Frank Gehry, the most celebrated architect of his time, dies at 96

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.

Gehry died Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP.

Gehry's fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of distinctive, striking buildings. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Berlin’s DZ Bank Building.

He also designed an expansion of Facebook’s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the field’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as “refreshingly original and totally American” work.

Other honors include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native country’s highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.

After earning a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954 and serving in the Army, Gehry studied urban planning at Harvard University.

But his career got off to a slow start. He struggled for years to make ends meet, designing public housing projects, shopping centers and even driving a delivery truck for a time.

Eventually, he got the chance to design a modern shopping mall overlooking the Santa Monica Pier. He was determined to play it safe and came up with drawings for an enclosed shopping mall that looked similar to others in the United States in the 1980s.

To celebrate its completion, the mall’s developer dropped by Gehry’s house and was stunned by what he saw: The architect had transformed a modest 1920s-era bungalow into an inventive abode by remodeling it with chain-link fencing, exposed wood and corrugated metal.

Asked why he hadn’t proposed something similar for the mall, Gehry replied, “Because I have to make a living.”

If he really wanted to make a statement as an architect, he was told, he should drop that attitude and follow his creative vision.

Gehry would do just that for the rest of his life, working into his 90s to create buildings that doubled as stunning works of art.

As his acclaim grew, Gehry Partners LLP, the architectural firm he founded in 1962, grew with it, expanding to include more than 130 employees at one point. But as big as it got, Gehry insisted on personally overseeing every project it took on.

The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York City’s Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-story New York By Gehry building, once one of the world’s tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.

That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia University.

Not everyone was a fan of Gehry’s work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario.

Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as “oppressive,” arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced the Disney Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.

Still other critics included Dwight D. Eisenhower’s family, who objected to Gehry’s bold proposal for a memorial to honor the nation’s 34th president. Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower’s life, the architect declined to change his design significantly.

If the words of his critics annoyed Gehry, he rarely let on. Indeed, he even sometimes played along. He appeared as himself in a 2005 episode of “The Simpsons” cartoon show, in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison.

He came up with the idea for the design, which looked a lot like the Disney Hall, after crumpling Marge Simpson’s letter to him and throwing it on the ground. After taking a look at it, he declared, “Frank Gehry, you’ve done it again!”

“Some people think I actually do that,” he would later tell the AP.

Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on Feb. 28, 1929, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1947, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen. As an adult, he changed his name at the suggestion of his first wife, who told him antisemitism might be holding back his career.

Although he had enjoyed drawing and building model cities as a child, Gehry said it wasn’t until he was 20 that he pondered the possibility of pursuing a career in architecture, after a college ceramics teacher recognized his talent.

“It was like the first thing in my life that I’d done well in,” he said.

Gehry steadfastly denied being an artist though.

“Yes, architects in the past have been both sculptors and architects,” he declared in a 2006 interview with The Associated Press. “But I still think I’m doing buildings, and it’s different from what they do.”

His words reflected both a lifelong shyness and an insecurity that stayed with Gehry long after he’d been declared the greatest architect of his time.

“I’m totally flabbergasted that I got to where I’ve gotten,” he told the AP in 2001. “Now it seems inevitable, but at the time it seemed very problematic.”

The Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, first proposed in 2006, is expected to finally be completed in 2026 after a series of construction delays and sporadic work. The 30,000-square-foot (2,787-square-meter) structure will be the world's largest Guggenheim, leaving a lasting legacy in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates.

His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and the buildings he created.

Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.

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Rogers, the principal writer of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2021.

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Reporter Jaimie Ding contributed from Los Angeles.

