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Gondos family papers
Victor Gondos, a civil engineer, immigrated to the United States with his family in 1911, settling in Chicago. He married Irene Trautmann, and they had two sons, Zoltan (later Robert) and Victor Jr. In the 1920s they moved to Reading, Pennsylvania, where Victor set up The Gondos Company, a general...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Collection: | Gondos Family Papers |
| Collection Number: | 3082 |
| Format: | Manuscript |
| Language: | Hungarian |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Link to finding aid |
| Physical Description: |
3.9 Linear feet 13 boxes, 3 volumes, 7 flat files |
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| Summary: |
Victor Gondos, a civil engineer, immigrated to the United States with his family in 1911, settling in Chicago. He married Irene Trautmann, and they had two sons, Zoltan (later Robert) and Victor Jr. In the 1920s they moved to Reading, Pennsylvania, where Victor set up The Gondos Company, a general contracting firm. In 1930, Gondos joined with his sons to form Gondos and Gondos, an architectural firm headquartered in Philadelphia that designed industrial buildings, schools, and hotels. Both sons garnered engineering degrees, but Victor Jr. was also an historian and archivist, and he served on the staff of the National Archives for twenty-three years.
This diverse collection, which spans almost one hundred years, chronicles a Hungarian family’s attempt to assimilate to the United States yet retain its heritage. It also documents the family’s architectural and construction businesses from the mid 1920s though the Great Depression and World War II. The vast majority of this collection is correspondence between family members in the United States and in Hungary. There are also scrapbooks, audio materials, clippings, programs, pamphlets, journals, technical drawings, and photographs. |