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{{short description|American architect}}
{{Multiple issues|refimprove=January 2009|POV=January 2009|COI=January 2009|cleanup=January 2009}}


{{more citations needed|date=January 2009}}
'''David A. Wallace, FAICP, AIA, PP''' (1917 &ndash; July 19, 2004) was an influential urban planner and [[architect]] who founded the firm of [[Wallace Roberts & Todd]] (WRT) with [[Ian McHarg]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Obituaries; David A. Wallace, 87; Planner Focused on Urban Renewal |url=http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/667169501.html?dids=667169501:667169501&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jul+21%2C+2004&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=Obituaries%3B+David+A.+Wallace%2C+87%3B+Planner+Focused+on+Urban+Renewal&pqatl=google |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=2004-06-21 |accessdate=23 December 2008 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Almanac of Architecture & Design, 2005 |last=Cramer |first=James P. |coauthors=Jennifer Evans Yankopolus |year=2005 |publisher=[[Greenway Communications]] |isbn=0967547792 |page=677 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=1j_KxJeqpsUC&pg=RA2-PA677&dq=%22David+A.+Wallace%22 }}</ref>


'''David A. Wallace''' FAICP, AIA, PP (1917 &ndash; July 19, 2004) was an urban planner and [[architect]] who co-founded, with [[Ian McHarg]], the firm of [[Wallace Roberts & Todd]] (WRT).<ref>{{cite news |title=Obituaries; David A. Wallace, 87; Planner Focused on Urban Renewal |url=https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/667169501.html?dids=667169501:667169501&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jul+21%2C+2004&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=Obituaries%3B+David+A.+Wallace%2C+87%3B+Planner+Focused+on+Urban+Renewal&pqatl=google |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=2004-06-21 |accessdate=23 December 2008 |archive-date=2012-10-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121018142159/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/667169501.html?dids=667169501:667169501&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jul+21,+2004&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=Obituaries;+David+A.+Wallace,+87;+Planner+Focused+on+Urban+Renewal&pqatl=google |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Almanac of Architecture & Design, 2005 |last=Cramer |first=James P. |author2=Jennifer Evans Yankopolus |year=2005 |publisher=[[Greenway Communications]] |isbn=0-9675477-9-2 |page=677 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1j_KxJeqpsUC&dq=%22David+A.+Wallace%22&pg=RA2-PA677 }}</ref>
In an illustrious career that spanned the second half of the 20th century, David A. Wallace contributed significantly to the fields of planning and urban design as a professional, as a builder of communities, and as a teacher. His accomplishments in planning serve as models for the profession. Beginning in Philadelphia, PA in 1953, under Mayor Joseph S. Clark, Wallace led a citywide urban redevelopment evaluation that resulted in the Central Urban Renewal Area (CURA) Report. In it he established a new strategy for overall redevelopment that targeted catalytic actions to strengthen communities and downtown. CURA became a model for other cities, notably Baltimore, MD.


==Early career==
In 1957, Wallace moved to Baltimore and headed a team to prepare a plan for the city’s ailing central business district. Responding to the need for immediate action, the team designed the {{convert|22|acre|m2|adj=on}} Charles Center, a mixed-use project that started the revitalization. Praised by Jane Jacobs in the ''[[Architectural Forum]]'' as the New Heart for Downtown Baltimore, Charles Center also set the stage for Baltimore’s famous Inner Harbor.


Wallace's career spanned the second half of the 20th century. Beginning in [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]], in 1953, under Mayor [[Joseph S. Clark]], Wallace led a citywide urban redevelopment evaluation that resulted in the Central Urban Renewal Area Report (CURA), which established a new strategy for overall redevelopment that targeted catalytic actions to strengthen communities and downtown. CURA became a model for several other cities, notably [[Baltimore, Maryland]].{{citation needed|date=August 2019}}
Wallace returned to Philadelphia to teach at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Fine Arts as professor of planning and urban design. In 1963, he co-authored with Ian L. McHarg the benchmark “Plan for the Green Spring and Worthington Valleys, the {{convert|80|sqmi|km2|adj=on}} northwest sector of the Baltimore region. The key idea in the plan was the preservation of the valleys as largely undeveloped open space, and the diversion of development to the surrounding plateaus. Lewis Mumford cited the plan as “brilliantly conceived… a most important contribution to regional planning.” McHarg republished the plan as a chapter in his seminal book Design with Nature and wrote in his autobiography, A Quest for Life, “By the 1970’s Wallace was, indisputably, the dominant city planner in the United States. The valleys remain open to this day.


