Resurrecting LeeLawrie.com
Founded in 2008, LeeLawrie.com is the sole compendium documenting Lee Lawrie’s life and work. Over the years, the site has suffered from my limited knowledge of Information Technology. I have endeavored to build and expand the website. The result was a mish-mash of different categories of content and various platforms such as straight HTML, DreamWeaver, Muse, WordPress and even a “Website in a Box,” all of which were supposedly so easy a chimpanzee could build websites with them. They weren’t.
As summer gave way to fall 2023, I finally wised up, admitted that I was incompetent as a webmaster and I hired a professional to bail me out; to stop beating the dead horse that my site had become. It was the wisest decision I ever made. She is professional and has the KSAs to rebuild the website and to build it back better than it was before.
LEE WHO?
To begin with, let us examine just why this site exists.
While Lee Lawrie was the contemporary of artists like Picasso, Thomas Hart Benton, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Georgia O’Keefe, Edward Hopper, and all of the other artists that became famous in the 1920s and 1930s, he never garnered the recognition that these popular artists did.
Lawrie stated that his life was no more interesting than that of a grocer. He also said that in his role in creating sculpture for buildings, he was no more important than “a fiddler in an orchestra.” That is, he never felt superior to the masons, plumbers, electricians or tile-setters who all worked together on buildings.
While he was revered as the “go-to guy” by architects and builders, outside of these trades, he was practically unheard of.
As a result, he “flew under the radar” of most academics, art- and architecture historians.
LeeLawrie.com is where I share my knowledge of the long-forgotten, or never-known 20th Century Architectural Sculptor, Lee Oskar Lawrie.
How we got here
Since 2000, when I first “discovered” Lawrie and his works, I have traveled to many sites where his art is found, and where his archives exist. To date, I have conducted primary research, photographed and documented his works in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baton Rouge, Lincoln, Omaha and Syracuse, Nebraska, Los Angeles, and Pasadena, California, Bloomfield Hills and Detroit, Michigan.
Recently, I conducted additional research at Lawrie’s archives at the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress. In doing so, I managed to examine boxes 31 through 45 in which his documents supporting his sculptural commissions are stored.
Since 2008, LeeLawrie.com has been the only website focused on Lawrie’s life and work. As one individual I have had to overcome many challenges, keeping the website afloat, and working properly. Over the past two years, illness intervened and prevented me from keeping the site up-to-date and functioning properly. I needed help, so I hired a professional web designer to create a fresh, new website that people will enjoy visiting. So here we are.
It has become necessary to throw out the old site and re-assemble the content to present in a more user-friendly and search engine compatible fashion.
Mission Statement The mission(s) of this site are:
To educate the world about the life and work of Lee Lawrie.
Unlike most modern artists (Andy Warhol or Jean-Michel Basquiat,) Lawrie never sought to be a celebrity. He was humble to a fault and never really “blew his own horn.”
While on occasion, Lawrie created some free-standing statues, and a number of medals, his work is found on buildings across North America and beyond.
As such, it is impossible to gather it all in a bricks and mortar museum.
The site is, therefore, intended to serve as a virtual museum of Lawrie’s gargantuan body of work consolidating it all into a single online location that never closes.
To establish connections to scholars around the world, by introducing his work to new audiences, and to be able to serve as your consultant regarding Lawrie’s life and work.
To sell copies of my book.
While Lawrie’s sculpture can be found nationwide and beyond, there is no real connection among those places that host his work. While Nebraskans may be aware of his work on their state capitol (which was his largest commission in his 70 year career) few if any are aware of his work in New York City or in Los Angeles. And the reverse is true as well; that few people in either New York or Los Angeles are aware of any of Lawrie’s work in Nebraska.
And this phenomenon is not unique. People in Baton Rouge, are probably oblivious to his work in Philadelphia or Lake Wales, Florida.
In essence, no one in City A, is aware of all of his work in Cities B, C, D, or City E. But they all share one thread of connectivity: that they are all individual homes to Lawrie’ work.
What is LeeLawrie.com?
In establishing this website, I have endeavored to share the results of more than two decades of research on all things Lawrie.
Lawrie was astonishingly prolific. His works span North America and beyond. I have personally visited as many sites as I could, in photographic and research expeditions, the fruits of which, I will be displaying here.
Since LeeLawrie.com solely managed by myself, I do all I can to expand the collective knowledge of all of Lawrie’s works and to “show and tell” about his art. This site will continue to evolve as time passes.
What’s next?
A Primary goal of this site is to consolidate my energy into a single place and focus my efforts to assemble the words and pictures that will eventually fill my next three books.
These books will be:
“Passing Torches: Lee Lawrie’s Art Deco Sculpture at the Los Angeles Public Library;
An Encyclopedia identifying all of Lawrie’s Commissions(an inventory and,
Lawrie’s long-lost autobiography with analysis, illustrations and commentary
When I wrote Lee Lawrie’s Prairie Deco: History in Stone at the Nebraska State Capitol, it was the first book written about Lee Lawrie alone, since 1955, when the University of Georgia Press published a monograph about him.
Other than my book, there are no others that focus solely on him and his work. When I began my study of Lawrie in 2000, there were no books about him and even fewer mentions of him in any trade books on sculpture.
My study of Lawrie’s life and work has made me the premier subject matter expert on him and his work. Over the years, whenever his name has come up, such as when a long-lost bronze-semicircle, formerly known as half of the Well of Scribes” was discovered in an antique shop in Bisbee, AZ, my phone rang and I answered questions about its origin story and its symbolism.
Among the fruits of my research are the discovery of Lawrie’s first commission; a statue he crafted of a priest in Amsterdam, NY, in 1897. For decades, it was thought that his first commission was in 1900 for figures on the Dorothy Sayles Memorial Library, in Providence, RI.
Another of my significant original findings is that his commission in Nebraska, creating sculpture for the State Capitol was his largest. He worked on it from 1921 when the Capitol’s design competition was held, until the carving was completed in November 1934.
Finally, it is with some pride that I state that I have expanded the Smithsonian’s Catalog of American Painting and Sculptures by adding some 25 pieces to the 75 that were there beforehand.
Stay tuned for what is planned to become at least a monthly, or bimonthly blog.
Any questions? Email me at lawriescholar@gmail.com