Joseph Urban

Urban re­cei­ved his edu­ca­tion at the Im­pe­rial and Royal Aca­demy of Fine Arts and the Po­ly­tech­ni­cum in that city and stu­died fur­ther under Baron Carl Ha­se­nauer. In 1897 he won the Kai­ser Prize for his il­lus­tra­ti­ons of Edgar Allan Poe's »The Mask of the Red Death« and later the Aus­trian State grand medal for other il­lus­tra­ti­ons. In 1901 he came to Ame­rica to de­sign the Aus­trian pa­vi­li­ons at the St. Louis Ex­po­si­tion, for which he re­cei­ved the gold medal. Upon his re­turn to Vi­enna, he tur­ned his at­ten­tion to ar­chi­tec­ture and the plas­tic arts of the thea­ter. He had gai­ned fame by his ope­ra­tic and stage set­tings be­fore re­turning to the United Sta­tes in 1911 to serve as art di­rec­tor of the Bos­ton Opera House and to make this coun­try his per­ma­nent home. Many of the Zieg­feld pro­duc­tions in New York were de­si­gned by him. His par­ti­cu­lar mas­tery in the use of ma­te­ri­als, forms, and co­lors made him in­ter­na­tio­nally re­co­gni­zed as the grea­test sce­nic de­si­gner li­ving. As an ar­chi­tect, he was a dar­ing de­si­gner, bound by no tra­di­tion and no school. In 1933 he was awar­ded the an­nual gold medal of the Ar­chi­tec­tu­ral Le­ague of New York for his stage set­tings for a re­li­gious pa­ge­ant. Among his most ce­le­bra­ted works ab­road were the in­te­rior of the mu­ni­ci­pal buil­ding in Vi­enna, the Czar Bridge across the Neva River in Le­nin­grad, the Pa­lace of the Khe­dive of Egypt, and the Schloss of Count Carl Es­ter­hazy near Press­burg in Hun­gary. He de­si­gned many buil­dings in the United Sta­tes and cli­ma­xed his ca­reer with the color tre­at­ment for the ent­ire Cen­tury of Pro­gress Ex­po­si­tion in Chi­cago. He died wi­thout ha­ving seen the re­sults of his work.