Jacques André Fouilhoux was a French-born architect active in the United States from 1904 to 1945. He is most well known for his work on Tribune Tower in Chicago; Rockefeller Center; early skyscrapers such as the Daily News Building and 30 Rockefeller Plaza; and the 1939 World's Fair in New York, for which he designed the central Trylon and Perisphere. Many of his early works are also listed in the National Historic Register, including 705 Davis Street Apartments and Wickersham Apartments in Portland, Oregon. According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, Fouilhoux has received less attention than partners such as John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, but was "known as an astute engineer and a painstaking supervisor and his work gained the respect of his collaborators."

The Trylon and Perisphere were two monumental modernistic structures designed by architects Wallace Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux that were together known as the Theme Center of the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Perisphere was a tremendous sphere, 180 feet (55 m) in diameter, connected to the 610-foot (190 m) spire-shaped Trylon by what was at the time the world's longest escalator. The Perisphere housed a diorama by Henry Dreyfuss called Democracity which, in keeping with the fair's theme "The World of Tomorrow", depicted a utopian city-of-the-future. The interior display was viewed from above on a moving sidewalk, while a multi-image slide presentation was projected on the dome of the sphere. After exiting the Perisphere, visitors descended to ground level on the third element of the Theme Center, the Helicline, a 950-foot-long (290 m) spiral ramp that partially encircled the Perisphere.