He served 15 years as the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. His firm, Polshek Partnership Architects, was founded in 1963 and is best known for its renovations and expansions of public buildings. Polshek himself is unusual among top-tier architects for taking the position that architecture is more craft than fine art. His completed works include: Carnegie Hall, New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.