Students, Colleagues, Family Grieve for Architecture Prof

Mourners overflowed into the balcony at the memorial service held in St. Paul’s Chapel Monday for Columbia architecture professor Paul Spencer Byard.

The service for Byard, who died on July 15 after serving for almost a decade as the director of historic preservation at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, featured speakers ranging from University President Lee Bollinger to Byard’s daughter Eliza Starr Byard. Those present lauded Byard’s enthusiasm for both his family and his work.

“Paul was in love with buildings,” said Mark Wigley, Dean of the School of Architecture, “deeply and passionately.”

Paul Spencer Byard graduated from the architecture school at Columbia in 1977. Also a graduate of Yale, Harvard Law School, and Clare College, University of Cambridge, he worked in both architecture and law and served in the Architectural League of New York and the Municipal Art Society of New York. From old law school classmates to the master of Clare College, the friends gathered in St. Paul’s represented every aspect of his life.

“Paul was a hurricane through thoughts, words, ideas and mind,” said Ray Dovell, his partner at Platt Byard Dovell White Architects.

Called by his other partner Samuel White the “Keeper of the Museum of Everything,” Byard pioneered the joint studio at the architecture school, a program that allows architects and preservationists to work together on a joint project to facilitate their understanding of each other’s disciplines.

“Columbia was a cornerstone of his life,” his widow Rosalie Byard said afterwards during the reception at Low Library. She spoke of how Byard “became really involved in imagining an ambitious life for his students” and persuaded a few who had come to Columbia to study to become architects.

Byard’s passion for teaching carried over into his home. His daughter described him as “a person of bright passions, enthusiasm, and high expectations” who was “always interested in showing us [his children] everything.”

Rosalie Genevro, Byard’s coworker at the Architectural League of New York, agreed. “His energy, ebullience, and enthusiasm was a conscious choice on his part,” she said.

Many attendees said they found the service comforting—Rosalie Byard said that the speakers’ anecdotes accurately reflected “the person I was married to for 43 years.”

But, as Charles Platt, also of Platt Byard Dovell White, said: “He [Byard] should stand here expressing our thoughts. He would dazzle us.”

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