Gene Leedy

Lifetime Design Achievement Award - Florida Chapter of the American Institute of Architects - 1988 Outstanding Alumni Award - University of Florida College of Architecture - 1993 Fellows of the AIA - 1992

Leedy was selected as one of Architectural Record's successful young architects in 1965 with a published portfolio of his work. In 1988, he was awarded the lifetime design achievement award from the Florida Association of Architects. He was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1992, and received the outstanding alumni award from the College of Architecture of the University of Florida in 1993. His work has been extensively published in the U.S. and Europe and has received more than 50 architectural awards both nationally and statewide.

In addition to projects throughout the U.S., including Hawaii, he designed a large housing complex for the government of Malaysia. He was also a design consultant for Alfred A. Yee and Associates, Architects and Engineers, Honolulu, Hawaii for more than 25 years. Among Leedy's notable former employees are architects Lawrence Scarpa and Max Strang, whose firm Strang Design, collaborated with Alive Coverage on The Gene Leedy Influence. This short film is about a house designed by Gene Leedy in 1956 in Winter Haven, Florida, which was his own family residence, as well as the original prototype for the Craney Spec Homes development. This small collection of homes is now recognized as a National Historic District.

Gene Leedy (February 6, 1928 – November 24, 2018) was an American architect based in Winter Haven, Florida. He was a pioneer of the modern movement in Florida and later a founder of the Sarasota School of Architecture, whose members included Paul Rudolph, Victor Lundy, and others. After beginning his career in Sarasota, Leedy moved his practice to Winter Haven in 1954. He is best known for his bold use of precast concrete, especially in long-span, "double-tee" structural elements.

Gene Leedy was born to Cecil Hudgins Leedy and Ethyl Ferguson Leedy on February 6, 1928 in Isaban, West Virginia. Cecil was a supervisor for a coal mining company, and Ethyl taught in a one-room schoolhouse. The family eventually moved to Gainesville, Florida, where Cecil opened a small restaurant. At the University of Florida in Gainesville, Gene later studied architecture. On July 20, 1950, in Arlington, Virginia, he married Kathryn "Bebe" Hoge, of Tampa, Florida. The couple settled in Florida, first in Sarasota and then, in 1954, in Winter Haven, where Gene opened his own architectural office. Their son, Robert Hoge Leedy, was born in Winter Haven on October 17, 1956, but they divorced in 1958. Gene then married Marjorie Frances Ingram on March 6, 1960, residing in Winter Haven along with Marjorie's daughter from her previous marriage, Helen Isabel King (born August 27, 1954). The family grew with the birth of their daughter, Marjorie "Saffie" Leedy, on October 25, 1962, and their son, Gene Ingram Leedy, on November 1, 1969. Leedy's wife, Marjorie, died on Christmas Day 2010 in Winter Haven.