James Gardner -- Frank Williams: He Took Manhattan

There was a special poignancy for me in the news that on Feb. 25, the architect Frank Williams succumbed to cancer at the age of 73. This feeling went beyond the fact that I counted him as a friend (indeed, over the years, I had done some writing for his firm). It had to do with an appreciation that, in many respects, Frank was the quintessential New York architect, the sort who is responsible for most of the towering structures that inhabit the modern metropolis. Though Frank was little known to the proverbial man in the street, he was well-known inside the profession, and well regarded by some of the city's foremost developers. You could make a strong case that Frank Williams and Partners was more responsible than any other firm for how Manhattan's skyline changed between the mid-1980s and the new millennium. During that time, Frank completed about 20 tall and imposing skyscrapers and high-rises that now define the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side and Midtown. Just by looking out the window of his apartment in the Park Belvedere on 79th Street and Columbus, which he designed in 1985, Frank could see seven buildings he had worked on, among them the Trump Palace, the Four Seasons Hotel and 515 Park Avenue, perhaps the last monumental residential building that will rise on that avenue.