Baltimore Architecture Foundation

The Robert E. Lewis Memorial Lecture

The Baltimore Architecture Foundation has sponsored an annual lecture for most of its history.  The Robert E. Lewis Memorial Lecture brings an expert in the field of Architecture to our city for an evening of discussion about the built environment, be it focused on the work of an individual practitioner or an overarching topic.

The 2010 Lewis Lecture will take place on the 14th of October at the Student Center Theater on the campus of Morgan State University.  Philip Freelon, FAIA is this year’s Lewis Lecturer.  He is Principal of the Freelon Group, and part of the design group (Freelon Bond Adjaye) for the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In 2009, The Baltimore Architecture Foundation  presented Witold Rybczynski and his lecture “When Buildings Try Too Hard”

Witold Rybczynski, the Martin and Margy Myerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and architecture critic for Slate magazine is the author of more than fifty articles and papers on the subject of housing, architecture, and technology. His essays appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the New York Review of Books, he has also written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

Past lecturers have included:

Dr. Barry Bergdoll

Robert Campbell, FAIA

Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA

Samuel White

Allan Greenberg

Antoine Predock

Charles M. Gwathmey, FAIA

Eric Owen Moss, FAIA

Lebbeus Woods

Dr. Phoebe Stanton

Dr. Charles Jencks

Peter Blake

Edmund Bacon

James Rouse

Vincent Scully

Brendan Gill

The Robert E. Lewis Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the Baltimore Architecture Foundation through a gift from the family of architect Robert E. Lewis.

Robert E. Lewis (1904-1996) was a founder and principal for the architectural firm of Wrenn, Lewis, and Jencks. Active in Baltimore from 1927 until 1978. Wrenn, Lewis and Jencks designed many significant buildings in Baltimore and throughout Maryland. Beginning as residential architects in Roland Park, Guilford, and Homewood, their successful design for the Faculty Club (now the Hopkins Club) at JHU led them to expand their practice to include commercial buildings as well.

Their long standing relationship with Johns Hopkins, both the University and the Hospital gave them a steady stream of commissions, often updating buildings to reflect the Hopkins’ changing needs.

Their work also included several jobs for the Baltimore Museum of Art as well as the Maryland State House Office Building in Annapolis. They did not work in a particular style, rather their buildings tended to reference their neighborhoods always with a nod toward Classical detailing.

Most of the firms records are now housed at the State Archives in Annapolis. Mr. Lewis’s personal library and many of the firms renderings were given to the Baltimore Architecture Foundation by the Lewis family. The BAF would like to thank the Lewis family for their support and generosity in endowing the Robert E. Lewis Memorial Lecture.