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John Stewart Detlie was an architect, painter, movie set designer, and arts leader in Seattle in the 1950s. He was born December 23, 1908 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and died November 30, 2005, in La Quinta, California, of lung cancer.

Detlie earned a BA in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1932 and a Masters in 1933. After graduation he moved to Hollywood to work in the movie industry. In 1940 he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work as production designer on the film Bitter Sweet, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. He left Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in 1942 to manage the Boeing camouflage project in Seattle as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers. He subsequently worked with several Seattle based architectural firms, including Detlie & Peck, in Seattle.

Mr. Detlie was a pioneer in the Seattle arts movement in the 1950s. He was a member of the Beer and Culture Society, a small group of academics, architects, and artists who later formed Allied Arts of Seattle, serving as its first president. The group pressured the Seattle City Council to create a Municipal Arts Commission, which laid the groundwork for building the Seattle Center and hosting the 1962 World's Fair.

Mr. Detlie designed a number of Seattle buildings, including Children's Orthopedic Hospital, several University of Washington buildings, and Temple De Hirsch. Detlie also wrote and lectured on religious architecture and was a painter.

Mr. Detlie and his second wife, Virginia Crowell, whom he married in 1946, left Seattle in 1960 after the death of their 3-year-old son, Christopher. Detlie went on to become a noted architect in Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Honolulu, before retiring near Palm Springs in 1974. His first marriage (1940-1943), to the film actress Veronica Lake, ended in divorce.