James Lawrence, IV

James Lawrence Jr., 87, architect who helped guard region's soul

By Peter J.Howe
GL0BE STAFF
and Edgar J. Driscoll Jr.
SPECIAL TO THE GL0BE

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-boston-globe/24375342/

James Lawrence Jr., an architect and civic leader whose sense of compassion and love of beauty animated his lifelong efforts to build and improve Greater Boston, died Sunday at his Brookline farm. He was 87.

Over six decades of activism, Mr. Lawrence fought to save the elm trees of Commonwealth Avenue from high-rise construction and shaped public buildings as diverse as the Gardner Museum and the Mary Ellen McCormack housing development in South Boston.

Mr. Lawrence also helped lead arts, educational and civil-rights organizations and, with both tenacity and charm, threw himself into many local causes.

Among them was the 1979-80 fight to insist that the venerable Boston Athenaeum, which was then short of cash and negotiating to sell famed portraits of George and Martha Washington to the National Portrait Gallery, arrange a joint-custody deal keeping the paintings in Boston half the time.

The Boston Society of Architects in 1987 presented Mr. Lawrence with its lifetime achievement Award of Honor, declaring: "By the force of example and determined leadership, [he] has had and continues to have a profoundly positive influence... uncommonly thoughtful, uncommonly positive and uncommonly deserving of honor."

His public leadership was balanced by his private appreciation of the flow of seasons and the turns of nature, nurtured by his daily strolls around the family's Allandale Farm along the Brookline-Jamaica Plain line. It is Boston's only working produce farm, dotted by ponds and puddingstone hills, and Mr. Lawrence and his family made it their home since 1939.

Born in Milton, Mr. Lawrence graduated from Groton School and Harvard College in the class of 1929. After a year of graduate work at Cambridge University in England, he earned his master's in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1935. He served in the Army Air Force for 3 years during World War II, principally in the European theater of operations with the 8th Air Force. He attained the rank of major and was awarded the Bronze Star.

During his career in independent practice and with several firms, Mr. Lawrence was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1959 and in 1976 was named a Benjamin Franklin Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Friends said Mr. Lawrence was fond of quoting - and indeed took as his credo - Winston Churchill's words: "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us."

Mr. Lawrence won the 1958 Boston Arts Festival Award for the Scusset Beach pavilion near the Cape Cod Canal. He designed several buildings at North Adams State College and played a key role in designing the Mary Ellen McCormack development, known today as Boston's premier public housing.

In the 1960s, Mr. Lawrence took a major role in urging initially resistant city officials to conduct a design competition for the new City Hall at the former Scollay Square. While president of the Boston Society of Architects in 1961-63, he also led the campaign against construction of high-rise buildings on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay and advocated legislation to order urban utility lines buried underground.

Francis W. Hatch, the former legislator and 1978 gubernatorial candidate from Beverly Farms, yesterday recalled Mr. Lawrence's role in keeping the Washington portraits in Boston as an example of both his passionate civic-mindedness and his good nature.

"If he had a concern, he just waded right in with it," said Hatch, whom Mr. Lawrence prevailed upon to sign a petition urging the Athenaeum not to let the portraits go permanently to Washington, D.C. "It didn't matter with whom he was feuding. He never got nasty. But he really didn't care, as long as he believed in the principle, who was on the receiving end of his criticisms," Hatch said.

Ultimately the museum and the National Portrait Gallery worked out an agreement that has the portraits spending alternating three- ' year periods at the Museum of Fine Arts here and in Washington.

Another of Mr. Lawrence's interests was in civil rights. A committed lifelong Democrat, he served for more than 30 years as a member of the New England Committee of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, receiving the group's Thurgood Marshall Award in the 1970s.

Among other civic involvements, Mr. Lawrence was a trustee of Wellesley College and an honorary overseer of the Museum of Fine Arts. He was associated with the English Speaking Union, the New England Opera Theater Inc., the Massachusetts Art Commission, a 1946 state emergency housing commission and the Visiting Committee of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Mr. Lawrence was also a member of The Country Club in Brookline, the Tavern Club, and the Union Boat Club.

He leaves his wife, the former Frances L. Weeks Hallowell; three sons and a daughter by his first wife, the former Martina L. Brandegee, who died in 1959: James 3d of Baltimore, Edward P. of Brookline, Robert P. of San Francisco and Martina Lee Albright of Brookline; a sister, Dorothy McKenzie Stephens of Sarasota, Fla., and Vermont; a brother, John, of Hamilton; and nine [sic] grandchildren. A memorial service will be held on May 7.

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James Lawrence Jr., Architect And Preservationist, Dies at 87

By Ronald Sullivan
Feb. 17, 1995

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/17/obituaries/james-lawrence-jr-arc...

February 17, 1995, Section D, Page 17

James Lawrence Jr., an architect who designed a number of public structures in the Boston area and was a leading preservationist of the city's natural beauty and historical landmarks, died on Jan. 29 at his home in Brookline, Mass. He was 87.

In a period that spanned 60 years, Mr. Lawrence helped lead the fight to protect Back Bay's stately elm trees on Commonwealth Avenue from threatened high-rise construction and he advocated legislation to require city utility lines to be buried.

He also helped forge a compromise that allowed the financially troubled Boston Athenaeum to keep its famous portraits of George and Martha Washington in Boston by having them shared for alternating three-year periods by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

As an architect, he played a key role in designing the Mary Ellen McCormack public-housing development in South Boston, which is widely regarded as the city's most impressive housing project.

He also designed the Gothic-style greenhouses at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, as well as the museum's cafe, shop and library.

For over 30 years, he served as a member of the New England committee of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; he received the organization's Thurgood Marshall Award in the 1970's.

Mr. Lawrence was born in Milton, Mass. He graduated from Harvard University in 1929, and in 1935, he received a master's degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During World War II, he served as a major in the Army Air Forces.

He was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and in 1976 he was named a Benjamin Franklin Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Mr. Lawrence's first wife, Martina, died in 1959.

He is survived by his wife, Frances; three sons and a daughter from his first marriage, James, of Baltimore, Edward, of Brookline, Robert, of San Francisco, and Martina Lee Albright of Brookline; three stepchildren, Roger Hallowell Jr., Beatrice Hallowell Edgar and Christian Hallowell; a sister, Dorothy Mckenzie Stephens, of Sarasota, Fla.; a brother, John, of Hamilton, Mass., and seven grandchildren.