A “PERSON OF CULTURE”

With Eliel Saarinen’s death in 1950, Eero officially launched his career as an independent architect. Throughout the decade, heading the office of Eero Saarinen and Associates, he kept up an intense professional and social schedule, including numerous trips to foreign countries. In 1953 Eero was divorced from Lilian Swann Saarinen (1913– 95), a sculptor who had contributed to the Crow Island School, and the following year married Aline B. Louchheim (1914– 72), an associate art critic for the New York Times, who often examined the relationship between art and society. Assisting him and his office on press relations, she helped Saarinen meet his goal of becoming not only an architect “who contributes to culture,” but also a “person of culture.” Although Eero’s career was cut short by his death in 1961, leaving nine major buildings uncompleted, no clients severed their ties with the firm, and many of Saarinen’s greatest achievements were realized posthumously.