Wood, John Walter

John Walter Wood was an American architect and specialist in airport design from 1931, and partner in the New York City firm of Poor & Wood, Airport Contractors Ltd. Born in Short Hills, N.J. on 5 June 1900, he possessed formidable educational credentials, graduating from Harvard Univ. in 1922, attending Oxford Univ. in 1923, and becoming a finalist for the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1926. He also studied at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris in 1928. In Canada he can be credited with the design of a significant modernist residence located on Niagara Island, Ontario, in the Thousand Islands district of the St. Lawrence River. Designed in 1930 for Sherman Pratt, this striking landmark was one of the first reinforced concrete houses built in Ontario (Architecture [New York], lxv, Feb. 1932, 63-9, illus.; Arts & Decoration [New York], xxxix, Oct. 1933, 16-18, illus. & descrip.; Pierre du Prey, Ah Wilderness! Resort Architecture in the Thousand Islands, 2004, 106-10, illus.). Three years later Wood was again commissioned by Pratt to add another structure, a ferro-concrete boathouse located on the south side of the island (Architectural Record, [New York], lxix, Jan. 1936, 37-42, illus. & descrip.). A tennis shelter for the complex was built at the same time (Architectural Record [New York], lxix, March 1936, 198, illus.). In the United States, Wood designed the outdoor aquarium at Marine Studios (now Marineland) in St. Augustine, Florida, 1937-38, and a technical school for the American Air Force in Denver. He was an acknowledged authority on airport design, and author of Airports - Some Elements of Design & Future Development (1940), and Airports and Air Traffic (1948). He later taught at the Department of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana, and died there on 24 November 1958 (obit. New York Times, 27 Nov. 1958, 29; biog. Who Was Who in America, iii, 1951-1960, 936)