John Belle, who died this week at 84, helped restore several of New York City’s most important buildings, including Grand Central Terminal and the soaring Enid Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden. Those efforts earned Belle and the firm he co-founded, Beyer Blinder Belle, a reputation as guardians of the city’s architectural treasures. But when the same firm answered a call for conceptual designs for the World Trade Center site, it was broadsided by criticism from the public and the profession.
Born in Cardiff, Wales, and educated in England, Belle moved to the United States in 1959, just in time to witness the destruction of cities by proponents of “urban renewal.” “I was determined to find a different way,” Belle later wrote. In 1968, after working for Jose Luis Sert and Victor Gruen, he started a firm with Richard L. Blinder and John Beyer. Inspired by the writings of Jane Jacobs, they focused not on “urban renewal” but on the actual renewal of historic buildings. But, Beyer said in a 2014 interview, many architects “thought we were crazy. The profession came to preservation very, very slowly.”
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