Considered to have been Mies van der Rohe's "right-hand man",[1] he assisted his famed employer in the design of the iconic Seagram Building on Park Avenue on the island of Manhattan in New York City.
Later, in private practice, he designed the huge McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, Illinois.
From 1950 until 1966, Gene Summers served as project architect for Mies van der Rohe, working on important commissions such as the Seagram Building in New York City, the Toronto-Dominion Centre and the National Gallery in Berlin.
[3] Gene Summers built up a wide collection of drawings by architects that he donated to the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
[4] In 1985, Gene Summers moved to France, but returned to Chicago in 1989 to become dean of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a position he held until 1993.