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==Early Life==
==Early Life==
Gruen was born Victor Grunbaum in a middle-class Jewish family in [[Vienna]]. He trained as an architect but also devoted much of his youthful energy to producing ansd acting in political cabarets in the interwar Austrian capital. As a Jew, and a known social democrat, he appreciated the danger he was in following the German [[Anschluss]] of Austria in 1938 - he was briefly arrested by the Nazi authorities and released only after friends gave a bribe - and fled the country with his wife, travelling via Zurich and London to [[New York City]]. There he recommenced working as an architect, initially on high-class Fifth Avenue shops. During the war (in which he applied to join, but was rejected by, the US Army), he became a naturalised American citizen and changed his surname to Gruen.
Gruen was born Victor Grunbaum in a middle-class Jewish family in [[Vienna]]. He trained as an architect but also devoted much of his youthful energy to producing ansd acting in political cabarets in the interwar Austrian capital. As a Jew, and a known social democrat, he appreciated the danger he was in following the German [[Anschluss]] of Austria in 1938 - he was briefly arrested by the Nazi authorities and released only after friends gave a bribe - and fled the country with his wife, travelling via [[Zurich]] and [[London]] to [[New York City]]. There he recommenced working as an architect, initially on high-class Fifth Avenue shops. During the war (in which he applied to join, but was rejected by, the US Army), he became a naturalised American citizen and changed his surname to Gruen.
He rapidly achieved prominence as a retail architect (a branch of architecture somewhat looked down on in what was still a rather snobbish profession), designing clothing stores for the California-based chain Grayson's in the early 1940s and subsequently for the [[Detroit]] dapartment store Hudson's. However, he made his name with a depatrment store for the [[Los Angeles]] department store Milliron's, which
[[Category:Urban Planning]]
[[Category:Urban Planning]]