In 1957, Wallace moved to [[Baltimore]] and headed a team to prepare a plan for the city's ailing [[central business district]], which had not had any major new construction projects since the end of the 1920s. Responding to the need for immediate action, the team designed the {{convert|22|acre|m2|adj=on}} [[Charles Center]], a 33-acre mixed-use project that started the revitalization. Approved by Baltimore City voters in a bond issue request for $25 million in the municipal elections of November 1958, the concept was strongly supported by two mayors of the city from different political parties: Democrat [[Thomas L. J. D'Alesandro, Jr.]] (1947-1959) and Republican [[Theodore R. McKeldin]], (1943-1947 and 1963-1967), as well as business, commercial and other civic leaders in the [[Greater Baltimore Committee]] and the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce. The Charles Center was praised by [[Jane Jacobs]] in the journal ''[[Architectural Forum]]'' as the "New Heart for Downtown Baltimore", and set the stage for the subsequent [[Inner Harbor]] project, a re-development of the city's old waterfront district and the [[Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore|Baltimore Harbor]].
When Wallace received the assignment to prepare the Inner Harbor Master Plan, also in 1963, he asked McHarg, architect/landscape architect William H. Roberts, and architect/urban designer Thomas A. Todd to join him in founding [[Wallace McHarg Roberts & Todd (WMRT)]]. With Wallace as partner in charge, the plan established the basic principles for development. Over the next 25 years Wallace and his partners were the designers of all of the Inner Harbor’s infrastructure, promenades, piers, bridges and fountains, and the design controls for all private development. The Inner Harbor has reportedly received more awards than any other comparable project in the United States.


Wallace returned to Philadelphia to teach at the [[University of Pennsylvania]]'s Graduate School of Fine Arts (now known as the [[University of Pennsylvania School of Design|School of Design]]) as professor of planning and urban design. In 1963, he co-authored, with [[Ian McHarg]], the ''Plan for the Green Spring and Worthington Valleys'', a {{convert|80|sqmi|km2|adj=on}} semi-rural area northwest of Baltimore in the suburban [[Baltimore County]]. The key idea in the Valleys Plan was the preservation of the valleys as largely undeveloped open space, and the diversion of development to the surrounding plateaus and to the east of the [[Baltimore-Harrisburg Expressway]] (Interstate 83). The plan was praised by [[Lewis Mumford]] as "brilliantly conceived", and was republished by McHarg as a chapter in his book ''Design with Nature''. McHarg wrote in his autobiography, ''A Quest for Life'', that by the 1970s, Wallace was "indisputably, the dominant city planner in the United States". The valleys northwest of Baltimore remain open and generally rural to this day.
Impressed by the Inner Harbor plan, Mayor John Lindsay and the city of New York retained WMRT in 1965 (with Whittelsey, Conklin and [[James Rossant|Rossant]] as local architects) to prepare a master plan for the moribund Lower Manhattan district. Excavation for the World Trade Center’s foundations was underway, and the plan was to prepare a response to the WTC’s impact. Wallace invented an urban design and growth modeling procedure that evaluated existing conditions, determined the susceptibility-to-change, forecast the probability-of-change, and proposed a design response. The catalytic idea in the Lower Manhattan Plan was to develop a predominantly residential community on land created by filling between the bulkhead and pier head lines at both Hudson and East Rivers, adjacent to the single-use commercial centers. Public walkways would be provided at the water’s edge, linked by pedestrian ways to the centers and subway stations. The districts’ elevated expressways would be depressed. The Lower Manhattan Plan won the New York Municipal Art Society’s Honor Award and was published in Progressive Architecture. The plan also established Wallace and his firm as the preeminent downtown planners and urban designers in the US for the next decade. Plans for the central areas of New Orleans, LA, Buffalo, NY, Miami, Orlando, and Jacksonville, FL, Oakland and Los Angeles, CA, and Baltimore’s MetroCenter followed, all employing Wallace’s growth modeling method combined with catalytic projects unique to each.


