James Ter­rell (M.Arch ’68) was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1944. He grad­u­ated from Cen­tral High School in Evansville, IN in 1961 before pur­su­ing a BA in archi­tec­ture from Depauw University. Fol­low­ing his grad­u­a­tion from the Yale School of Archi­tec­ture in 1968, Ter­rell became a nation­ally respected architect, serv­ing as the store design man­ager for major retail­ers includ­ing Macy’s, Bloom­ing­dales and Saks Fifth Avenue.

A mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects and the Insti­tute of Store Plan­ners, Ter­rell’s inno­v­a­tive depart­ment store designs won him the Store of the Year Award four times. Ter­rell was a founding partner of Ham­brecht Ter­rell Inter­na­tional in 1980, even­tu­ally serv­ing as the firm’s pres­i­dent. He also chaired the fund-rais­ing com­mit­tee of the Design Indus­try Foun­da­tion for AIDS, using his con­nec­tions in the fash­ion indus­try to cre­atively raise money for AIDS research, edu­ca­tion and patient care. 

Ter­rell died of AIDS on August 19, 1989 at New York Hos­pi­tal.

He was 45 years old.

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