San Francisco County
Biographies
GUSTAVE
ALBERT LANSBURGH
LANSBURGH,
GUSTAVE ALBERT, Architect, San
Francisco, California, was born at Panama, January 7, 1876, the son of Simon
Lazarus Lansburgh and Rebecca (Pyke)
Lansburgh. His paternal ancestors were Germans, while
on the maternal side he is of Portuguese and Spanish descent. S. L. Lansburgh, his father, was one of the largest ship
chandlers on the Pacific Coast, and a maternal grandfather was the
author of the famous “Pyke’s Catechism.” Mr. Lansburgh was
married in San
Francisco,
in June, 1908, to Miss Irene Muzzy, the children of which marriage are Ruth and
Lawrence Lansburgh.
From 1884 to 1892 he attended the Grammar
School at San
Francisco and
then spent a year at the Cogswell School and another at the Lowell High. In 1894
he entered the University of California, but left there in 1906 to travel in Europe.
He became a student in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, of Paris, France, in 1901, took the
regular course of architecture, painting, modeling, sculpture, engineering, the
history of architecture, etc., and was graduated in 1906, with the degree of “Architecte diplome par le Gouvernment.” In his last year there he won the medal of
the Society of French Architects which was awarded at the Grand Salon of the Champs Elysees.
While in Europe he traveled extensively, partly as a
student and partly for mere pleasure, and continued this combined course in the
Orient. Returning to San
Francisco
at the end of May, 1906, shortly after the fire, he began the active practice
of his profession, under unusually auspicious
conditions.
Mr. Lansburgh’s
first important works in San Francisco are the two Gunst
buildings, one at the corner of Third and Mission Streets, and the other at
Geary and Powell. In the former especially he has followed his preference for
the modern French Renaissance, and
Has
achieved a notable triumph therein.
Among his other noteworthy structures are the San Francisco Orpheum, Sanford Sachs Building, Lumberman’s Building, Newman & Levinson’s, the restoration of the Temple Emanuel, the Hotel Manx and the Gunst residence. Besides these he has fitted up the
Emporium, won the competition for the Concordia Club and B’nai B’rith Building,
and designed many imposing mausoleums in San Mateo County. He has recently completed the new
Orpheum in Los
Angeles,
thereby carrying off another artistic palm.
An attempt, largely successful, to express
purely American ideas is a striking characteristic of Mr. Lansburgh’s
recent work. In other words he is trying to develop a strictly American form of
architecture. A fondness for color, possibly inherited from his Spanish and
Portuguese forbears, is evident in the polychrome to which his taste seems to
run. A conspicuously good example of his polychrome work is the new Los Angeles
Orpheum. He virtually introduced this style to the far West but though he
favors it, together with stone, terra cotta and the like, he believes in
adapting the material to the needs, and especially in making the character of
the building show the use to which it is to be put. Always artistic, with a
decided architectural bent, he has concentrated on his specialty to the
considerable gain of San
Francisco.
He is a skillful musician and an accomplished decorator. It was he who designed
the decorations for the Taft Banquet given at the Palace Hotel on the eve of
the ceremonies of the ground breaking for the Panama-Pacific Exposition. He was
formerly an acrobatic star of the Olympic Club and a champion wrestler, but now
limits his athletic enthusiasms to automobiling and
golf. Mr. Lansburgh is a member of the Beaux Arts
Society, Diplome Society, San Francisco Chapter
American Institute of Architects, Concordia Club and Argonaut Club of San
Francisco.
Transcribed by Gloria (Wiegner) Lane.
Source: Press Reference
Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 700, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta.
1913.
© 2007 Gloria
Lane.
California Biography Project
San Francisco County
California Statewide
Golden Nugget Library