== Inner Harbor plan ==
The Lower Manhattan Plan’s (LMP) full public access to the rivers and continuous walkways at the water’s edge caught the eye of John Weingart, then director of New Jersey’s Division of Coastal Zone Management. Part of the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, his division had been assigned regulatory control over a {{convert|300|ft|m|adj=on}}-deep coastal waterfront, and he saw the LMP concept as applicable. He retained the newly formed [[Wallace Roberts & Todd]] (WRT), after [[Ian McHarg]] left the firm, to prepare the plan and develop design guidelines for the {{convert|18|mi|km|adj=on}}, nine-community facility. Mandated for both public and private developers, to date, 75% of the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway is completed or in planning.


When Wallace received the assignment to prepare the later Inner Harbor Master Plan, also in 1963, he asked McHarg, architect/landscape architect William H. Roberts and architect/urban designer Thomas A. Todd to join him in founding the partnership firm [[Wallace Roberts & Todd|Wallace McHarg Roberts & Todd]] (WMRT). With Wallace as partner in charge, the plan established the basic principles for development. Over the next 25 years Wallace and his partners were the designers of all of the Inner Harbor's infrastructure, promenades, piers, bridges and fountains, and the design controls for all private development. By 1980, with the addition of developer [[James Rouse]]'s "festival marketplaces" of [[Harborplace]] along the promenade, the project had become a well-known urban success story of the 1980s.
David Wallace received the John Harbeson Award from AIA Philadelphia for distinguished service to the profession in 2002 and the American Planning Association’s Distinguished Leadership Award in 2003. He was the author of Urban Planning/My Way, a memoir published by The Planners Press in 2004 that features case studies that examine the evolution of large-scale urban development in the 20th century.


== Lower Manhattan plan ==
Throughout his career, Wallace initiated and investigated new ideas through teaching, first at the University of Chicago, then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for 17 years. Through the network of his former students, staff, and the many people who have participated in his work as clients and stakeholders, he made a significant contribution to the profession and to the communities where he worked. In all, David Wallace was a true pioneer of planning practice, education, and theory whose work had a direct, significant, and positive impact on the field that endures to this day. This long-term impact can be seen not only in his own extant work, but in the work of others whom he has influenced.


Following the Inner Harbor plan, Mayor [[John Lindsay]] and the [[New York, New York|City of New York]] retained WMRT in 1965 (with Whittelsey, Conklin and [[James Rossant|Rossant]] as local architects) to prepare a master plan for the moribund [[Lower Manhattan]] district. Excavation for the [[World Trade Center (1973–2001)|World Trade Center]]'s foundations was underway, and the plan was to prepare a response to the WTC's impact. Wallace developed an urban design and growth modeling procedure that evaluated existing conditions, determined the susceptibility-to-change, forecast the probability-of-change, and proposed a design response. The catalytic idea in the Lower Manhattan Plan (LMP) was to develop a predominantly residential community on land created by filling between the bulkhead and pier head lines at both [[Hudson River|Hudson]] and [[East River (New York)|East Rivers]], adjacent to the single-use commercial centers. Public walkways would be provided at the water's edge, linked by pedestrian ways to the centers and subway stations. The districts' elevated expressways would be depressed. The LMP won the [[Municipal Art Society|Municipal Art Society of New York]]'s Honor Award and was published in ''Progressive Architecture''. Over the next decade, the firm developed plans for the central areas of [[New Orleans]], [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]] in New York, [[Miami]], [[Orlando, Florida|Orlando]], and [[Jacksonville]] in [[Florida]], [[Oakland]] and [[Los Angeles]] in [[California]], and [[Baltimore]]'s MetroCenter, all employing Wallace's growth modeling method combined with catalytic projects unique to each.
In 2008, both APA Pennsylvania and National APA recognized the importance of Wallace's contributions to the planning profession, as having significantly and positively redirected planning with long-term results, and selected him for the 2009 AICP National Planning Pioneer Award.

