"Gropius," he would say by way of introducing himself, which often left the other person fumbling momentarily for the master builder's first names. It should have come as easily as Frank Lloyd.
But where Wright designed soaring, poetic buildings that smote the eye and branded their creator's name in the memory, Walter Adolf Gropius was cogent.
He was modern architecture's idea-giver, analytical thinker and greatest educator. Professionally active and alert to the end of his 86 years, he died in Boston of complications following heart surgery. There was no funeral in the...