If Hugh Hardy, who died last week at 84, had never designed anything but theaters—his specialty during a 50-year career—he would still be known as an architect of extraordinary range. That’s because his performance spaces varied radically, from the renovated Radio City Music Hall, where he captured the art deco exuberance of the 1930s, to the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, home to Theater for a New Audience, in Brooklyn. That stripped down, high-tech venue, utterly unlike Radio City or the other historic theaters that Hardy renovated, is an optical and acoustical triumph.

Mr. Hardy died of a cerebral hemorrhage Friday morning. On Wednesday evening, he had fallen while getting out cab before a performance at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea. Mr. Hardy had created the Joyce, a favored venue for dance performances, thirty-five years earlier.