Allan Temko, San Fran critic and 1990 Pulitzer Prize for criticism died Wedensday. Temko was highly influential in downtown SF development, and authored such catchy critiques as resembles something "deposited by a concrete dog with square intestines." | sfgate
----------------------------------------------
Allan Temko, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Chronicle architecture critic who used his position to shape the Bay Area as profoundly as any developer, died Wednesday in Orinda. He was 81.
Mr. Temko, who had been in failing health, died of apparent congestive heart failure at the Orinda Convalescent Hospital.
The self-styled "activist critic" passed judgment with Olympian certainty on what was built and, most importantly, what was still up for grabs. In the process, his broadsides affected the design of everything from downtown shopping centers and office towers to bridges and BART stations.
"Without question he had more effect on people's interest in architecture and design in the Bay Area than anybody else," said Lawrence Halprin, the renowned landscape architect for such projects as Sea Ranch on the California coast. "We were very close, but in a funny way. I was always scared when he wrote about me."
Former Chronicle Executive Editor Matthew F. Wilson, who worked extensively with Mr. Temko, said, "Allan had a dramatic effect on the skyline of San Francisco and beyond. Architects, city planners and politicians took his criticism very seriously. Often when there was (an official) plan and he espoused a different approach, things got changed."
But even before he began a newspaper career that was capped by the 1990 Pulitzer Price for criticism, Mr. Temko led a storied life, which included a memorable appearance as Roland Major in Jack Kerouac's "On the Road."
Author of "Notre Dame of Paris," the definitive book on the famed cathedral, Mr. Temko was an unabashed intellectual known to bill himself within the newsroom as a "thoroughbred among a field of dray horses," a pronouncement he once made in the middle of said newsroom as the dray horses were furiously batting away on deadline.
"He laughed at himself even while he played the character," said Wilson, who now is executive editor of the Marin Independent Journal. "It was partly making fun of himself ... he recognized who he was and couldn't hide it."
But his writing aimed squarely at the casual reader, using vivid phrases that stuck to their targets for good.
It was Mr. Temko who first described San Francisco's 39-story Marriott Hotel as "the jukebox," and the Vaillancourt Fountain on the Embarcadero as resembling something "deposited by a concrete dog with square intestines."
As for Pier 39, Mr. Temko's 1978 review of the waterfront retail complex was so harsh it provoked an unsuccessful lawsuit from the architect. Consider the opening: "Corn. Kitsch. Schlock. Honky-tonk. Dreck. Schmaltz. Merde."
Younger architecture critics, including Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune, hold up Mr. Temko as a model.
"What I loved about him was that he was a street fighter in a bow tie," said Kamin, who himself won the Pulitzer for criticism in 1999. "He was elegant and knowledgeable, but he didn't write for a small coterie. He fought for what he thought was important in a crazy hell-raising way."
No Comments
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.