From designing to developing projects

The first time Jerry Sincoff designed a house, he failed. Literally. As a ninth-grader at Hanley Junior High in University City, Sincoff — a voracious draftsman with an affinity for buildings and rocket ships — was required to enter the inaugural Greater St. Louis Science Fair. Instead of a science display, he submitted a conceptual drawing for a small private residence.

“I got an ‘F’ because it was supposed to be a science project,” recalls Sincoff, now dean of Architecture for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, with a laugh. “I didn’t fail the course. Just that assignment.”

Ironically, as a project manager and later president and chief executive officer of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Inc. (HOK), the world’s largest architecture firm, Sincoff would oversee design of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., arguably the most successful science display ever created.

Other projects would include corporate headquarters for Kimberly-Clark, Pillsbury, Kellogg’s, Mobile, BP and Bristol-Myers Squibb. In St. Louis, Sincoff led the $150 million renovation of historic Union Station and developed headquarters for Nestle Purina, the American Zinc Co., and Community Federal Savings & Loan (the latter building now home to Edward Jones), among others.

In 2004, he was inducted into the University City High School Hall of Fame.

Sincoff was born at St. Mary’s Hospital on Clayton Road, less than a mile due south of his current office in Givens Hall. His mother, Elma, sold dresses for Famous Barr downtown. His father, Morris, was “a classic traveling salesman,” marketing curtains and drapes for a firm in Washington Avenue’s bustling textiles district.

The young family lived in a third-story walk-up just east of the Hi-Pointe Theatre but moved to University City when Sincoff was in third grade. He drew constantly as a boy, to the point of being scolded for not properly minding other lessons. In high school, he took every design class offered, from art and shop to mechanical drawing.

“I was very alert visually, especially about things that were built,” Sincoff muses. “I liked them. I appreciated them. I thought they were interesting.”

During his senior year, Sincoff entered a regional design competition sponsored by the St. Louis Home Builders Association. Top prize? A scholarship to Washington University’s School of Architecture. Amazingly, Sincoff won and two classmates placed second and third. (One of them, William Stewart, also became a noted architect.)

Sincoff arrived on campus in 1951. He was soon impressed by the legendary Buckminster Fuller, a visiting professor of architecture, and spent much of his sophomore year helping to construct a collapsible wooden version of Fuller’s famous geodesic dome.

“We were actually able to do it,” Sincoff recalls. “It took a long time, the shop was very busy and one person lost a finger, but we got the thing built. It worked and it was spectacular.”

Another influence was future architecture dean Joseph Passonneau, who arrived Sincoff’s senior year. “The first day of classes, a couple of us were in the studio playing chess when this guy walks up and asks for a game.” It was Passonneau. “He won in about 10 moves.”

Yet the early ’50s were also the height of the Korean War and Sincoff, hoping to become a pilot, enlisted in the Air Force ROTC. Upon finishing his degree, in 1956, he reported to camp but was transferred to the Army’s Air Defense Command because of an asthma condition. After training at Fort Bliss, Texas, he was stationed in Chicago, one of three officers commanding a small air defense missile battery.

“We were all kids — 21, 22 years old. It was a lot of responsibility but we worked as a team; it was really great training.” Plus, Sincoff adds with a smile, “we had a perfect record. Not one bomb was dropped on Chicago while I was there.”

Discharged in 1959, Sincoff found work — despite a lingering recession — at Russell, Mullgardt, Schwarz & Van Hoefen, an old St. Louis architecture firm. He joined HOK in 1962 after interviewing with design principal Gyo Obata (B.Arch ’45), who had co-founded the partnership in 1955 with George Hellmuth, George Kassabaum and 26 employees.

Sincoff started in design but soon realized that he was better suited to the role of project architect, or “job captain,” as it was then called.

“Frankly, I saw other fellows who were better designers,” Sincoff admits. “But I found that I had the ability to take these ideas and carry them to completion. Basically, I went from designing projects to developing projects.”

Sincoff’s first major assignment was for the campus of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, which he spent two years working on and which opened in 1965. Subsequent projects included the stainless steel-clad American Zinc building (now part of the Drury Plaza Hotel) and the Boatman’s Bank headquarters. He spent two years in Los Angeles developing the firm’s first high-rise, 1901 Avenue of the Stars.

In 1972 Sincoff took over the National Air and Space Museum, which HOK had designed in 1964 but which still awaited Congressional funding.

“The budget was $40 million,” Sincoff explains. Unfortunately, “from ’64 to ’72 the inflation rate was so staggering that, by the time funding was approved, we had to start design all over again.” Nevertheless, construction was completed in 1975, “on budget and on schedule,” and the building opened July 4, 1976. Virtually overnight, it became the world’s most-visited museum facility.

In the early 1980s, Sincoff led renovation of St. Louis Union Station, then the largest adaptive re-use project in the United States. Closed in 1978, the station had fallen into such disrepair that portions were used as sets for the apocalyptic thriller Escape From New York (1981). When it re-opened in 1985, Union Station housed dozens of shops, restaurants, offices, a lake, a public plaza and a 500-room hotel.

Meanwhile, Sincoff was emerging as a key member of HOK’s senior leadership team, rising from project architect to vice president, office-managing principal and corporate vice chairman.

It was an exciting time for the company, whose first international offices, in London and Hong Kong, opened in 1984. Today HOK employs more than 1,700 throughout North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Sincoff, who was named president and CEO in 1990, ascribes the expansion to a variety of factors: Obata’s keen internationalism; Hellmuth’s ideas about architectural firm organization; Kassabaum’s management talents; a developing specialty in sports architecture. Perhaps most importantly, HOK established long-term relationships with major clients like Nortel, ExxonMobile, Bristol-Myers Squibb and others. As they grew, so did HOK.

“No other firm has ever designed a project for the Air and Space Museum,” Sincoff points out.

Though retired since 2001, Sincoff remained a consultant for HOK and had even served a term as president of The Saint Louis Art Museum’s Board of Commissioners. Still, by the end of 2004 things were finally slowing down. Then, a week before Christmas, the phone rang. It was Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton.

“He said, ‘Jerry, if you’re standing up, perhaps you should sit down … ‘”

Longtime architecture dean Cynthia Weese was rejoining her firm in Chicago. Architecture and Art — previously Washington University’s smallest units — were forming the Sam Fox School, along with the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Two new buildings by renowned architect Fumihiko Maki were under construction, part of a $56.8 million improvement to art and design facilities.

Sincoff, who remained deeply involved with his alma mater, was a savvy choice to follow Weese. The former Ethan A.H. Shepley Trustee, he had chaired the Alumni Board of Governors; chaired the Architecture National Council; and co-chaired the Sam Fox School’s capital campaign.

He certainly possessed the requisite managerial skills and had even been the driving force behind HOK University, the company’s award-winning continuing education program.

“I felt that perhaps I could bring something helpful to this transitional period,” Sincoff explains, noting that Architecture — like HOK and, indeed, the profession in general — has grown ever more international in scope and collaborative in nature.

Where architects once designed buildings for local clients, they now compete worldwide for projects that increasingly integrate architectural, landscape and planning perspectives.

In July, Sincoff formally took the reins as dean of the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design.

He has been particularly impressed by the large numbers of undergraduate and graduate students from Asia, Europe and Latin America, and by Architecture’s recent launch of studios in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Florence, Helsinki, Tokyo and New York.

“When I was a student, we had maybe two or three people from outside the Midwest,” Sincoff muses. “Our students are from everywhere now.

“We’re bursting at the seams.”