Blake Hall
The architect who designed the building you see below, the United States Tax Court Building in Washington, D.C., was a soldier once — in World War II — and young.
He was an artist too, ever fleshing out what he saw in his mind, never afraid to get it down on paper no matter where he was or what he was doing.
“When I think thoughts, I draw thoughts,” said U.S. Army veteran Victor A. Lundy, who was born in New York City in 1923 and attended New York University’s architecture program (“specializing in the Beaux Arts style”) before enlisting in the Army Specialized Training Program as a 21-year-old student.
Recently, the website Retronaut featured a sketchbook he kept from his training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina to his deployment to Europe, where he served as an infantryman, on the front lines, in the Allied invasion (he was wounded in 1944 and returned home).
Aside from the stark sketch featured below the headline above, here are a few more of Lundy’s. The full book resides, for all time, at the Library of Congress.
His most famous work is probably the Warm Mineral Springs Hotel, located in Florida, which is now officially on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Smithsonian even honored him on his 90th birthday, back in 2013, and a film was made by the General Services Administration (GSA) titled “Victor Lundy: Sculptor of Space.”