I was saddened to hear that Robert A. M. Stern passed away on Thanksgiving. I had the privilege of working with Bob on The Philip Johnson Tapes. Those aren’t idle words: it truly was a privilege.
I first met Bob at the Philip Johnson symposium at Yale. I was rather surprised he had invited me, as I had been quite critical of his role in recuperating Johnson in the early 1970s, but that was the thing about Bob. He didn’t mind intelligent arguments; he hated stupidity. In contrast, he didn’t invite Franz Schulze, whose biography he felt was too sensationalistic, too eager to pander for sales, and too simplistic in its treatment of the history. It was my first symposium in which I was treated as an equal with the top figures in the field. In no small measure, that invitation led me to my position as director of the Network Architecture Lab at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.
Soon after, Joan Ockman, director of the Buell Center, asked if I would be willing to work with Bob to edit a series of tapes in which Stern—who had been director of the Buell Center in the 1980s—attempted an oral history of Johnson’s life. I listened to the first two hours and wholeheartedly agreed. This was fascinating material. Little did I know that as the tapes progressed, Johnson’s cardiac condition was deteriorating and the conversation would fall apart toward the end. But Bob and I soldiered on. I would spend three weeks editing a section, send it to him, and he would turn it around that evening from his house in Montauk. Bob’s recall of historical facts was second to none. It seemed to me that he knew every architect who had ever practiced in the city. He was a brilliant mind, and I enjoyed that time very much.
The last time that Bob and I had a chance to spend much time together was at a public conversation about Johnson with the late Henry Urbach in 2012. Henry said that we would have martinis after the conversation. “Oh no,” Bob said, “we will have them during the conversation.” And so it was. I will raise a martini to his memory, as well as to Henry’s tonight.