Alfred Bendiner

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Alfred Bendiner (23 July 1899 - 19 March 1964) was an American architect and artist, perhaps best known for his caricatures and cartoons.

Biography

He was born in

Orthodox Jewish household.[2] The family moved to Philadelphia when he was a boy, where he attended public schools, and graduated from Northeast High School in 1917.[1]

Bendiner won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum School,[3] but left after a year to enlist in the Students' Army Training Corps at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a sergeant and still stationed in Philadelphia when World War I ended in November 1918,[4]: 316  but his service earned him automatic admission to Penn.[2] He studied architecture there under Paul Philippe Cret, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1922.[1]

Architect

Moore School of Engineering Building, 33rd & Walnut Streets, Philadelphia

Following graduation, he was employed as a draftsman in the office of Stewardson & Page for a couple years, before being hired by Cret.[1] Bendiner worked on major Cret projects such as the Detroit Institute of Arts (1927), the Hartford County Courthouse (1929), and the Folger Shakespeare Library (1932).[4]: 286  He also did early work on three battle memorials for American military cemeteries in Europe: the Château-Thierry American Monument (1937) and the Somme American Cemetery and Memorial (1937), in France; and the Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial (1937), in Belgium.[4]: 204 

While working as a Cret draftsman during the day, Bendiner completed a master's degree in architecture from Penn at night.

Moore School of Engineering. Cret's office designed alterations to the building, 1925–1926, with Bendiner as architect in charge. He took a year off to attend the American Academy in Rome, 1928–1929.[1]

Bendiner left the Cret office in 1933,[1] and opened his own architectural office in Philadelphia, which remained in operation until his retirement in 1961.[1] Finding clients was a challenge during the Great Depression, and commissions were few and far between.[2] Most of his completed designs during this period were alterations to houses and commercial buildings,[1] and the third story addition to the Moore School (1940).[5]

Archaeological draftsman

The University of Pennsylvania Museum sponsored archaeological excavations at Tepe Gawra and Khafaji, Iraq, in 1937. Bendiner went along as project draftsman on the 8-month excavation, drawing site plans and sections of the dig, and making measured drawings of the artifacts uncovered.[6] He again worked as an archaeological draftsman on an excavation in Tikal, Guatemala, in 1960.[6]

Caricaturist

Hungarian-American violinist

Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as a music critic, but with a twist: each review would be illustrated by his caricature of the featured musician, drawn during the performance.[2] His caricatures became highly popular, and he reproduced them as lithographs, earning him the moniker "The Hirschfeld of Philadelphia."[7] He retired from music criticism in 1946, and collected his favorite reviews and caricatures in the 1952 book Music to My Eyes.[7]

Muralist

Bendiner's first mural commission was for Gimbel Brothers Department Store in Philadelphia, in 1952. The subject was a musical event that had occurred thirteen years earlier: Sergei Rachmaninoff performing as piano soloist in his Symphony No. 3 with the Philadelphia Orchestra.[7] Rachmaninoff had chosen the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Leopold Stokowski to perform the work's world premiere, November 6, 1936.[8] He returned three years later to perform Symphony No. 3 under conductor Eugene Ormandy and to make the first recording of it.[8] The mural depicted the December 2, 1939 concert at the Academy of Music, the composer/pianist's final appearance with the orchestra.[8] Rachmaninoff died in 1943. The mural is illustrated in Bendiner's autobiography.[4]: 21 

Fidelity Bank commissioned Bendiner to paint twin murals for its Rittenhouse Square branch: Rittenhouse Square, 1856 and Rittenhouse Square, 1956.[4]: 188, 316  He also painted murals for the offices of Blue Cross of Greater Philadelphia (1959); and The Story of Man for the University of Pennsylvania Museum.[7]

Author

Bendiner's books include:

  • Music to My Eyes" (1952)
  • Bendiner's Philadelphia (1964)
  • Translated from the Hungarian: Notes toward an Autobiography (1967)

Personal

Bendiner married Elizabeth "Betty" Sutro (1904-1991) in August 1938.[4]: 271  They had met a decade earlier when they shared the same drafting table at Penn, she during the day and he at night.[4]: 238  Bendiner described them as a "mixed marriage" between an Orthodox Jew and an "Old Philadelphia" Episcopalian.[4]: 271  She assisted him on the 1960 Guatemala archaeological excavation.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Alfred Bendiner from Philadelphia Architects and Buildings.
  2. ^ a b c d Alessandro Pezzati, "The Reluctant Architect: Alfred Bendiner (1899-1964)," The SAA Archaeological Record, vol. 6, no. 3 (May 2006), pp. 41-43.
  3. ^ Alfred Bendiner from Redwood Library and Athenaeum.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Alfred Bendiner, Translated from the Hungarian: Notes toward an Autobiography (South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes, 1967).
  5. ^ Pepper Musical Instrument Factory from Philadelphia Architects and Buildings.
  6. ^ a b Alfred Bendiner, 1899-1964 from University of Pennsylvania Archives.
  7. ^ a b c d Alfred Bendiner from Michener Art Museum.
  8. ^ a b c Sergei Bertensson, Jay Leyda, and Sophia Satina, Sergei Rachmaninoff—A Lifetime in Music (New York: New York University Press, 1956).
  9. ^ Elizabeth S. Bendiner from Philadelphia Architects and Buildings.

External links

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