Honoring Herberger:
Arizona leaders are remembering Gary K. Herberger not only for his philanthrophic contributions in Arizona, but also for his passion for the arts and for education. A Frank Lloyd Wright-trained architect who became a real-estate developer, Herberger has died at age 79.
Having your name on a building ensures a certain kind of immortality. But Arizona philanthropist Gary K. Herberger is being remembered as a man whose passion for the arts and for education didn’t end with the signing of a check or the cutting of a ribbon.
A Frank Lloyd Wright-trained architect who became a real-estate developer, Herberger died Feb. 28 at age 79 after a heart attack earlier in the month.
Herberger died in California, where he has had a home for the past two decades.
The son of Valley arts patrons G. Robert and Katherine “Kax” Herberger, his legacy includes the Gary K. Herberger Young Scholars Academy, a school for gifted students on Arizona State University’s west campus, which was launched in 2011 with a $20 million gift from Gary and his wife, Jeanne Herberger.
“He came to our graduation ceremonies,” said Robert Walker, principal of the academy. “He would stop by periodically, and he always liked our students to put on kind of a jam session – some would read poetry, some would sing. They donated a grand piano to the school, so a lot of students would play on that.”
In addition to his wife, Herberger is survived by his brother, Judd Herberger.
The Herberger family moved to Scottsdale in 1949 from the Midwest, where Bob Herberger owned a department store chain based in Minnesota. In Arizona he switched to real estate, and his wife became a major patron of arts organizations such as the Phoenix Symphony and the Phoenix Art Museum. The couple made large gifts to Arizona State University, particularly to the music school, and helped spark the revitalization of downtown Phoenix with the construction of the Herberger Theater Center in the late 1980s.
Kax, as she was known, passed her passion for the arts along to her two sons.
“It just came in naturally. It’s sort of in our DNA,” Judd Herberger said.
Judd describes his brother as curious and bright.
“He loved astronomy. He had some patents in computers. He was a painter, and he loved the performing arts and the visual arts and all forms of cultural activity,” he said.
Gary Herberger graduated from the Judson School in Scottsdale and went on to study at Pomona College in California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as with the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
He worked for an Arizona architecture firm for about 15 years, Judd Herberger said, before switching to real-estate development as the head of Herberger Enterprises.
“But in his office he had an architectural drafting table that always had something on it that he was working on, be it his own homes that he designed or projects that he designed,” he said.
Among his many gifts to ASU, Gary Herberger contributed to the Design School in efforts to study sustainable urban planning. He also helped fund a merger with the arts college to create the current Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.
Steven J. Tepper, dean of the institute since 2014, said one of the first things he did after he was offered the job was meet with Gary and Jeanne Herberger.
“They were an amazing font of knowledge and inspiration for me from day one,” he said. “That visit with them still remains one of the highlights for me, because being in a space that was 360-degree designed by the person who lives in that space. Every detail in that home in Paradise Valley had Gary’s design thumbprint on it.”
As news of Herberger’s death spread last week, civic leaders around the Valley offered praise.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey took to Twitter on Tuesday to praise his “immeasurable and lasting” impact on the state, and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, via Facebook, called him “a true giant for education, architecture and the arts.”
In an appreciation published online by ASU, university president Michael Crow said, “Gary had an extraordinary intellect that was wide-ranging and effortlessly curious about how to design things better, how to make things better. He was totally committed to upgrading the intellectual capability of the community. His legacy here at ASU and around the Valley will be felt for generations to come.”