Nancy Goldberg owned a prestigious restaurant in Chicago, Maxim’s de Paris, which she managed from 1963 to 1982. Maxim’s was a replica of a famous Parisian restaurant, Café de Paris, and located in the basement of Astor Tower, a high-rise building designed by Bertrand Goldberg in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.

The restaurant is now The Nancy Goldberg International Center, operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs as a facility for private events. (Left) Entry at The Nancy Goldberg International Center.

Nancy died on November 12, 1996 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital at the age of 74.

She was the daughter of Irving Florsheim, chairman of Florsheim Shoe Company from 1936 to 1966, and noted sculptor Lillian H. Florsheim.

In 1982, the Chicago Tribune described Maxim’s as “the first designer restaurant.” When it opened in 1963, a team of eight chefs prepared a meal based on one that had been prepared for George V, the king of England from 1910 to 1936.

“Very quickly,” said the Tribune, “those who rated restaurants in the city and the world began praising Maxim’s and sprinkling stars on it.”

Said her husband, Bertrand, “She was a woman of enormous quality. She loved fine foods and fine wines and to serve the people who appreciated them.”

A graduate of The Latin School of Chicago (a private school for students through 12th grade) and Smith College, Nancy was considered a fine chef, and she won many trophies for horse riding.

She lived on the Near North Side of Chicago. She was administrator of the Lillian H. Florsheim Foundation for Fine Arts. She had two daughters, Lisa and Nan, born in 1950 and 1952, and a son, Geoffrey, born in 1955, who himself is an architect.

Bud died on October 8, 1997.

He had suffered a stroke. There were complications, and he died at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago at the age of 84.

Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin wrote the next day, “Goldberg’s significance transcended architecture. In the 1950s, when there was widespread pessimism about the future of cities as places to live, Mr. Goldberg posed a vital alternative with the five-building Marina City complex.”

Paul Gapp, the Tribune’s architecture critic in 1991, had written, “Marina City will survive close scholarly appraisal well into the next century as a superb example of architectural plasticity as well as a multiple-use facility reflecting Goldberg’s concerns about urban amenities.”

Bertrand Goldberg was born in Chicago in 1913 and grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood. He studied at Harvard University and the Staatliches Bauhaus, an art and architecture school in Germany that was an influence on Modernist architecture.

In 1933, after lecturing his landlady on the evils of Nazism, Goldberg, who was Jewish, was asked to leave Berlin. Back in Chicago, he finished his studies at Armour Institute (now known as Illinois Institute of Technology). After working with architect George Fred Keck, Goldberg started his own practice in 1937.

He was influenced by the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition – held to commemorate Chicago’s 100th anniversary – which featured modern, streamlined architecture in contrast with what he had studied in Germany.

His son, Geoffrey, says there was poetic relationship between his father and Lillian Florsheim, the sculptor and mother of Nancy Goldberg. He believes another artistic influence was Bertrand's sister, Lucille, who was an actress in the 1930s.

At The Tavern Club, on the 25th floor of 333 North Michigan, he would often sit at a table that had a view of Marina City.