Thomas S. Marvel (1935-2015) was born in Newburgh, NY to Gordon S. Marvel and Madeline Jova and was raised in Washingtonville, NY both in Orange County in the Hudson River Valley. His father was an architect as were previous generations of the Marvel family who were in one way or another involved in architecture and design. He once said; “I was born to be an architect, never did I wish to be anything else.” Regarding his life in the tropics he would also later say, “Puerto Rico and I found each other early in my career, there was a sense of returning to the Caribbean as my mother’s family had roots in Guadeloupe and Cuba in the 19th century.”

In 1956 Marvel received a Bachelor in Arts degree from Dartmouth College, he later studied architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and obtained a master’s degree in architecture. After graduating from Harvard he moved to Raleigh, NC where he worked at the office of his father-in-law Richard Buckminster Fuller Jr., and then at Nelson A. Rockefeller’s International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC) in New York City. In 1959 he came to San Juan to design low cost housing, which was an IBEC specialty in many developing countries. At IBEC he was instrumental in the development of several housing developments among them Lomas Verdes in Bayamón, Altamesa in San Juan and Bairoa in Caguas. He stayed on the island and in 1960, with two fellow workers at IBEC named Antonio Torres and Pedro Beauchamp, established his first partnership to practice architecture; Torres, Beauchamp & Marvel. In 1963 William Reed, another fellow worker at IBEC joined the firm.

His practice was very successful, he designed notable buildings including the Santa Mónica Condominium in the Condado area of San Juan (1963), the Beauchamp residence in Rio Piedras in 1964, the Marvel residence in Santurce in 1965, the West Indies Advertising building in Puerta de Tierra), the Busó-García residence in Miramar in 1987, the Shelley residence in Dorado in 1987 the Centro Europa in Santurce in 1988, the Caguas City Hall in 2009, the Bayamón City Hall in 1980 for a long time the only building in Latin America built over an avenue, the Education Building at the University of Puerto Rico, the convent for Carmelite Nuns in Trujillo Alto in 1969, the U.S. Federal Courthouse in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and U.S. embassies in Guatemala and Costa Rica.  He taught at the University of Puerto Rico School of Architecture established in 1966,

Marvel authored three books and wrote many articles in local and regional publications. During thirty four years of his lifetime, Marvel researched to a great extent the life and work of Antonin Nechodoma, his research was published in one of his books titled Antonin Nechodoma Architect, 1877-1928 - The Prairie School in the Caribbean in 1993. In it Marvel makes it clear Nechodoma did not copy Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs but explains how he adapted and modified it to suit a completely different region, landscape and climate.

Current pictures of his work are forthcoming.