Bruce Alonzo Goff (June 8, 1904 – August 4, 1982) was an American architect, distinguished by his organic, eclectic, and often flamboyant designs for houses and other buildings in Oklahoma and elsewhere.
A 1951 Life magazine article stated that Goff was "one of the few US architects whom Frank Lloyd Wright considers creative...scorns houses that are ‘boxes with little holes."
Early years
Bruce Goff's father, Corliss, was the youngest of seven children born to a builder in Cameron, Missouri, who learned to be a watch repairman at an early age, and moved to Wakeeney, Kansas, where he opened his own watch repair business. He married a young schoolteacher in 1903 at the home of her parents in Ellis, Kansas. Soon after marriage, they moved to the farm town of Alton, Kansas, where their son Bruce was born on June 8, 1904.
Life was very difficult for the Goffs in Alton, so they moved south to Indian Territory and lived on land that would become Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the end of the first summer, they moved to Henrietta, where Goff's sister was born in 1906. Then they moved to Skiatook and Hominy, where he saw the Indians in ceremonial dress, and was very impressed with their patterns and color. He started school in Skiatook, where he was fascinated by a picture of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, his first real exposure to architecture other than frontier structures. Later, after moving to Hominy, he began drawing fanciful pictures of such buildings on wrapping paper.
Goff's family decided in 1913 to relocate to Denver, Colorado, where the father expected that his fortunes would change for the better. First, Corliss went ahead of the mother and children who stayed with her relatives in Ellis, Kansas. He bought a watch shop and opened for business. Meanwhile Bruce, displaying the talent of an artistic prodigy, learned to paint from nature. At the end of the summer of 1913, Corliss sent for the family to join him in Denver. The economy did not favor his efforts, and Bruce later remembered going to bed hungry many nights, because his father could not afford enough food for the family. After a year and a half of constant struggle, Corliss realized that his fortunes were not going to change there.
Goff's parents decided to move back to Tulsa in 1915. Corliss had given up on the watchmaking business and became a grocery equipment salesman. Bruce was largely self-educated and displayed a great talent for drawing. He enrolled in the sixth grade at Lincoln Elementary School, where his first art teacher, a Miss Brown, strongly supported his individualistic artistic expression.