Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn was born in 1901 in what is now Estonia, came to Philadelphia as a child, and spent his career there. He taught at Yale and then at the University of Pennsylvania, and his heavy, silent buildings of concrete, brick and light led some, by the end of his life, to call him America's foremost living architect. He died in 1974 after collapsing in Pennsylvania Station in New York, alone, on his way home.

Yale holds his first major work and his last. The Yale University Art Gallery of 1953 was his first great building, and it is free. Directly across Chapel Street, the Yale Center for British Art opened after his death; go up to the top floor on a bright day, when daylight comes down through the skylights onto the paintings. At Penn, where he taught for twenty years, our walk passes Frank Furness's fine arts library, a building he loved and defended when the university wanted to tear it down.