Brooks Stevens - Background and Personal Life

Background and Personal Life

Stevens was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 7, 1911. Stricken with polio as a child, Stevens was encouraged by his father to practice drawing while confined to his bed, perhaps motivating his career in design. He studied architecture at Cornell University from 1929 to 1933, and established his own home furnishings design firm in 1934 in Milwaukee. His son, Kipp Stevens, ran the Brooks Stevens Design Associates until late 2008 when he stepped down.

In 1959, Brooks opened a 12,500sf automotive museum in Mequon, Wisconsin, which became a repository for his own designs as well as others—and became a production facility in the late 1980s for the Wienermobile fleet. The museum closed in 1999, four years after his death.

Brooks Stevens died on January 4, 1995, in Milwaukee—survived by his wife Alice, sons Kipp, William and David, a daughter Sandra A. Stevens, and five grandchildren.

Read more about this topic:  Brooks Stevens

Famous quotes containing the words personal life, background and, background, personal and/or life:

    Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters “woman’s peculiar sphere,” her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.
    Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)

    I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions .... You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you’re not going to change each other’s minds. It’s a waste of your time and my time.
    Barbara Bush (b. 1925)

    The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better.... Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.
    Václav Havel (b. 1936)