Norman Jaffe (April 3, 1932 – August 19, 1993) was an American architect widely noted for his contemporary residential architecture,[2] and his "strikingly sculptural beach houses" on Eastern Long Island, in southeastern New York.

After finishing school, he joined the military in 1954,[9] serving with the United States Army Corps of Engineers in Japan during the Korean War.

[8] In 1965, Jaffe's estranged wife, Barbara Cochran, was living in Glen Ellyn, Illinois with their 7-year-old son Miles and her parents when she was killed in a motor vehicle accident.

He became the most prolific architect in the Hamptons at that time, designing more than 50 local houses, from small summer homes to large estates.

[7] The New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave Jaffe an award in 1977 for a beach house he designed on Long Island.

[1] Jaffe and Emery Roth & Sons were the architects of the Guardian Life Building, built in the Financial District in 1983.

[1] Paul Goldberger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture writer from The New Yorker, later described the Gates of the Grove as Jaffe's "greatest work" and a "truly sacred space...",[16] and architecture historian Alastair Gordon said Jaffe's design for the Gates of the Grove "was the jewel in the crown of his turbulent career".

[18] Architecture critic Paul Goldberger from The New Yorker, described the building as "quite remarkable...a stunning modernist object (which) respects the street, and in so doing, it enriches the city.

[25] The curator of the exhibition was architectural historian Alastair Gordon,[26] who is also the author of the book, Romantic Modernist: The Life and Work of Norman Jaffe Architect 1932-1993.