"Every urban architecture community has its great civic boosters. Think, historically, of Daniel Burnham in Chicago or Bernard Maybeck in the San Francisco Bay Area. For the past half-century, few architects in New York City had better claim to that role than Hugh Hardy, FAIA, who died on March 16. According to The New York Times, he collapsed during a performance at the Joyce Theater, one of the many theaters that he had designed or renovated, and subsequently died at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital.

A true gentleman of the old school, Hardy was born in Majorca, Spain, while his well-heeled parents were temporarily living abroad. He attended Deerfield Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts, and Princeton University, where he obtained his professional degree in architecture. Theaters and restoration work were specialties of Hardy and his three successive firms, Hugh Hardy & Associates , Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, and H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture. Hardy Holzman Pheiffer, which Hardy co-founded with Malcolm Holzman, FAIA, and Norman Pfeiffer, FAIA, won the Architecture Firm Award from the AIA in 1981."