The LMP's full public access to the rivers and continuous walkways at the water's edge caught the attention of John Weingart, director of New Jersey's Division of Coastal Zone Management. Part of the [[New Jersey]] Department of Environmental Protection, his division had been assigned regulatory control over a {{convert|300|ft|m|adj=on}}-deep coastal waterfront, and he saw the LMP concept as applicable. He retained [[Wallace Roberts & Todd]] (after McHarg left the firm) to prepare the plan and develop design guidelines for the {{convert|18|mi|km|adj=on}}, nine-community facility. Mandated for both public and private developers, so far 75% of the [[Hudson River]] Waterfront Walkway is completed or in planning.

== Recognition ==

Wallace received the John Harbeson Award from AIA Philadelphia for distinguished service to the profession in 2002 and the [[American Planning Association]]'s Distinguished Leadership Award in 2003. He was the author of ''Urban Planning/My Way'', a memoir published by the Planners Press in 2004 that features case studies that examine the evolution of large-scale urban development in the 20th century. In 2008, both APA Pennsylvania and National APA selected Wallace for the 2009 AICP National Planning Pioneer Award, in recognition of his contributions to the planning profession, as having significantly and positively redirected planning with long-term results.

Wallace was also a teacher throughout his career, first at the [[University of Chicago]], then at the [[University of Pennsylvania]], where he taught for 17 years.


==References==
==References==

{{Reflist}}
{{Reflist}}


==Books==
==Books==

*''Urban Planning/My Way:From Baltimore's Inner Harbor to Lower Manhattan and Beyond'' David A. Wallace 2004 ISBN 1884829899
*''"Urban Planning/My Way:From Baltimore's Inner Harbor to Lower Manhattan and Beyond"'' by David A. Wallace, (2004), {{ISBN|1-884829-89-9}}


==External links==
==External links==
*[http://www.wrtdesign.com Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC (WRT) Website]
*[http://www.wrtdesign.com Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC (WRT) Website]
*[[Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT)|Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT) Wikipedia Page]]


{{Authority control}}
{{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->

| NAME =Wallace, David A.
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
| SHORT DESCRIPTION =
| DATE OF BIRTH = 1917
| PLACE OF BIRTH =
| DATE OF DEATH = July 19, 2004
| PLACE OF DEATH =
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wallace, David A.}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wallace, David A.}}
[[Category:1917 births]]
[[Category:1917 births]]
[[Category:2004 deaths]]
[[Category:2004 deaths]]
[[Category:American architects]]
[[Category:20th-century American architects]]
[[Category:Urban designers]]

Latest revision as of 04:46, 28 May 2024

David A. Wallace FAICP, AIA, PP (1917 – July 19, 2004) was an urban planner and architect who co-founded, with Ian McHarg, the firm of Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT).[1][2]

Early career

[edit]

Wallace's career spanned the second half of the 20th century. Beginning in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1953, under Mayor Joseph S. Clark, Wallace led a citywide urban redevelopment evaluation that resulted in the Central Urban Renewal Area Report (CURA), which established a new strategy for overall redevelopment that targeted catalytic actions to strengthen communities and downtown. CURA became a model for several other cities, notably Baltimore, Maryland.[citation needed]

In 1957, Wallace moved to Baltimore and headed a team to prepare a plan for the city's ailing central business district, which had not had any major new construction projects since the end of the 1920s. Responding to the need for immediate action, the team designed the 22-acre (89,000 m2) Charles Center, a 33-acre mixed-use project that started the revitalization. Approved by Baltimore City voters in a bond issue request for $25 million in the municipal elections of November 1958, the concept was strongly supported by two mayors of the city from different political parties: Democrat Thomas L. J. D'Alesandro, Jr. (1947-1959) and Republican Theodore R. McKeldin, (1943-1947 and 1963-1967), as well as business, commercial and other civic leaders in the Greater Baltimore Committee and the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce. The Charles Center was praised by Jane Jacobs in the journal Architectural Forum as the "New Heart for Downtown Baltimore", and set the stage for the subsequent Inner Harbor project, a re-development of the city's old waterfront district and the Baltimore Harbor.

