Page 41 - MM July2018

The top of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Atlanta, designed by Mr. Portman. Credit Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Mr. Portman scoffed, arguing that open spaces in congested cities relieved anxieties. Influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, who harmonized structures with people and surroundings, Mr. Portman said his own buildings, especially hotels, were oases within cities, designed to enhance the experiences of the people who
used them.
“Anyone can build a building and put rooms in it,” he told The Times in 2011. “But
we should put human beings at the head of our thought processes. You want to hopefully spark their enthusiasm.
Like riding in a glass elevator: Everyone talks on a glass elevator. You get on a closed-in elevator, everyone looks down at their shoes. A glass elevator lets people’s spirits expand. Architecture should be
a symphony.”
Colleagues said Mr. Portman, like his buildings, was proudly self-contained.
Tall, soft-spoken, with a gentle smile and 30 |
wavy hair, he worked incessantly, was not given to small talk and never shed his slight air of Old South formality.
In a profession that regarded architecture and real estate development as a conflict of interest, he aggressively pursued
both, designing buildings while his firm bought property and arranged financing and construction for projects that required partners and millions of dollars from lenders. At first, no hotel chain would touch his ideas. Even in Atlanta, few accepted his vision of a
redeemable downtown.
But the Peachtree Center in Atlanta was
a spectacular success: 14 blocks of office towers, hotels and shopping arcades opened in 1961 with the Merchandise Mart, a wholesale complex that lured hordes
of buyers. The Hyatt Regency was built
in 1967 to accommodate them. It made
Mr. Portman famous, revolutionized hotel construction and spurred Peachtree to
completion. It was a key to the downtown renaissance and changed Atlanta’s view of itself.
“Portman saw his mission as making the city safe for the middle class,” Mr. Goldberger wrote in 1996, “and he did so almost too well, for he filled Atlanta with buildings that brought a kind of suburban mall mentality to the center of downtown.”
John Calvin Portman Jr. was born in Walhalla, S.C., on Dec. 4, 1924, to
John Calvin and Edna Rochester Portman. His father was a government worker, his mother a beautician. He grew up in Atlanta, where he played football and graduated in
1943 from Tech High School.
In 1944, Mr. Portman married Joan Newton. They had six children. Besides his wife,
he is survived by four sons, Michael,
John C. III, Jeffrey and Jarel; a daughter, Jana Simmons; three sisters, Glenda Dodrill, Anne Davis and Joy Roberts;