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Seabee Experience Leads to Architectural Greatness

Seabee Experience Leads to Architectural Greatness

February 26, 2016

by CEC/Seabee Historical Foundation

Bruce Alonzo Goff was an American architect, distinguished by his organic, eclectic, and often flamboyant designs for houses and other buildings. A 1951 Life Magazine article stated that Goff was “one of the few US architects whom Frank Lloyd Wright considers creative…scorns houses that are ‘boxes with little holes’.”

Before rising to architectural fame, Goff was a Seabee. He joined the armed forces as a Seabee in World War II, and traveled to California, Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Because building materials were scarce, he created barracks, chapels, and mess halls using simple military material. He seemed to find the purely utilitarian supplies liberating, fabricating Quonset huts into exercises in geometry beyond the bare bones of the structures.

Goff was one of the most creative American architects of the 20th Century with more than one hundred structures in over fifteen states. ‪#‎24for24‬

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1 Comment
  1. I would like to learn more about what Bruce Goff did in building in Alaska. My father is a cousin, and I am doing family history. At the present I have friends who were Seabees in WWII.
    Where could I research about Bruce Goff as a Seabee. Are there pictures of what was built?

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