Robert A.M. Stern: A Master of Stylish Building

In his 60-year career, the architect Robert A.M. Stern designed museums; skyscraper condominiums—most famously 15 Central Park West in New York; a presidential library, and a good deal more. Above all, in his numerous houses, he revived the Shingle Style, the informal and flexible 19th-century vernacular that is the most American of architectural creations. It is therefore fitting that he died on Nov. 27, at age 86, on that most American of holidays, Thanksgiving.

Had he never designed a single building, he would still be remembered as one of the great historians of American architecture. He wrote or co-wrote at least 16 books, among them a brilliant monograph on George Howe and his “Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City,” a massive study of American urbanism. Most important is his monumental, multivolume history of New York’s built environment since the Civil War—the latest entry, “New York 2020: Architecture and Urbanism at the Beginning of a New Century,” appearing a month before his death.

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