About Ben McMurry Jr.

Ben Jr. was born in 1926 in Knoxville. During World War II, Ben served in the Pacific theater in the U.S. Navy as a tactical radar and fighter director officer, with a rank of lieutenant. He came home in 1946, going on to earn his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from UT in 1948, then a Bachelor of Architecture from University of Pennsylvania in 1952. 

He won numerous awards while in school, including the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Elements of Architecture (1949), Warren Powers Laird Memorial Prize – Highest Honors in Architecture (1950), Arthur Spayd Brooke Memorial Prize – Merit in Architectural Design (1951) and the Alpha Rho Chi Medal for Leadership, Service & Merit (1952). 

Ben Jr. was president of AIA East Tennessee in 1964. He was named a vice president at Barber McMurry in 1953, and by 1959 was president.

Ben Jr. led the designs of some of the firm’s progressive mid-Century designs, including the iconic Jenkins House in Sequoyah Hills, which won a prestigious AIA Gulf States Award in 1958. The home was recognized as one of the best modern homes of the southeast as recently as 2008, when it was profiled in Oxford American.

He married Betsy Parrott and had three children: Neel, Ben III, and Ruthie. After retiring from Barber McMurry, Ben Jr. relocated to Florida. Ben Jr. died in 1989.