The Chicago skyline you see today was largely influenced by Bruce Graham, a Peruvian American architect who was born in Colombia and raised in Puerto Rico. Bruce Graham worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill from 1951 to 1989, where his projects included the Inland Steel Building (1957), John Hancock Center (1969), and Sears Tower (1974), among others.
An undated portrait of Bruce Graham from Wikimedia Commons.
Graham’s father, Carroll, was born in Canada, raised in Puerto Rico, and traveled throughout Latin America for his work as a bank inspector for Chase Bank. While in Arequipa, Peru, he met and married Angélica Gómez de la Torre Bueno, and was transferred to La Cumbre, Colombia, where Bruce John Graham was born on December 1, 1925. Within a few months, the family moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where Graham grew up, not speaking English until age seven or eight.
He showed interest in drawing as a youth, taking drawing lessons and sketching cartoons. Graham was also fascinated by San Juan’s built environment, so he combined those interests and made a hobby of mapping the city’s slum neighborhoods. After attending Colegio San José Río Piedras for high school, he graduated at age 15 and came to the United States to study at the University of Dayton on a scholarship, but his studies were interrupted by World War II.
Graham served in the US Navy from 1941 to 1945 and resumed his education at the University of Pennsylvania on the GI Bill, graduating in 1948. From then on, he grew his career in Chicago, first at Holabird, Root, and Burgee until 1951, then at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill until 1989.
The Inland Steel building at 30 West Monroe Street, Chicago, March 24, 1958. HB-21235-B4, CHM, Hedrich Blessing Collection.
As Graham reached the heights of his storied career, he maintained ties to South America as one of the founding members of the School of Architecture at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and as an honorary member of the Institute for Urbanism and Planning at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Perú, the oldest continuously operating university in the Americas.
The Sears Tower under construction, Chicago, c. 1972. In the left background is the John Hancock Center. HB-36150-H2, CHM, Hedrich-Blessing Collection.
Learn more about Bruce Graham’s extraordinary life and career in our Chicago History article, “Creating a Dance: Interviews with Bruce Graham and Maria Tallchief.”