Alden B. Dow

Alden B. Dow (1904 to 1983) was an American architect based in Midland, Michigan, and the son of Dow Chemical founder Herbert Dow. He trained in engineering at the University of Michigan, took his architecture degree at Columbia University in 1931, and spent the summer of 1933 studying with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin before opening his own studio in 1934. Over a career of more than thirty years he designed upward of seventy residences and many churches, schools, civic and art centers and commercial buildings, mostly in Michigan, and he is remembered for the Michigan Modern idiom. His own house and studio in Midland became a National Historic Landmark in 1989. In 1942 he laid out the company town of Lake Jackson, Texas, with deliberately winding streets, and in 1983 he was named Michigan's architect laureate.