Victor Christ-Janer papers

Victor Christ-Janer was born in Minnesota in 1915. He built his practice in New Canaan, Connecticut, which was an epicenter of architectural modernism and home to a host of distinguished architects in the 1940s – among them Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, and Eliot Noyes. Throughout his life, Christ-Janer maintained his practice as an artist, an inventor, and a supporter of humanitarian causes. He worked on developing building materials resistant to natural calamities such as earthquakes, cyclones, and hurricanes and, alongside his career as an architect, he was a sculptor, an art conservationist, a conservator of open space, a writer, a lecturer, and a teacher. He delivered Danforth Lectures on topics in theology and culture and taught architectural design at Columbia and Yale Universities.

Christ-Janer served in the United States Army during World War II, with conscientious objector status, as a camouflage artist and in Army intelligence. In 1941-1942, he worked under Nelson Rockefeller at the Office of Inter-American Affairs, who recruited him to serve as the Office’s chief graphic designer. He studied art at both St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, and at Yale (B.F.A, 1940, B.Arch. 1947).

He founded his firm, Victor Christ-Janer and Associates, in the heart of New Canaan, where it would remain until his death in 2008. The firm functioned at times as both an architectural office and art gallery. Christ-Janer designed many modern residences in and around New Canaan, including his own house, which was constructed between 1949 and 1952 (demolished 2013). The firm designed a variety of other building types, including offices and stores, and was known especially for the design of religious architecture, college buildings, and campus plans. During the design of the Mount Equinox Monastery in Arlington, Vermont, Christ-Janer lived among the Carthusian Order in France. Following his design of the Lincoln Commons Building at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, he was recognized in 1961 with an Award of Merit from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In 1967, his work at Lake Erie College on the James F. Lincoln Library was also recognized with an AIA-sponsored R.S. Reynolds Award.