Marcus Whiffen (4 March 1916 - February 2002) was an English architectural journalist, historian, author and photographer specialising in British and American architecture. He was Professor Emeritus in the School of Architecture at Arizona State University.
Marcus Whiffen was born in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire on 4 March 1916, the son of Thomas Joseph Whiffen and Jessie Anne Hardy.[1]
He graduated from Cambridge University with a BA in 1937, and then completed his MA in 1946.[2]
Following his graduation, he joined The Architect and Building News in 1937. After the war, in 1946, he joined the Architectural Review (London) as assistant editor.[3]
Whiffen moved to the United States in 1952, where he held lecturer positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then at the University of Texas. In 1954 he joined Colonial Williamsburg as architectural historian.[4] He moved to Arizona State University in 1960 where he held various positions, and finally as Professor Emeritus.[3] He corresponded extensively with several other leading architectural historians including Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Sir John Summerson, plus architects including Walter Gropius, Paul Schweikher, and Bart Prince.[5]
Whiffen served as director of the Society of Architectural Historians (1969-1971, 1975-1978) and director of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (1963-1968). His awards included the Society of Architectural Historians Annual Book Award for The Public Buildings of Williamsburg (1958) and the Arizona State University Alumni Association Faculty Achievement Award (1979).[5]
Marcus Whiffen lived in a house designed for him in 1963 by architect (and Arizona State University colleague) Calvin C. Straub in the Arcadia district of Phoenix, Arizona.[6][7] He died, aged 85, in Phoenix in February 2002.[3]
Photographs by Marcus Whiffen are held at the Conway Library in the Courtauld, London, and are being digitised.[8]