Raymond Hood Life and Works

Raymond Hood
(1881 - 1934)

Born in 1881, Hood moved on to be ducated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. We don't know much about Hood's early architectural career, but his success became obvious in 1922 when, along with John Mead Howells, he won the Chicago Tribune Tower design competition. Even though the building was neo Gothic rather than the Art Deco style of the time, his proceeding 12 years of practice included work on some of the most relevant American structures of the age: the Rockefeller building (1931), which he co-designed and remains an icon of Art Deco; the American Radiator Building in New York (1925), which contained a Gothic style along with a confident modernity; and the McGraw Hill Building with its famous red terra cotta exterior. His very last commission before his death in 1934 was to design the Chicago Electricity Building (1933 Century of Progress exhibition).