to the Board of Trustees of the Berkeley Art Museum, a position he holds until 2002.