Hugh Hardy; breathed life into landmarks . By David W. Dunlap New York
Times . NEW YORK - Hugh Hardy, an architect who breathed exuberant new
life into some of New York City's most storied theatrical landmarks,
among them Radio City Music Hall and the New Amsterdam Theater, died
Thursday in Manhattan of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 84. You have
felt Mr. Hardy's ebullient approach if you have ever taken in a show at
the New Victory Theater on 42nd Street or the Majestic Theater in
downtown Brooklyn, sought directions at the gingerbread information
kiosk in Central Park, dined in the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center
or Guastavino's under the Queensboro Bridge or - before Sept. 11, 2001
- at Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center. You have seen
his masterly use of dramatic gesture if you have walked by the
townhouse at 18 W. 11th St. in Greenwich Village, destroyed by an
explosion in 1970 when it was being used by radicals as a bomb factory
and rebuilt with a brick facade that seems to pivot - clearly signaling
the disruption of the tranquil row. What they have in common is Mr.
Hardy's affection not just for the past but also for showmanship,
nurtured by his early association with theatrical set and lighting
designer Jo Mielziner. Mr. Hardy headed three architectural practices
of his own: Hugh Hardy & Associates, formed in 1962; Hardy Holzman
Pfeiffer Associates, formed in 1967 with Malcolm Holzman and Norman
Pfeiffer; and H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, formed in 2004.
Although Mr. Hardy's firms were best known for renovations and
restorations, they have left some distinctive marks on the Manhattan
and Brooklyn skylines. The most jewel-like is the Claire Tow Theater on
top of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, on which Mr.
Hardy had worked in the early 1960s, mediating between Mielziner, the
stage designer for the Beaumont, and Eero Saarinen, its architect. The
most commented on is 420 W. 42nd St., a 40-story apartment tower with a
facade of alternating horizontal stripes in cream and dark purple
brick. Neighbors call it the zebra building or the Oreo cookie
building. That was fine with Mr. Hardy. "The Chrysler Building is at
the other end of the street," he told The New York Times in 2001, "and
the patterning and decoration here is meant to have its own pizazz and
reflect the energy of 42nd Street. "I am tempted to say what it all
comes down to is that for Hugh, all architecture was theater," Paul
Goldberger, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a professor of design
at the New School and a former architecture critic for The New York
Times, said in an e-mail Friday. "I don't think any architect has
better embodied the spirit of New York than Hugh, not only through his
work but also through everything he thought and wrote and did,"
Goldberger said. "Every one of us has lived more intensely in New York
because of Hugh, understood the city better because of him, and loved
the city more because of him. Robert A.M. Stern, who chronicled much of
Mr. Hardy's work in his definitive architectural histories, "New York
1960" and "New York 2000," said, "In a profession that frequently takes
itself too seriously, Hugh sparkled with wit. Mr. Hardy married
architect Tiziana Spadea in 1965. They were "the Nick and Nora Charles
of a certain New York set, a group of people who are involved in
helping to ensure a future for New York as rich in magic as its
nostalgia-tinged past," Julie Iovine wrote in 1997 in the Times.
