Carter Manny
Originial by Peter Moran/Courtesy Geisen Funeral Homes Carter Manny

Carter Manny, Jr., FAIA, an active member of the Chicago architecture community, died on Feb. 1 at 98. For his entire professional career, Manny worked at Naess & Murphy, which was renamed several times during his tenure and is known today as Jahn, a reflection of the current design leaders Helmut Jahn, FAIA, and Francisco Gonzalez-Pulido. He also served as the director of the Graham Foundation from 1971 through 1993, and in 1996, the foundation established an award in his name, which has awarded more than $740,000 to support the work of doctoral students from various disciplines whose work has a primary focus in architecture. He was also a president of AIA Chicago and a fellow of the Chicago-based Society of Architectural Historians.

Manny was born on Nov. 16, 1918, in Michigan City, Ind. Reporter Bob Kasarda writes in an obituary in The Northwest Indiana Times:

Growing up in Michigan City, his family was friends with the family of Wright [Frank Lloyd Wright] as well as artists such as Grant Wood, who gave Manny a drawing he later donated to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Manny was born Nov. 16, 1918, to Carter Hugh Manny and Ada Gage [Barnes]. He attended Harvard University and continued his architectural studies at the Graduate School of Design. World War II intervened and Carter switched to the Harvard Business School, feeling he would be more useful to the country.

He pursued his architectural studies again after returning to Indiana, during which time he had a short apprenticeship with Wright at Taliesin in 1946, studied with Mies van der Rohe and graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1948. He began working with Naess & Murphy in 1948.

Manny at the J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. Building dedication ceremony in 1968.
Courtesy Geisen Funeral Homes Manny at the J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. Building dedication ceremony in 1968.

Manny was the C.F. Murphy & Associates project engineer for the O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. He also worked as the partner in charge of J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. Building in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated in 1975, and is currently on the chopping block as the agency seeks a new location for its headquarters. In a 1978 Chicago Tribune article on that building, architecture critic Paul Gapp wrote:

"I sometimes wish the FBI had just decided to pack up and move to Virginia or someplace, as the CIA did," Manny said recently. "That would have made things a lot simpler." It took four years to design the FBI structure and another eight years to build it because of congressional appropriation delays. The originally estimated cost of $60 million rose to $126.1 million.

As news circulated of his death, remembrances were posted online:

The Graham Foundation posted the following statement on their website today:

The Graham Foundation is sad to lose an important member of our family: Carter H. Manny, Jr. (November 16, 1918–February 1, 2017). Mr. Manny served the foundation since its inception in 1956, first as a trustee, then as the director from 1971, and after his retirement in 1993, as director emeritus.

During his long service as director, Mr. Manny oversaw the award of more than $10,000,000 to over 1200 projects, to support publications, exhibitions, and research by individuals and organizations across the United States and abroad. He also oversaw a robust public program of talks, symposiums, and exhibitions by architects and scholars from around the world at the Foundation’s Madlener House in Chicago.

Since 1996, every year the Graham honors the legacy of Mr. Manny with the Carter Manny Award, one of the most prestigious awards given to doctoral students working in the field of architecture in the United States and Canada.