Education
George Nelson graduated from Hartford Public High school in 1924, thereafter attending Yale University. Nelson did not originally set out to become an architect. He happened upon the architecture school at Yale because of a rain storm, ducking into the building in order to get out of the rain. Walking through the building, he came upon an exhibit of students' works entitled "A Cemetery Gateway". Nelson met with some early recognition while still an undergraduate, being published in "Pencil Points" and "Architecture" magazine. He graduated with a degree in architecture in 1928. During his final year at Yale Nelson was hired by the architecture firm Adams and Prentice as a drafter.
In 1929 Nelson was hired as a Teacher's Assistant while getting his second Bachelor's degree at Yale. He received a degree in Fine Arts in 1931. The next year, while preparing for the Paris Prize competition, he won the Rome Prize. The award for the Rome Prize was a year in Rome studying architecture with a healthy stipend and accommodations in a palace in downtown Rome.
Based in Rome, Nelson traveled through Europe, where he met a number of the modernist pioneers, whom he interviewed for articles for Pencil Points magazine. While interviewing Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe Van Der Rohe asked about Frank Lloyd Wright whom Nelson was embarrassed to say, he did not know much about. Years later he would work with Wright on a special issue of "Architecture Forum" which would come to be Wright's comeback from relative obscurity. While in Rome Nelson married Frances Hollister. A few years later he returned to the United States to devote himself to writing. Through his articles in Pencil Points he introduced the work of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Gio Ponti to North America.
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