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Lawrence Laguna, 84, award-winning architect
from: newsday.com
By Bill Kaufman, Staff Writer
Despite the fact he was an award-winning architect who enjoyed a career that included designing numerous buildings on Long Island and elsewhere, Lawrence Laguna was a very modest man.
"He was not the kind of guy who walks into a room and takes over the room," said family friend Karol Kamin.
Laguna died Sept. 1 in South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside of kidney failure. He was 84.
Among Laguna's many professional achievements was serving on the team that during World War II designed and planned what is now the Guantanamo Bay Naval Air Station in Cuba.
An Oceanside resident, Laguna developed a portfolio that includes the Oceanside Jewish Center, which earned him the first Town Award for outstanding design from Hempstead Town some years back, as well as the Oceanside Lutheran Church. Other projects that benefited from his talents are apartment buildings in Freeport and Rockville Centre.
Plans for the Leonia, N.J., public library and the Jackson Heights Public Library also emerged from his drawing board. In 1950 he won the Queens Chamber of Commerce award for the library as the outstanding building of the year.
Born in Manhattan, Laguna graduated from Stuyvesant High School and went on to earn a degree in architecture and design from New York University. After working for several architectural firms he eventually started to consult on his own. By the mid-1940s his reputation began to precede him.
After his retirement about 15 years ago, Laguna still continued but on a somewhat lesser scale to provide professional advice. He was sometimes quoted as an expert in Newsday on home construction matters.
"He was a brilliant artist. He could draw something that looked like a photograph," explained a son, KENNY LAGUNA, a musician and songwriter from Rockville Centre. He added that during the construction of Levittown in the late 1940s his father had an opportunity to do design work at a significant fee but declined. "It didn't appeal to his artistic sensibilities," his son said.
The family ties with art are strong. The senior Laguna's wife, Mariella Laguna, is an abstract artist whose work is in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation.
"I met Larry in college," Mariella recalled. "He was so gifted. Everybody knew Larry's work."
She added, "There will never be anyone else like Larry." The couple had been married for 61 years.
Besides his son and wife, Laguna is survived by another son, Sanford of Hollywood, Fla., and three grandchildren. A fourth grandchild, Sanford's daughter, Perri, 14, died in an automobile accident last year.
A memorial service was held Sept. 3 at Laguna's home. The remains were cremated.
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