Architect and historian Robert A.M. Stern, 86, died on Nov. 27. Stern designed such buildings as 15 Central Park West, resorts for Disney World, the George W. Bush Center in Dallas, the Museum of the American Revolution, and Philadelphia’s Comcast Center, among many others. His style varied from gawd-awful glass and concrete slabs to really rather charming post-modern designs (520 Park, the Gerald R. Ford school in Michigan, and the Jacksonville Main Library in Florida are among his nicest works). From 1998-2016, Stern was the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture; he also coauthored some of my favorite coffee-table books, the New York 1880, New York 1930, etc., series. “I became an architect because I loved the buildings of my city, New York,” he said, “and imagined one day that I would make ones like them. The New York of my youth is to this day the principal subject of all my work in architecture.”
