Norval White *55

Norval White, an architect and co-author of the AIA Guide to New York City, died Dec. 26, 2009, of a heart attack. He was 83.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1949, White earned an M.F.A. in architecture from Princeton in 1955. In the early 1960s, he was a leader in the fight to save the original Penn Station. White was very proud of designing the subsidized Essex Terrace complex built in 1970 in East New York, Brooklyn.

White taught at Cooper Union until 1968 when he became head of the just-established City College School of Architecture. While he was the author of two other books, it was the AIA Guide (originally prepared for the 1967 American Institute of Architects’ national convention in NYC) that was his real literary legacy. He was the co-author with the late Elliot Willensky of this guidebook, which The New York Times called “authoritative, encyclopedic, opinionated, and constantly consulted.” The fifth edition is scheduled to be published this June.

White is survived by his wife, Camilla Crowe White, whom he married in 1992; and four sons from his first marriage to Joyce Leslie Lee, which ended in divorce.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.