{"id":887508,"date":"2026-06-23T16:13:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/887508\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T16:13:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:13:14","slug":"dallas-city-hall-is-in-jeopardy-but-i-m-peis-archive-is-preserved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/887508\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas City Hall is in jeopardy, but I.M. Pei\u2019s archive is preserved"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Dallas is debating the future of I.M. Pei\u2019s City Hall<\/a>, the architect\u2019s archive has found a home where it will be kept intact for posterity. That place is the MIT Museum, on the campus of Pei\u2019s undergraduate alma mater, in Cambridge, Mass.<\/p>\n

The collection includes some 1,500 rolls of architectural drawings, 50 architectural models and a virtual mountain of correspondence and ephemera. Among those items are drawings and materials documenting the design and construction of City Hall and the Meyerson Symphony Center. The collection was acquired from Pei\u2019s former firm, New York-based Pei Cobb Freed & Partners<\/a>, with the support of an anonymous\u00a0funder.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It brings me immense joy to know that my father’s archive will find its home at MIT \u2014 the place that launched his architectural path and later entrusted him with four important commissions on its campus,\u201d says Pei\u2019s architect son, Li Chung “Sandi” Pei. \u201cIt is deeply fitting that the record of his life’s work is returning to the institution where it first took shape.”<\/p>\n

Pei, who died in 2019<\/a>\u00a0at the age of 102, received his undergraduate degree from\u00a0MIT in 1940, and designed four buildings on the school\u2019s campus, among them the 1962 Green Building, an immaculate concrete tower named for Cecil Green, one of the founders of Dallas-based Texas Instruments. That project helped lay the groundwork for Dallas City Hall, commissioned under the mayoralty of J. Erik Jonsson, another Texas Instruments founder.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPei\u2019s connection with MIT runs so deep,\u201d says Michael John Gorman, the MIT Museum<\/a>\u2019s director. \u201cPei is the most important architect to emerge from MIT so I think it’s a logical home for his archive, and I’m very excited about the discoveries that will be made with all of this material.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Pei archive will augment the museum\u2019s considerable architectural collection, which includes a staggering 50 tons of architectural drawings. It is also home to the archive of The Architects Collaborative (TAC), the firm established by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. The museum\u2019s aim is to have the Pei archive processed over the next two years, after which it will be made accessible to the public. For Pei,\u00a0an architect for whom scholarly interest has lagged behind commercial and popular success, it promises new revelations and ways of understanding his work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The threatened state of Dallas City Hall<\/a>\u00a0has inevitably captured the museum\u2019s attention, with\u00a0Gorman describing it as \u201ca situation of grave concern.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Securing the future of Pei\u2019s archive is a significant achievement, but no substitute for his actual buildings,\u00a0in Dallas and elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Dallas is debating the future of I.M. Pei\u2019s City Hall, the architect\u2019s archive has found a home…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":887509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,358,326036,290170,290169,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-887508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-america","tag-dallas","tag-texas","tag-tp-dallas-city-hall","tag-tp-architecture","tag-tp-dallas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116800310943147815","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}