Harold Hafer Fisher (28 October 1901 – 2005) was an American church architect. He has been described as "a genius who designed over 500 churches with order, unity and beauty reflecting the majesty and transcendence of God".

Biography

Early life

Fisher was born in 1901 in

Uniontown, Pennsylvania Uniontown is a city in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, southeast of Pittsburgh and part of the Greater Pittsburgh Region. The population was 10,372 at the 2010 census, down from 12,422 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat and ...

, to Charles and Emma (McCoy) Fisher. He had a difficult childhood, being partially raised in an orphanage when his father was forced to leave the family to look for work and his mother could not feed her children. Fisher was a precocious student who enjoyed drawing and painting.

Early professional years

Fisher was prolific in drawing and painting. His childhood oil paintings of biblical events attracted the attention of architect John Charles Fulton and son T. Ray Fulton who designed churches in forty-three of the then forty-eight states. The fifteen-year-old Fisher was recruited by Fulton to work as an apprentice draughtsman for $2 per day in his Uniontown, Pennsylvania office in the fall of 1916. Fisher had misrepresented his age as 27 so he could be hired. He worked six days per week as an apprentice. At night and on weekends he studied Beaux-Arts courses at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. After graduation, he taught at Atelier Fulton in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

for six years. In 1922 he and a colleague, Charles Hines, started their own architectural office in

Hagerstown, Maryland Hagerstown is a city in Washington County, Maryland, United States and the county seat of Washington County. The population of Hagerstown city proper at the 2020 census was 43,527, and the population of the Hagerstown metropolitan area (exten ...

, but had to close their company after only a year. Fisher went back to Uniontown to work for Fulton until the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

forced the office to close. In the early 1940s Fisher tried to establish his own firm once again, but WWII had started. As a result he began working for the Austin company and Conover Engineering, supervising the conversion of

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

's factories for wartime production. At the war's end, he finally fulfilled his dream by establishing Harold H. Fisher & Associates, an architectural firm devoted entirely to church architecture. That office was run by his sons until 2010.

Later professional years

Fisher worked until he was 102. He received an award for being the oldest working man.
ABC NEWS - Oldest Worker: At 100, Architect Still Aspires to Build Spires, Dec. 10, 2001

References

External links

1901 births 2005 deaths American men centenarians People from Uniontown, Pennsylvania 20th-century American architects Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (New York City) alumni {{US-architect-stub