James T Lendrum was born in 1907 at Oxford, New York State, and gained a degree at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1926, before taking a BArch. degree at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1930. Following graduation, he became a partner at the practice of George E. Ramey and Company, based in Champaign, Illinois. He took on multiple roles, acting as Associate Professor of General Engineering Drawing at the University of Illinois (where he was himself to take an MArch in 1946) and serving as Director of the Small Homes Council and member of the Architectural Standards Advisory Committee for the Federal Housing Administration. By 1955 he had moved to Florida and established the company Lendrum and Pusey Consultants, based in Gainsville. He took part in a Ford Foundation mission to Pakistan in early 1957, as an architectural education consultant, and shortly afterwards was appointed Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Florida, in Gainsville - a position he was to hold until 1967. For six months, from September 1962, Lendrum took study leave to attend the postgraduate course run by the Architectural Association’s Department of Tropical Studies, in London. On completion of the course Lendrum returned to the University of Florida, heading the Architecture Department until 1967. Two years later he was to join the practice of his son, Peter Lendrum, where he continued to work until his retirement in 1987. A substantial quantity of archival material, relating to James Lendrum’s period as Head of the Department of Architecture are held at the University of Florida Archives.
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