David Haid » Architects + More

David Haid was an architect who worked with and was influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and A James Speyer. Haid’s own home in Evanston was an award-winning house built in 1968.

“That house is so clear, so livable,” said Jacques Brownson, a longtime Chicago architect and designer of the Daley Center. “I think David was one of the more important architects in Chicago.

“Anything we build should not be for the sake of fashion or it will be dated,” Mr. Haid said in a Tribune article on his home in 1982. “I think that a good building will always stand the test of time. This house, I would like to think, will still be a delight 100 years from now.”

Born in Winnipeg, where he worked as an apprentice cabinetmaker, Mr. Haid came to Chicago in 1951 to study at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where Mies van der Rohe was head of the architecture department. That year, Mr. Haid joined Mies’ office, where he worked for 9 years.

In 1960, he moved to Houston, where he designed apartments, office towers and the Houston Art Museum. In 1963, he founded David Haid & Associates

Mr. Haid’s commissions in the Chicago area included the Dyett Middle School in Washington Park, the Abraham Lincoln Oasis on the Tri-State Tollway in South Holland, a bank in north Evanston, an industrial plant in Wheaton, six floors of law offices for Jenner & Block in the IBM Building and the Rose Pavilion in Highland Park, a glass studio over a ravine that was smashed and later repaired under Mr. Haid’s supervision for the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

Several years ago, Mr. Haid donated his project records, including 2,705 drawings and 444 photographs, to the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal.

Taken from Jon Anderson’s obituary for the Chicago Tribune, March 13, 1993