FILE - This Oct. 20, 2003 file photo shows early morning sun illuminating the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, file)

FILE - Athletic Bilbao fans wait in front of the Guggenheim museum as support boats pass before team celebrations on the Nervion Estuary in Bilbao, Spain, Thursday, April 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos, File)

FILE - Honoree and Walt Disney Concert Hall architect Frank Gehry poses at the 2023 Los Angeles Philharmonic Gala, Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

FILE - The Louis Vuitton Foundation building designed by American architect Frank Gehry is pictured before the presentation of Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2015 ready-to-wear fashion collection in Paris, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)

FILE - Architect Frank Gehry describes his concert hall design at the Colburn School during an unveiling in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — With no clear end in sight, the war with Iran is sending oil prices back to $100 per barrel, and stocks are sinking worldwide on Thursday.

The S&P 500 fell 1.2% and is returning to big swings following a couple days of relative calm. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 607 points, or 1.3%, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.7% lower.

The center of action was again the oil market, where the price of a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, got as high as $101.59 overnight before pulling back to $100.44, a 9.2% rise. Worries are worsening that the war could block the production of oil in the Persian Gulf for a long time and cause a debilitating surge of inflation for the global economy.

Iran's new supreme leader released his first statement Thursday since succeeding his late father, saying his country would keep up attacks on Gulf Arab neighbors and use the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz as leverage against the United States and Israel. A fifth of the world’s oil typically sails through the strait, and oil producers in the region are cutting production because their crude has nowhere to go.

Countries around the world are trying to make up for that, and the International Energy Agency said Wednesday that its members would release a record amount of oil, 400 million barrels, from their stockpiles built for such emergencies.

But such moves are short-term fixes, and they do not clear the long-term risks. Analysts have said that if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, oil prices could jump to $150.

To be sure, the U.S. stock market has a history of bouncing back relatively quickly from military conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, as long as oil prices don't stay too high for too long. Even with all the up- and- down swings of the last couple weeks, many rocking markets hour to hour, the S&P 500 is still just roughly 4% below its all-time high set in January.

What’s made this jump for oil prices frightening is not only the degree — prices jumped near $120 earlier this week to their highest level since 2022 — but that they’re also occurring during an uncertain time for the economy.

Last month’s report on hiring by U.S. employers was surprisingly weak, which raised worries about a possible worst-case scenario for the economy called “stagflation.” That’s one where economic growth stagnates while inflation remains high. And it's a miserable mix that the Federal Reserve has no good tools to fix.

A more encouraging signal arrived Thursday. A report said that the number of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits inched lower last week. That’s a sign that layoffs are potentially remaining low around the country.

Dollar General, meanwhile, reported better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. But the retailer with relatively low prices, whose customers often have the least cushion to absorb higher gasoline prices, gave forecasts for revenue this upcoming year that indicated a slowdown in growth. Its stock fell 5.8%.

Some of the worst losses on Wall Street again hit companies with big fuel bills. United Airlines sank 3.9%, and cruise-ship operator Carnival fell 5.7%.

Worries about the private-credit industry continued to hurt the market. Investors have been rushing to pull their money out of some funds and companies that have lent to businesses whose profits are potentially under threat. Many of the worries are focused on business that could be made obsolete by new AI-powered rivals and may not pay back their loans.

Morgan Stanley fell 4% after its North Haven Private Income fund said it allowed investors to redeem only 5% of its total shares instead of the nearly 11% they had requested. That 5% cap is the advertised limit.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across Europe and Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1%, and France’s CAC 40 sank 0.9% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

In the bond market, Treasury yields continued to climb because of upward pressure from rising oil prices. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.24% from 4.21% late Wednesday and from just 3.97% before the war started.

Higher yields help make all kinds of borrowing more expensive, such as mortgages for potential U.S. homebuyers and bond offerings for companies looking to expand. They also push down on prices for all kinds of investments, from stocks to crypto.

Because of the spike for oil prices, traders have pushed back forecasts for when the Fed could resume its cuts to interest rates. President Donald Trump has been angrily calling for such cuts, which would give the economy and job market a boost but also potentially worsen inflation.

A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rose 10.1% to $96.12.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported the percentage drop for United Airlines’ stock.

Gregg Maloney works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Gas prices are displayed at a station Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Evanston Ill. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Pedestrians mill about outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The New York Stock Exchange is seen in New York, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)