Early in his career, Professor William Breger spent two years as an assistant to Walter Gropius—in fact , it was just the two of them in the office. “We had a tremendous professional dialogue—I learned a great deal from him. He was a brilliant and kind man.”
At 91, Professor Breger recalls Gropius fondly, “I admired his great humility. My own life has been a modest interpretation of his greatness. Some might say very modest.” Like Gropius, Professor Breger prioritized teaching as well as practicing. “I owe a great deal to Harvard, the School of Design, and to Gropius. In everything that I do in life, I am always conscious of the great gift I was given, and I wanted to give back.”
The Professor William Breger Fund, endowed with a $500,000 gift, was created in 2012 to honor the legacy of Gropius. “Harvard is a wonderful place that cares about values. I hope that my gift will help students to explore the social structural, and philosophical honesty of architecture as Gropius understood it.”