(By David W. Dunlap – urban treasure at the NY Times)

With the recent death of John Belle, New York City has lost an architect who conveyed a genial joy in resuscitating the masterworks of his predecessors. That made him an appealingly modest figure in a room full of big architectural egos, since he was at his best when his own interventions were least obvious.

New York has also lost a link to the intellectual crucible of the 1960s, when Jane Jacobs and others demanded that architects stop obliterating the past and, instead, take time to understand the many ways in which people were well served by older buildings and neighborhoods.