Nowicki earned his place in the annals of architecture with a building constructed after his untimely death at age 40: the State Fair Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina, later renamed the J.S. Dorton Arena. Remembered as a contributor to architectural theory, he developed visionary plans for rebuilding Warsaw that never came to fruition and was at work on a new state capital in India when he died in a plane crash in 1950.