Lieutenant Holabird was a close friend of the late Lieutenant Carl Mauro of E Company. They met while on the ship to North Africa. Both joined the 504th Regimental Combat Team on the Anzio Beachhead.


Chicago architect John A. Holabird Jr., a living link to a family dynasty of architects that shaped some of the city’s renowned early skyscrapers and such Art Deco landmarks as the Chicago Board of Trade, died Monday, February 16, in Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
At the end of a life that encompassed wartime parachuting, teaching drama and stints at television set design, Mr. Holabird, 88 years old, had a series of health problems including intestinal cancer, said his wife Janet.
Mr. Holabird’s grandfather, William Holabird, established his firm in 1880 as Chicago was about to undergo a building boom that would revolutionize the construction of tall buildings with internal cages of steel rather than load-bearing exterior walls.
Renamed Holabird and Roche in 1883, the firm designed such significant early skyscrapers as the Marquette Building at 140 S. Dearborn St., a robust “Chicago School” high-rise which handsomely expresses its underlying structure.

After World War I, the firm was reestablished as Holabird & Root and was led by Mr. Holabird’s father, John. It shaped such Art Deco gems as the Palmolive Building, the Board of Trade and 333 N. Michigan. Still in operation, it is one of Chicago's oldest architectural firms.
“John lived long enough that his earliest memories were of his grandfather all the way through the present,” said University of Illinois at Chicago architectural historian Robert Bruegmann, the author of books and an illustrated catalog about both firms. “This is an amazing thing in American architecture. There are very few firms that have had anything like this continuity. He was absolutely a link to the past.”
Born in Chicago in 1920, Mr. Holabird graduated from Chicago’s Francis W. Parker School in 1938 and received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1942.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army, including parachute duty, and was awarded a Silver Star for his role in a dangerous attack on a German-held bridge in Holland.
In broad daylight, facing German guns, Mr. Holabird and other soldiers paddled boats across a river to reach the bridge, which was taken that night, he later recalled. The episode was immortalized in the 1977 movie, “A Bridge Too Far.”
“Robert Redford played a combination of me and several other officers in the movie,” Mr. Holabird said in an oral history compiled by The Art Institute of Chicago. “We all had had some paddling experience, and I think we got across before they had a good target.”

After the war, Mr. Holabird returned to Harvard, where the architect I.M. Pei was one of his teachers. He received a master of architecture degree in 1948, then set off on an unusual career trajectory. It included teaching drama at the Parker School and work as a set designer for CBS and NBC in the mid-1950s. Eventually, Mr. Holabird joined Holabird & Root, becoming a partner in 1970. He retired in 1987.
“His role was somewhat more of a duty than a calling,” Bruegmann said. “Architecture wasn’t what he intended to do.”
As a young architect at Holabird & Root, said James Baird, now a principal at the firm, Mr. Holabird contributed to the design of the main pavilion at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park. He later directed a range of projects, including such solid, well-received works of architecture as the University of Chicago’s Kersten Physics Teaching Center and the now-demolished Stateway Gardens public housing project. His portfolio included mentoring younger architects, such as Carol Ross Barney, who now has her own firm.
"He was in a position where he could have been almost inaccessible, but he was one of the most accessible people in the office," Baird said.
Mr. Holabird was also active in civic affairs, serving on the Chicago Commission on Historical and Architectural Landmarks from 1981 to 1985. He was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1974. In 2007, the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects presented Mr. Holabird with a lifetime achievement award and produced the film, “John Holabird: A Lifetime of Service.”
Mr. Holabird was divorced from his first wife, Donna. His second wife, Marcia, died in 1994.
He is also survived by five daughters—Jean, Polly, Ann and Lynn Holabird, and Katharine Haggiag —and three grandchildren. His daughter Lisa died in 1970. Another survivor is his brother Christopher, who lives in Los Angeles.
A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. on March 20 at Crown Hall, 3360 S. State St., at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

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