Wallace Kirkman Harrison (September 28, 1895 – December 2, 1981) was an American architect. Harrison started his professional career with the firm of Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, participating in the construction of Rockefeller Center. He is best known for executing large public projects in New York City and upstate, many of them a result of his long and fruitful personal relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, for whom he served as an adviser.<ref>Caroline Rob Zaleski, Long Island Modernism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2012): Pg. 27</ref>
Harrison's work in the mid-20th century comprised large, modernist public projects and office buildings. He worked for McKim, Mead & White and Bertram Grovesnor Goodhue from 1916 to 1923, and later formed a series of architectural partnerships. Harrison participated with the architectural teams involved in the construction of Rockefeller Center in New York City, completed in 1939. His brother-in-law was married to John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s daughter, Abigail<ref>Icons of American Architecture: From the Alamo to the World Trade Center By Donald Langmead</ref> and Harrison served as a designer and architectural adviser for Nelson Rockefeller, notably in the years when Rockefeller was governor of New York.
In 1941, Harrison joined with Max Abramowitz to form the firm of Harrison & Abramowitz. In partnership with Abramovitz, Harrison designed scores of university and corporate buildings, including the Time & Life (1959) and Socony-Mobil (1956), both designated New York City landmarks.<ref name="Caroline Rob Zaleski 2012 Pg. 26">Caroline Rob Zaleski, Long Island Modernism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2012): Pg. 26</ref>
Among Harrison's most noted projects are the Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York. He also served as Director of Planning on the United Nations complex, which was built on slaughter house property contributed by the Rockefeller family (the Rockefellers owned the Tudor City Apartments across First Avenue). Harrision developed the design for the Pershing Memorial in Washington, D.C., which is now home to the National World War I Memorial.<ref>Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p. 545.</ref> In addition to his architectural work, Harrison served as master planner and supervising architect for a number of important Long Island-based projects, including the World's Fairs of 1939 and 1964 in Flushing, Queens, and LaGuardia and Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy) airports.<ref name="Caroline Rob Zaleski 2012 Pg. 26"/>
Harrison's major projects are marked by straightforward planning and sensible functionalism, although his residential side-projects show more experimental flair. In 1931, Harrison established an Template:Convertsummer retreat in West Hills, New York, which was a very early example and workshop for the International Style in the United States, and a social and intellectual center of architecture, art, and politics. The home includes a Template:Convert circular living room that is rumored to have been the prototype for the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. Two other circular rooms complete the center of Harrison's design. Frequent visitors and guests included Nelson Rockefeller, Robert Moses, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Alexander Calder, and Fernand Léger. Harrison's expansive country property also exhibited his relationships with contemporary architects. For example, shortly after purchasing the property in 1931, Harrison and his wife bought the Aluminaire House, an iconic, compact, ready-to-assemble steel-and-aluminum structure designed by Swiss architect Albert Frey and then editor of Architectural Record, A. Lawrence Kocher.<ref>Caroline Rob Zaleski, Long Island Modernism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2012): Pg. 29</ref>
Between 1941 and 1943, Harrison designed and built the Clinton Hill Coops, a 12-building coop complex split between two campuses along Clinton Ave. in Brooklyn, to house the Brooklyn Navy Yards workers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Harrison was a member of the United States Commission of Fine Arts from 1955 to 1959. In 1967, Harrison received the AIA Gold Medal.<ref>Luebke, Civic Art; Richard Guy Wilson, The AIA Gold Medal (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984).</ref> In 1938, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1948.
