Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg[1] on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario, to parents Sadie Thelma (née Kaplanski/Caplan) and Irving Goldberg.[6] His father was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish parents, and his mother was a Polish Jewish immigrant.[7][8][9] A creative child, he was encouraged by his grandmother, with whom he would build little cities out of scraps of wood.[10] With these scraps from her husband's hardware store, she entertained him for hours, building imaginary houses and futuristic cities on the living room floor.[6]