Benjamin C Thompson
  Conventional boundaries were not part of Mr. Thompson's practice, for
he was just as much an advocate as an architect; of vital cities, human
commerce, lively design and good eating. "For art to be part of our life we must live with it, not just go to
museums," Mr. Thompson said in a 1963 interview in The New Yorker. "In a
way, things like museums and Lincoln Center kill art and music. Art is not
for particular people but should be in everything you do -- in cooking
and, God knows, in the bread on the table, in the way everything is
done." As crowded today as ever, the Faneuil Hall Marketplace offered a
formula repeated so many times — even by Mr. Thompson himself at the South
Street Seaport in Manhattan, Harborplace in Baltimore and Union Station in
Washington — that it is difficult now to recall how radical the notion
once was that a dilapidated, moribund inner-city locale could be remade as
a vibrant, popular, round-the-clock gathering place. "It was food, it was the culture of food, it was the design of objects
that surround us in our daily lives and the buildings that sold them," the
architect Moshe Safdie said yesterday about Mr. Thompson's career. "It was
an extraordinary celebration of design, life, urbanism and all the things
we tend to take for granted now. He was one of the forces that changed
America in that respect." Quincy Market, the first phase of the Faneuil Hall project, opened in
1976. Dedicated, in Mr. Thompson's words, to "the sight and smell of food,
the cornerstone of human commerce," the 150-year-old, 550-foot-long market
hall was filled with restaurants and specialty shops where one could buy
fresh herbs, raw oysters, coffee beans and Chinese cooking supplies. "Shopping was the excuse, the stated activity," the architect David S.
Rockwell said yesterday, speaking of Mr. Thompson's work. "He was able to
combine getting developers interested in cities and bringing people
together as a way to celebrate the pleasure inherent in public
spaces." Mr. Thompson is "never one to settle for a single basket of
strawberries when he can make a splash with 20," the social historian Jane
Davison wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 1976 about Quincy Market,
"and he has encouraged vendors to achieve an effect often described but
seldom seen — 'gay profusion.' " He had already introduced America to the bold, dazzling geometric and
floral patterns of Marimekko fabrics from Finland, which were among the
highlights of the D/R stores' offerings from Europe and Japan. Bright and cleanly styled home furnishings and accessories are almost
everywhere now, but four decades ago there were only a handful of stores
where they could be found, most notably the D/R outlets in Cambridge and
San Francisco and at 53 East 57th Street in Manhattan. "I believe the furnishing of the interior is part of architecture," Mr.
Thompson said in 1963, when D/R opened in Manhattan. "By -- call it
environment, if you will -- I wanted to show people the next step." Mr. Thompson was born in St. Paul, Minn., and graduated from Yale
University in 1941, after which he served in the Navy. His wife, Jane McC. Thompson, was also his partner in many ventures,
including the restaurant Harvest in Cambridge. She survives him, as do his children, Anthony, of Washington; Nicholas,
of Belmont, Mass.; Deborah, of Lexington, Mass.; Marina, of Nahant, Mass.;
and Benjamin Jr., of Cambridge; two stepchildren, Sheila McCullough of
Northampton, Mass., and Allen McCullough of Brooklyn; and 10
grandchildren. After World War II, Mr. Thompson and six colleagues founded TAC, the
Architects Collaborative, in Cambridge. They were joined by Walter
Gropius, a leading figure at the Bauhaus, whom Mr. Thompson succeeded in
1963 as chairman of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. After 20 years at TAC, Mr. Thompson founded Benjamin Thompson and
Associates. His five-story, all-glass showcase for Design Research opened
in Cambridge in 1970. Architectural Record said the transparent structure
"points the way to a method of glass building that could create a warmer
city, adding color and light and optimism to the life of the streets." But Mr. Thompson lost control of Design Research soon thereafter. The
Manhattan store closed in 1979. The Cambridge building now houses Crate
& Barrel. Mr. Thompson's national reputation was earned in a series of waterfront
projects with the developer James W. Rouse, beginning with Faneuil Hall
and including Harborplace of 1980, the South Street Seaport of 1985 and
the Bayside Marketplace in Miami and Jacksonville Landing in Jacksonville,
Fla., both of 1987. Although the festival marketplace formula is now criticized for
replacing diversity with homogeneity, and for eroding the distinction
between urban and suburban, public and private, it was conceived as the
answer to the serious shortcomings of urban renewal by bulldozer. As Quincy Market opened in 1976, Mr. Thompson said, "The problems of
the cities, how to create a new city center in practically every city in
the country, is the greatest issue facing the country
today." |
enjamin C. Thompson, an architect whose exuberant re-creation of
Faneuil Hall in Boston inspired festival marketplaces around the country
and whose Design Research International stores have influenced home
furnishings to this day, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass.
He was 84.
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