Eleanor Platt
Eleanor Platt was an American sculptor.
A native of Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, Platt was a pupil of Arthur Lee. She studied from 1929 to 1933 at the Art Students League of New York. In 1940 she received the Chaloner Prize; in 1944 she was granted $1,000 from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1945 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Platt was noted for her busts of notable individuals; among her subjects were Louis D. Brandeis, Learned Hand, Albert Einstein, and Earl Warren. Platt was twice married; she divorced her first husband, Charles Flavin, and her second husband, Victor Russo, died in 1957.
Platt was found dead in her studio at the Park Plaza Hotel on West 77th Street in New York City on August 30, 1974. Her death was initially ascribed to heart failure, but it was later determined that she had been suffocated to death and raped by Calvin Jackson, a serial killer who had murdered eight other women, most in the Park Plaza where he also lived. She was survived by her mother, a sister, and a brother.
