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Gerald K. Geerlings
1897–1998
BirthplaceMilwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America
Death placeNew Canaan, Connecticut, United States of America
BiographyGerald K. Geerlings led a remarkable career as an architect, architectural draftsman, printmaker, and writer on architectural history and design. A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Geerlings interrupted his art education and early career as an architectural draftsman and newspaper reporter to enlist in the army. After eighteen months as a commissioned officer in France, he attended Cambridge University in England. From 1919 to 1922, he studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, earning both bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture as well as several prizes. Geerlings worked for the New York architectural firms of York & Sawyer and Starret & Van Vleck before establishing his own architectural practice and making his first print in 1926. He would eventually create nearly sixty prints in intaglio and lithography, meticulously detailed cityscapes and views of individual buildings, primarily in Chicago and New York, that document urban growth in modern America. From 1928 to 1932, Geerlings lived alternately in New York and London, where he studied etching at the Royal College of Art and did research for several books: Color Schemes of Adam Buildings (1928), The Metal Crafts in Architecture (1929), and Wrought Iron in Architecture (1929). In 1933, the artist settled with his family in Connecticut.
Notwithstanding the critical acclaim for his exhibited prints, the stringent economic conditions of the Great Depression induced Geerlings temporarily to abandon printmaking. Beginning in1930, he contributed articles on domestic architecture and graphic design for such magazines as House & Garden and House Beautiful. He also was an accomplished draftsman, and his drawings were exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Adept in aerial perspective drawing, Geerlings devised target maps to aid Allied bombers during World War II. In 1942, as an Army Air Corps captain headquartered in England, he served as an intelligence officer, originated the Target Identification Unit, and devised air force procedures. Awarded a Legion of Merit medal in 1943, he retired two years later at the rank of colonel. He then resumed practicing and writing about architecture until 1970, apart from a stint working as a civilian consultant at Strategic Air Command Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1948-52. During the 1970s, Geerlings once again took up printmaking, now turning his attention to lithography; he also continued to make drawings, often using pastel. In 1980, he donated much of his work to the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives; other works entered important art museum collections in the years just prior to Geerling's death at the age of one hundred.
Notwithstanding the critical acclaim for his exhibited prints, the stringent economic conditions of the Great Depression induced Geerlings temporarily to abandon printmaking. Beginning in1930, he contributed articles on domestic architecture and graphic design for such magazines as House & Garden and House Beautiful. He also was an accomplished draftsman, and his drawings were exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Adept in aerial perspective drawing, Geerlings devised target maps to aid Allied bombers during World War II. In 1942, as an Army Air Corps captain headquartered in England, he served as an intelligence officer, originated the Target Identification Unit, and devised air force procedures. Awarded a Legion of Merit medal in 1943, he retired two years later at the rank of colonel. He then resumed practicing and writing about architecture until 1970, apart from a stint working as a civilian consultant at Strategic Air Command Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1948-52. During the 1970s, Geerlings once again took up printmaking, now turning his attention to lithography; he also continued to make drawings, often using pastel. In 1980, he donated much of his work to the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives; other works entered important art museum collections in the years just prior to Geerling's death at the age of one hundred.