Editing Lee Lawrie (section)

==Early work==
[[Image:St. Thomas Church Detail.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1|Reredos of Saint Thomas Church, at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street in New York City]]  
Lee Lawrie was born in [[Rixdorf]], Germany, in 1877 and immigrated to the United States in 1882 as a young child with his family; they settled in [[Chicago]]. It was there, at the age of 14, that he began working for the sculptor [[Richard Henry Park]].

At the age of 15, in 1892 Lawrie worked as an assistant to many of the sculptors in [[Chicago, Illinois|Chicago]], for their part in constructing the "White City" for the [[World's Columbian Exposition|World's Columbian Exposition of 1893]].  Following the completion of that work, Lawrie went East, where he became an assistant to [[William Ordway Partridge]].  During the next decade, he worked with other established sculptors: [[Augustus Saint-Gaudens]], [[Philip Martiny]], [[Alexander Phimister Proctor]], [[John William Kitson]] and others.  His work at the [[Louisiana Purchase Exposition|Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St Louis, 1904]], under [[Karl Bitter]], the foremost architectural sculptor of the time, allowed Lawrie to develop both his skills and his reputation as an architectural sculptor.

Lawrie received a bachelor's degree in fine arts from [[Yale University]] in 1910.  He was an instructor in Yale's School of Fine Arts from 1908 to 1919 and taught in the architecture program at [[Harvard University]] from 1910 to 1912.<ref>''Civic Art:  A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts''</ref>