Eugene Sternberg

Eugene Sternberg
Eugene Sternberg – ca. 1990
Born	Eugene Sternberg (1915-01-15)January 15, 1915 Bratislava, Austria-Hungary
Died	June 5, 2005(2005-06-05) (aged 90) Evergreen, Colorado, U.S.

Eugene Sternberg (January 15, 1915 – June 5, 2005) was a Czech-born American architect known for his passionate commitment and contribution to contemporary/modernist architecture and town planning in Colorado and other Rocky Mountain states between 1950 and 1990. He designed over 400 building projects and subdivisions, many of them iconic examples of Modernist architecture. Since his focus was on improving the quality of life of the general population, the structures he built were beautiful, useful, and cost-effective. Most of his projects were in the category of social architecture: affordable homes, senior housing projects, public housing, hospitals, medical clinics, public schools, community colleges, community centers, churches, buildings for credit unions, labor unions, and headquarters offices for Rural Electric Associations. As a planner Sternberg designed a number of innovative housing subdivisions and master plans for college campuses, governmental complexes, county fairgrounds, and a number of small western cities.

Sternberg was born during World War I in Bratislava, where his family had moved to be with his father while he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. When the war, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ended in 1918, the family returned to their home in Munkacs in the province of Ruthenia; in 1920 it became part of the newly created 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.