Joseph A. Connell Architect 1923 - 2017

Joseph A. Connell (1923 -2017) was a modernist architect and artist based in Corning, N.Y. Connell was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. and began his education at Straubenmuller Textile High School in N.Y.C. After graduation, he worked at Harrison, Fouiloux & Abramovitz, the designers the United Nations headquarters.

When the U.S. entered World War II, Connell joined the US Army Air Force. At the end of the war, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to enroll in the architecture program at Washington University in St. Louis, earning a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1952. By 1956 he had settled in Corning, N.Y. with his young family, and shortly thereafter started his own firm. As a young architect he brought a modernist aesthetic to a small upstate town that was thriving on the robust post-war economy. Drawing by hand was integral to his architectural practice. If architecture was his vocation, art remained his avocation as it had since he began sketching and painting at age sixteen.