Daniel Brenner

In Bloomington Daniel Brenner collaborated with Mies van der Rohe on the design for a fraternity house that was never built, but which inspired the Mies van der Rohe Building.

The following bio sketch is from the Daniel Brenner (1917-1977) Papers in the Ryerson and Burnham Archives at The Art Institute of Chicago.

'Daniel Brenner (1917-1977) was born in New York City, and received a B.Arch. degree from Columbia University in 1939. After graduation, Brenner began his architectural career in the New York City office of Alfred Easton Poor. Some years later, during the early to mid 1940s, Brenner embarked on a nearly year-long journey through Central and South America that eventually took him to the Instituto Allende in San Miguel Allende, Mexico. While at the Instituto, Brenner met Charles Worley and Charles 'Skip' Genther, who had studied under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Intrigued by the problems and concepts that Mies van der Rohe used in his teaching, Brenner moved to Chicago and received his M.S. in Architecture from IIT under Mies van der Rohe's tutelage in 1949. By the early 1950s, Brenner joined Jacques Brownson, William Dunlap, and Reginald Malcolmson as junior faculty at IIT. From 1958 to 1961, Brenner practiced with Dorothy Turck, whose office was at 646 Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Subsequently, Brenner joined George Danforth and H.P. Davis 'Deever' Rockwell in founding the architectural firm of Brenner, Danforth and Rockwell in 1961. Brenner's best-known projects include the National Design Center at Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City, the Great Ape House and Education Administration Building at the Lincoln Park Zoo, and the renovation of the Madlener House for the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts--all in Chicago--as well an addition to the J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. Brenner was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1968. He died in Chicago in 1977.'