Remembering Robert A.M. Stern, an architect who discovered possibility in the past

For many decades, the skyline of New York was a testament to the unyielding belief of its architects. Then there was Robert A.M. Stern, who died 27 November at the age of 86, a gentleman rebel whose buildings were as distinctly grand and buttoned-up as his chalk-striped suits.

His architecture, often dismissed at first glance as mere homage, was in fact a meticulously executed argument. Stern’s style, perhaps, is best exemplified in 15 Central Park West, a building, completed in 2010, that featured 1920s-style setbacks and a glass-enclosed, copper-domed lobby. It was ‘something new that doesn’t look too new,’ as architecture critic Paul Goldberger put it.

The building, however, was more than a piece of historical pastiche. Fifteen Central Park West was, in its success, a profound and highly profitable rebuke of modernism. Its limestone façade, its generous floor plans and its overt deference to the pre-war ideal made it an instant companion to the ultra-luxury skyscrapers lining ‘Billionaire’s Row’ — a building that didn’t merely reject the style of modernism, but rejected its entire ethos of social progress and democratic aesthetics. It forced a conversation, in economic terms that even the most dismissive critics could not ignore, about whether architecture’s primary obligation was to social innovation or to market-driven luxury. This argument was a counterpoint to the ideology of Stern's predecessors, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, as well as contemporaries like Frank Gehry and Robert Venturi.

But the easy visual shorthand of cornices and copper domes — the very details that made his work an immediate sensation and an instant target — obscures the far more profound and enduring challenge Stern posed, a challenge that was primarily intellectual and institutional, not merely aesthetic. In the late 1960s and through the ‘80s, his calculated revival of historical motifs — a hallmark of the nascent postmodern movement — was an act of architectural rebellion. Stern’s vast and varied portfolio included the glassy Comcast Center (Philadelphia) and the picturesque Schwarzman Center at Yale University (New Haven), all while his firm shaped the residential luxury market from coast to coast with projects like the striking Tribeca Park (New York City) and the monumental Clarendon (Boston).

For Stern, what was past was prologue. The intentional use of architectural memory—the very engine of his work—was the ultimate challenge to an architectural establishment that wanted nothing to do with history. As architect Daniel Libeskind tells Wallpaper*, Stern struck him as someone who was ‘consistently informed by history and context, qualities I greatly admired in his oeuvre.’ This intellectual battle was the surprising link to modernism: by forcefully challenging it, Stern broadened the definition of what architecture could be, providing the cultural space for eclecticism to flourish.

The story of Robert Arthur Morton Stern begins in Brooklyn, where he was born in 1939 to Sidney Stern and Sonya Cohen. Despite his lower-middle-class upbringing, Stern set his sights, early and deliberately, beyond the borough. A true New Yorker, he secured his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1960 before venturing to New Haven for his intellectual refining, earning a Master of Architecture from Yale University in 1965—a place where he would one day serve as the storied Dean of Architecture. He married Lynn Gimbel Solinger (which ended in divorce) and together they raised his son, Nicholas S. G. Stern, all while he built his influential practice.

Early in his career, Stern found a powerful academic mentor in the famed Yale historian Vincent Scully, whose teachings encouraged him to look past the dogma of modernism and reconnect with architecture’s history. After graduation, Stern spent time in the office of Richard Meier, before officially founding Robert A.M. Stern Architects (often abbreviated as RAMSA) in 1969.

Stern later returned to Yale in 1988, where he served for nearly two decades as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture. Stern, the master of traditional form, simultaneously became the master curator of contemporary discourse. ‘He was, first and foremost, a man of debate,’ says Nader Tehrani, principal of NADAAA and a visiting professor at Yale. ‘The standard of excellence at Yale emerged as a result of the discursive mortar he created himself, translating intellectual platforms and building bridges between various voices.’

It’s a legacy that architect Deborah Berke, founder of TenBerke and Stern’s successor at Yale, says she’s sought to build upon, both on and off campus. ‘Bob supported our public programs... ensuring that this spirit of discourse would not be limited to faculty and students but extend to the profession and the general public,’ she says.

Over the course of his career, Stern established himself as a prolific writer, authoring or co-authoring more than 25 books, most recently, a five-part series on New York’s architectural history and the sprawling urban study, Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City (2013). These literary efforts were, in essence, his public campus: a means of ensuring his arguments reached beyond the Ivory Tower.

It is tempting to distill Robert A.M. Stern’s career to a simple architectural binary: the grand traditionalist versus the modern reformer. Yet his most enduring contribution lies not in the style he imposed on New York’s skyline, but in the intellectual eclecticism he imposed on its future architects.

‘He operated out of a mix of charm and selfishness,’ Goldberger reflected in a recent essay for the New York Times, ‘loving the intellectual exchange of genuine friendship, and knowing how much his own intellect depended on the constant supply of fresh air that smart people, and particularly smart younger people, would provide him with.’

Stern may have used stone and brick to dress his buildings, but he also wielded a vast knowledge of history to fortify architectural thought — that precedent was possibility.