About Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger, one of the nation’s most eminent writers in the field of architecture, design and urbanism, has been the architecture critic at The New Yorker magazine since July, 1997. As The New Yorker’s architecture critic, he continues the magazine’s celebrated “Sky Line” column, a position once held by Lewis Mumford and more recently by Brendan Gill. He is the author of several books, including the text for The World Trade Center Remembered, which has just been published by Abbeville Press, and Manhattan Unfurled, just published by Random House. He is now at work on a book that will tell the story of the redevelopment of the site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, to be published by Random House in 2003, and he is also writing a book on the experience of looking at architecture.
He joined Conde Nast, which publishes both The New Yorker, in July of 1997, following a 25-year career at The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his architecture criticism, the highest award in journalism. He joined the staff of The Times in 1972, and was named architecture critic in 1973. In 1990 he was named cultural news editor of The Times, and in 1994 he became the paper’s chief cultural correspondent.
He lectures widely around the country on the subject of architecture, design, historic preservation and cities, and for several years taught architecture criticism at the Yale School of Architecture. He has also served as a special consultant to several major cultural and educational institutions, including the Morgan Library in New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh and the Ross Institute in East Hampton, New York, organizing and directing the process of selecting an architect.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his writing has received numerous awards including the President’s Medal of the Municipal Art Society of New York, the medal of the American Institute of Architects, and the Medal of Honor of the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation, awarded in recognition of what the Foundation called “the nation’s most balanced, penetrating and poetic analyses of architecture and design.” He has also received the Roger Starr Journalism Award from the Citizens Housing and Planning Council; the Award of Merit of the Lotos Club, presented to writers of distinction; and in 1993 was named a Literary Lion, the New York Public Library’s tribute to distinguished writers. In May, 1996, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani presented him with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission’s Preservation Achievement Award in recognition of the impact of his writing on historic preservation in New York.
Paul Goldberger graduated in 1972 from Yale University, where he studied architectural history with Vincent Scully. He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees by Pratt Institute in New York, the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit and the New York School of Interior Design for his work as a critic and cultural commentator on architecture urban design. He appears frequently on film and television to discuss art, architecture, and cities, most recently in Ken Burns’s film for public television on Frank Lloyd Wright, in the PBS series “Building Big,” and a program broadcast in the spring of 2002 on The Learning Channel entitled “Super Structures,” for which he acted as on-camera host. Among his earlier books are the classic “The City Observed: New York: An Architectural Guide to Manhattan,” “The Skyscraper,” “On the Rise: Architecture and Design in a Post-Modern Age,” and “Above New York.”
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in New York and of the Board of Governors of Parsons School of Design. He is also President of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, an organization which supports more than 1,700 aged and needy Christians around the world who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. He and his wife, Susan Solomon, are the parents of three sons, Adam, Ben and Alex. They live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.