Wallace returned to Philadelphia to teach at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts (now known as the School of Design) as professor of planning and urban design. In 1963, he co-authored, with Ian McHarg, the Plan for the Green Spring and Worthington Valleys, a 80-square-mile (210 km2) semi-rural area northwest of Baltimore in the suburban Baltimore County. The key idea in the Valleys Plan was the preservation of the valleys as largely undeveloped open space, and the diversion of development to the surrounding plateaus and to the east of the Baltimore-Harrisburg Expressway (Interstate 83). The plan was praised by Lewis Mumford as "brilliantly conceived", and was republished by McHarg as a chapter in his book Design with Nature. McHarg wrote in his autobiography, A Quest for Life, that by the 1970s, Wallace was "indisputably, the dominant city planner in the United States". The valleys northwest of Baltimore remain open and generally rural to this day.

Inner Harbor plan

[edit]

When Wallace received the assignment to prepare the later Inner Harbor Master Plan, also in 1963, he asked McHarg, architect/landscape architect William H. Roberts and architect/urban designer Thomas A. Todd to join him in founding the partnership firm Wallace McHarg Roberts & Todd (WMRT). With Wallace as partner in charge, the plan established the basic principles for development. Over the next 25 years Wallace and his partners were the designers of all of the Inner Harbor's infrastructure, promenades, piers, bridges and fountains, and the design controls for all private development. By 1980, with the addition of developer James Rouse's "festival marketplaces" of Harborplace along the promenade, the project had become a well-known urban success story of the 1980s.

Lower Manhattan plan

[edit]

Following the Inner Harbor plan, Mayor John Lindsay and the City of New York retained WMRT in 1965 (with Whittelsey, Conklin and Rossant as local architects) to prepare a master plan for the moribund Lower Manhattan district. Excavation for the World Trade Center's foundations was underway, and the plan was to prepare a response to the WTC's impact. Wallace developed an urban design and growth modeling procedure that evaluated existing conditions, determined the susceptibility-to-change, forecast the probability-of-change, and proposed a design response. The catalytic idea in the Lower Manhattan Plan (LMP) was to develop a predominantly residential community on land created by filling between the bulkhead and pier head lines at both Hudson and East Rivers, adjacent to the single-use commercial centers. Public walkways would be provided at the water's edge, linked by pedestrian ways to the centers and subway stations. The districts' elevated expressways would be depressed. The LMP won the Municipal Art Society of New York's Honor Award and was published in Progressive Architecture. Over the next decade, the firm developed plans for the central areas of New Orleans, Buffalo in New York, Miami, Orlando, and Jacksonville in Florida, Oakland and Los Angeles in California, and Baltimore's MetroCenter, all employing Wallace's growth modeling method combined with catalytic projects unique to each.

The LMP's full public access to the rivers and continuous walkways at the water's edge caught the attention of John Weingart, director of New Jersey's Division of Coastal Zone Management. Part of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, his division had been assigned regulatory control over a 300-foot (91 m)-deep coastal waterfront, and he saw the LMP concept as applicable. He retained Wallace Roberts & Todd (after McHarg left the firm) to prepare the plan and develop design guidelines for the 18-mile (29 km), nine-community facility. Mandated for both public and private developers, so far 75% of the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway is completed or in planning.

Recognition

[edit]

Wallace received the John Harbeson Award from AIA Philadelphia for distinguished service to the profession in 2002 and the American Planning Association's Distinguished Leadership Award in 2003. He was the author of Urban Planning/My Way, a memoir published by the Planners Press in 2004 that features case studies that examine the evolution of large-scale urban development in the 20th century. In 2008, both APA Pennsylvania and National APA selected Wallace for the 2009 AICP National Planning Pioneer Award, in recognition of his contributions to the planning profession, as having significantly and positively redirected planning with long-term results.

Wallace was also a teacher throughout his career, first at the University of Chicago, then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for 17 years.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Obituaries; David A. Wallace, 87; Planner Focused on Urban Renewal". Los Angeles Times. 2004-06-21. Archived from the original on 2012-10-18. Retrieved 23 December 2008.
  2. ^ Cramer, James P.; Jennifer Evans Yankopolus (2005). Almanac of Architecture & Design, 2005. Greenway Communications. p. 677. ISBN 0-9675477-9-2.

Books

[edit]
  • "Urban Planning/My Way:From Baltimore's Inner Harbor to Lower Manhattan and Beyond" by David A. Wallace, (2004), ISBN 1-884829-89-9
[edit]