Ferdinand (Fred) Gottlieb, born October 5, 1919, in Berlin, Germany, died peacefully at home in Dobbs Ferry, New York on October 27, after an extended battle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
He was 88. A noted architect, he designed numerous landmark structures in the United States and overseas, and a was decorated World War II veteran who, after escaping from Nazi Germany, lived in British Palestine before emigrating to New York in 1937.
Soon after his arrival in the United States, Mr. Gottlieb enlisted in the Army and served proudly as a Captain in the Ninth Army Air Corps, Signal Corps. As a company commander in Army Intelligence, he landed his men under harsh fire at Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy and thereafter helped to down numerous enemy planes, for which he received two Bronze Stars. After graduating from Columbia University in 1953, he became an architect, and was perhaps best-known for the original Rizzoli International Bookstore on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and the Saul Victor house in Riverdale — the latter considered one of the finest works of modern residential architecture in the City of New York. Among other works, Mr. Gottlieb also designed the Banco di Napoli offices in lower Manhattan, the Horace Mann School for Nursery Years, the Casa di Risparmio di Firenze in the Seagram’s Building, the Pirelli Tires building in New Jersey, and numerous private residences in the New York metropolitan area, Texas, Colorado, and Illinois.
In 1953, Fred Gottlieb married the former Bernice Friedman, who was his wife for 54 years. (Bernice Gottlieb is today the principal broker at Hudson Shores Realtors.) She survives him, along with their three children, Peter, Richard, and Susannah, and six grandchildren, Degen, Michael, Bobby, Samantha, Inbo, and Zoli.
