Born: 1943

Died: 2022

Married: Muriel

Children: Eva, Ana

Nils Luderowski is an architect who designed more than two hundred buildings in the Adirondacks, including several on Upper Saranac Lake.


Adirondack Daily Enterprise, November 8, 2022

Nils Luderowski

Nils Luderowski, a one-eyed architect who found his voice exploring Adirondack Camp Style, died at home surrounded by his family. He was 79.

Nils was the eldest son of a Swedish mother and Polish-American father who met at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He grew up with his mother in rural Sweden, completed university in Stockholm, and moved to the United States to attend Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Nils met Muriel while skiing in Zermatt, Switzerland. They married in 1978 and thereafter Muriel joined Nils in Brooklyn. Nils worked for The Walker Group, an architectural firm, before starting his own design group. He also taught as an adjunct professor at the Parsons School of Design.

Nils became a registered architect in 1993 and moved with his family to Keene, New York in 1996. He opened a small office in Keene Valley and began, at age 54, a relationship with Adirondack architecture that would become the great, burning love that defined the rest of his life. Refusing to engage with computer-aided design, Nils worked and reworked in graphite pencil, color pencil, and Prismacolor markers across pages and pages of drafting paper. He felt joy in a cantilevered roof, the way that pencil can add life to a line, dry gin martinis, the smugness of being left-handed, the stillness of the pond by his house, and the search for the perfect walking stick. Unable to gather supplies before his final trip to the hospital, Nils drew a sketch of his bathroom in order to direct his daughter to select the correct cologne. He never missed an opportunity to draw.

Nils is survived by Muriel, his wife of 44 years; Eva and Ana, his daughters; Christer, his brother; Taya, his sister; Coco; over 200 buildings across the Adirondacks; and many unfinished projects. The M. B. Clark, Inc. Funeral Home in Lake Placid is in charge of arrangements. Please visit www.mbclarkfuneralhome.com to share a memory or leave condolences for the Luderowski family.