His reputation rested on his ability to be what he called "the catalyst," the person in his firm who ironed out differences among clients, contractors and planning commissions.

[4] They were told to build pavilions for more than 500 exhibits at minimum cost using lightweight, mass-produced materials; and they devised solutions, using the simplest materials—pavilions built out of beaverboard.

[4] The two architects won the contract to design the 1939–40 New York World's Fair; and in 1939 engineer John O. Merrill joined the firm as partner.

[7] There were good business reasons for a practice with a foot in both New York and Chicago; and the firm found plenty of work in both cities.

[7] The firm would build a number of large projects, including government-funded work at military installations and air bases.

[8] During the war years, the partnership was hired to build a secret town for 75,000 residents in Oak Ridge, Tennessee where the atomic bomb was being developed.

SOM's best-known early work is Lever House (1952), which was designed by Gordon Bunshaft and reflects the influence of Mies van der Rohe.

[2] Bunshaft's many strengths as a designer were enhanced with Owings as his SOM super-salesman; but personal antipathies between these partners produced a complicated relationship.

[10] As a senior SOM partner, Owings principal role in the project was to mediate differences between members of a Senate appropriations subcommittee and Air Force officers, some of whom had misgivings about what they thought were the firm's unacceptably modern designs.

Owings was a leading figure in the team which developed the preliminary design during more than a year of closely guarded, top-level work.

[3] Owings and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then urban affairs adviser in President Richard Nixon's administration, were ultimately credited with the success of the master plan for the Washington Mall and for the redesign of Pennsylvania Avenue as the capital's grand ceremonial boulevard.

His SOM protégé was David Childs, who was later appointed by President Gerald Ford as chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission.

That resulted in Baer being able to stay on for a year and produce a set of striking photographs of pre-tourist southern Spain, especially of Andalucia.

In later years, Owings kept a home near Nambé Pueblo, New Mexico; and in due course, he came to be known as an active preservationist in the Santa Fe region.

[20] One noteworthy success was in Las Trampas, New Mexico, where the 1760s San José de Gracia Church was saved from highway demolition by a coalition of villagers and Santa Fe citizens.