Eugene Sternberg - Early Years

Early Years

Sternberg was born in the middle of the First World War in Bratislava, where his family had moved to be with his father as he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. When the war, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ended in 1918, the family moved back to their home in Munkacs in the province of Ruthenia, which in 1920 became part of the new country of Czechoslovakia.

During his elementary and high school education. Sternberg's major passion was art. He developed into an accomplished young artist and won a coveted place to study architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague. In the summers he worked for two architectural firms in Munkacs and for a well-known Czech architect, Frantisek Libra, in Prague. In 1938, he earned a first degree in architecture/engineering. Adolf Hitler's Germany occupied Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Because Sternberg was offered a scholarship to the University of London's Bartlett School of Architecture he was fortunate to leave Czechoslovakia in 1939, the only one of his large Jewish family to be able to do so.

After World War II broke out in September 1939, the Bartlett School was evacuated to Cambridge where Sternberg studied from 1939 to 1944, completing his architectural qualifications and a graduate degree in town planning. His mentor in town planning was Sir Patrick Abercrombie who was, at that time, Britain's busiest and most imaginative planner.

After graduation, Sternberg was invited to join Abercrombie's firm in London, where he worked mainly on planning new neighborhoods to replace the housing destroyed by German bombing. Sternberg also taught part-time at Cambridge University, the University of London and the Regent Street Polytechnic. As the war drew to an end, Sternberg and Barbara Edwards, his British fiancée, decided to emigrate to the United States. To accomplish this, they each had to secure a job in the U.S. Sternberg received a three-year contract to teach city planning at Cornell University. Barbara secured a position at the British Information Services in Manhattan. Gene and Barbara were married in Ithaca, New York in the fall of 1946. Sternberg soon became dissatisfied with the general lack of creative activity in Cornell's architectural and planning departments, and was particularly disappointed when he found that full-time faculty members were forbidden to practice. He resigned from the prestigious university after three months and took on the challenges of a newcomer in an unfamiliar country, with no job and few professional contacts. Fortunately, Sternberg's background and qualifications appealed to Carl Feiss, Director of a new School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Denver, where Sternberg became Associate Professor of Design. The Sternbergs, with a six weeks old baby, took their first ever flight in August 1947 to a new home in a city and state of which they had never heard.