Gerald Lee Morosco Architects, PC
President
CLASS OF 1981
Gerald Lee Morosco is an architect, author, and lecturer of national reputation who serves currently as chairman of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Drawn to Washington & Jefferson College in the footsteps of his father, Dr. Samuel G. Morosco '56, he began his studies an English major. In his junior year, recognizing Morosco's interest and aptitude in architecture, Professors Hugh Taylor and Bill Keen, encouraged him to add an additional major course of study in art in anticipation of pursuing architecture in graduate school. Double majors were not common then, so Morosco's professors petitioned the faculty to allow him to pick up a second major in his junior year. By doubling up on classes and taking summer and night classes, he accomplished the difficult task, graduating cum laude and with honors in art. It is no wonder that Morosco remembers W&J as a college with supportive faculty.
After graduation, Morosco pursued his education as an architect by way of traditional apprenticeship at Frank Lloyd Wright's landmark estates at Taliesin near Spring Green, Wisconsin, and at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he lived and worked with many who knew and studied directly under the master, including Wright's widow, Olgivanna.
Morosco relocated to Pittsburgh in 1986 to pursue his interest in historic preservation, establishing his architectural practice in 1989. For more than 20 years, he has worked to preserve the architectural heritage of Pittsburgh's South Side while also gaining national recognition for the craft and beauty of his sophisticated residential designs, his restoration of historic structures, and especially through the house he built for himself in Pittsburgh, which has been featured on the Home and Garden Network and won numerous architectural awards. His projects have also been featured in Metropolitan Home, Inspired House, Old House Journal, Old House Interiors, and Style 1900 as well as other magazines and periodicals. The recipient of many awards, he is the youngest individual to be nominated for the Otto Haas Award, Pennsylvania's highest preservation honor.
Now in its third printing, Morosco's bestselling first book, How to Work with an Architect, was published in May 2006. The release of his second book, Reinventing the Rowhouse is anticipated in 2008.
