{{Short description|American architect and artist}} '''Alfred Bendiner''' (23 July 1899 – 19 March 1964) was an American architect and artist, perhaps best known for his caricatures and cartoons.

==Biography== He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Hungarian immigrants Armin and Rachel Hartmann Bendiner.<ref name=PAB/> He was the second-oldest of five children, and raised in a cultured Orthodox Jewish household.<ref name=Pezzati>Alessandro Pezzati, "The Reluctant Architect: Alfred Bendiner (1899-1964)," ''The SAA Archaeological Record'', vol. 6, no. 3 (May 2006), pp. 41-43.</ref> The family moved to Philadelphia when he was a boy, where he attended public schools, and graduated from Northeast High School in 1917.<ref name=PAB>[https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/22267 Alfred Bendiner] from Philadelphia Architects and Buildings.</ref>

Bendiner won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum School,<ref name=Redwood>[https://www.redwoodlibrary.org/blog/mfarias/2017/10/13/vault-alfred-bendiner Alfred Bendiner] from Redwood Library and Athenaeum.</ref> but left after a year to enlist in the Students' Army Training Corps at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a sergeant and still stationed in Philadelphia when World War I ended in November 1918,<ref name=Translated>Alfred Bendiner, ''Translated from the Hungarian: Notes toward an Autobiography'' (South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes, 1967).</ref>{{rp|316}} but his service earned him automatic admission to Penn.<ref name=Pezzati/> He studied architecture there under Paul Philippe Cret, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1922.<ref name=PAB/>

===Architect=== thumb|Moore School of Engineering Building, 33rd & Walnut Streets, Philadelphia Following graduation, he was employed as a draftsman in the office of Stewardson & Page for a couple years, before being hired by Cret.<ref name=PAB/> Bendiner worked on major Cret projects such as the Detroit Institute of Arts (1927), the Hartford County Courthouse (1929), and the Folger Shakespeare Library (1932).<ref name=Translated/>{{rp|286}} He also did early work on three battle memorials for American military cemeteries in Europe: the Château-Thierry American Monument (1937) and the Somme American Cemetery and Memorial (1937), in France; and the Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial (1937), in Belgium.<ref name=Translated/>{{rp|204}}

While working as a Cret draftsman during the day, Bendiner completed a master's degree in architecture from Penn at night.<ref name=Translated/>{{rp|285}} Penn purchased a former piano factory at the southwest corner of 33rd & Walnut Streets to house the Moore School of Engineering. Cret's office designed alterations to the building, 1925–1926, with Bendiner as architect in charge. He took a year off to attend the American Academy in Rome, 1928–1929.<ref name=PAB/>

Bendiner left the Cret office in 1933,<ref name=PAB/> and opened his own architectural office in Philadelphia, which remained in operation until his retirement in 1961.<ref name=PAB/> Finding clients was a challenge during the Great Depression, and commissions were few and far between.<ref name=Pezzati/> Most of his completed designs during this period were alterations to houses and commercial buildings,<ref name=PAB/> and the third story addition to the Moore School (1940).<ref>[https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/pj_display_alldates.cfm/18211 Pepper Musical Instrument Factory] from Philadelphia Architects and Buildings.</ref>

===Archaeological draftsman=== The University of Pennsylvania Museum sponsored archaeological excavations at Tepe Gawra and Khafaji, Iraq, in 1937. Bendiner went along as project draftsman on the 8-month excavation, drawing site plans and sections of the dig, and making measured drawings of the artifacts uncovered.<ref name=Penn>[https://archives.upenn.edu/exhibits/penn-people/biography/alfred-bendiner Alfred Bendiner, 1899-1964] from University of Pennsylvania Archives.</ref> He again worked as an archaeological draftsman on an excavation in Tikal, Guatemala, in 1960.<ref name=Penn/>

===Caricaturist=== Hungarian-American violinist Arthur Hartmann was Bendiner's uncle, and his maternal grandfather had also been a violinist. In 1938, Bendiner pitched himself to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as a music critic, but with a twist: each review would be illustrated by his caricature of the featured musician, drawn ''during the performance''.<ref name=Pezzati/> His caricatures became highly popular, and he reproduced them as lithographs, earning him the moniker "The Hirschfeld of Philadelphia."<ref name=Michener/> He retired from music criticism in 1946, and collected his favorite reviews and caricatures in the 1952 book ''Music to My Eyes''.<ref name=Michener/>

===Muralist=== Bendiner's first mural commission was for Gimbel Brothers Department Store in Philadelphia, in 1952. The subject was a musical event that had occurred thirteen years earlier: Sergei Rachmaninoff performing as piano soloist in his Symphony No. 3 with the Philadelphia Orchestra.<ref name=Michener>[https://bucksco.michenerartmuseum.org/artists/alfred-bendiner Alfred Bendiner] from Michener Art Museum.</ref> Rachmaninoff had chosen the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Leopold Stokowski to perform the work's world premiere, November 6, 1936.<ref name=Rach/> He returned three years later to perform Symphony No. 3 under conductor Eugene Ormandy and to make the first recording of it.<ref name=Rach/> The mural depicted the December 2, 1939 concert at the Academy of Music, the composer/pianist's final appearance with the orchestra.<ref name=Rach>Sergei Bertensson, Jay Leyda, and Sophia Satina, ''Sergei Rachmaninoff&mdash;A Lifetime in Music'' (New York: New York University Press, 1956).</ref> Rachmaninoff died in 1943. The mural is illustrated in Bendiner's autobiography.<ref name=Translated/>{{rp|21}}

Fidelity Bank commissioned Bendiner to paint twin murals for its Rittenhouse Square branch: ''Rittenhouse Square, 1856'' and ''Rittenhouse Square, 1956''.<ref name=Translated/>{{rp|188, 316}} He also painted murals for the offices of Blue Cross of Greater Philadelphia (1959); and ''The Story of Man'' for the University of Pennsylvania Museum.<ref name=Michener/>

===Author=== {{unreferenced section|date=March 2025}} Bendiner's books include:

* ''Music to My Eyes'' (1952) * ''Bendiner's Philadelphia'' (1964) * ''Translated from the Hungarian: Notes toward an Autobiography'' (1967)

==Personal== Bendiner married Elizabeth "Betty" Sutro (1904-1991) in August 1938.<ref name=Translated/>{{rp|271}} They had met a decade earlier when they shared the same drafting table at Penn, she during the day and he at night.<ref name=Translated/>{{rp|238}} Bendiner described them as a "mixed marriage" between an Orthodox Jew and an "Old Philadelphia" Episcopalian.<ref name=Translated/>{{rp|271}} She assisted him on the 1960 Guatemala archaeological excavation.<ref>[https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/733345 Elizabeth S. Bendiner] from Philadelphia Architects and Buildings.</ref>

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *[https://americanart.si.edu/artist/alfred-bendiner-336 Alfred Bendiner] from Smithsonian American Art Museum *[https://www.philamuseum.org/search/collections?q=Alfred%20Bendiner Alfred Bendiner] from Philadelphia Museum of Art *[https://proficio1.campus.wm.edu/ProficioWebModule/Results.aspx?pS=alfred%20bendiner&db=objects&dir=MUSCAREL Alfred Bendiner] at the Muscarelle Museum of Art

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bendiner, Alfred}} Category:1899 births Category:1964 deaths Category:University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:Architects from Philadelphia Category:Writers who illustrated their own writing Category:American caricaturists Category:American muralists Category:American magazine cartoonists Category:American columnists Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Category:Fellows of the American Institute of Architects Category:20th-century American people