Louis Gardner Goldberg was born into a Jewish family in Poughkeepsie, New York on June 2, 1918. They relocated to Birmingham, Alabama in the 1920s and became involved in the meat packing industry. In 1934, Goldberg attended API (now Auburn University) where he later became friends with fellow student Paul Rudolph. Goldberg graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1939 and was awarded an Emerson Fellowship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning a master of architecture degree from MIT in 1940. During World War II, he served in the United States Army, Corps of Engineers during which time he commanded an Engineer Construction Battalion overseas. He supervised the construction of cantonments, hospitals, warehouses and other military installations. In 1946, he began work with an architectural firm in New York. He continued to work as an architect, legally shortening his name to Louis Gardner in 1948. Gardner established a firm with Philip Ives and Emanuel N. Turano in 1952. Ives, Turano, and Gardner designed the Pan Am International Arrivals Building which operated from 1960 to 2013 at Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy International) Airport. In 1970, Gardner and Don Reay designed The Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies located in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. Following twenty-six years as a commissioned and reserve U.S. Army officer, he retired as a full Colonel. Louis Gardner died in 2018.