NEW YORK — Architect Henry N. Cobb, who designed the tallest building in New England, has died. He was 93.
Architect Henry N. Cobb stands across from the John Hancock Tower in Boston in 1977. Cobb died Monday. Chet Magnuson/Associated Press
Cobb died Monday at his Manhattan home, according to his firm, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.
The most celebrated building of Cobb’s 70-year career was the 800-foot-tall glass skyscraper now called 200 Clarendon but still widely known as the John Hancock Tower in Boston.
Cobb also designed the Charles Shipman Payson Building of the Portland Museum of Art, which opened in May 1983.
“After the museum opened, the comment that pleased me the most was the comment of a grandmother who said she liked to bring her grandchildren up here because the children said they felt it was like exploring grandma’s attic,” Cobb said during a visit to the museum in 2011.
Landscape architect Laurie Olin, who worked with Cobb on several projects, called him “an architect’s architect.”
Architect Henry Cobb visits the Charles Shipman Payson Building of the Portland Museum of Art, which he designed and which opened in 1983, in 2011. Photo courtesy of Portland Museum of Art
“He was a great collaborator. He was a great intellect. He was a very warm friend,” Olin told The Boston Globe. “Usually, you might get one or two of those qualities, but you don’t get all. You did with Harry.”
Cobb was born in Boston on April 8, 1926, and grew up in Brookline. He studied at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design where he first met prominent architect I.M. Pei, who was his teacher, The New York Times reported.
Cobb moved to New York in 1950 to start his career in skyscraper architecture but ended up designing multiple buildings in Boston, including Harbor Towers and the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse and Harborpark.
Cobb also designed the Place Ville Marie in Montreal, the campus of the State University of New York Fredonia, and the Johnson & Johnson world headquarters in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Though the Hancock Tower — often confused with Chicago’s John Hancock Center — ended up becoming a Boston icon on par with the Old North Church, it wasn’t immediately accepted.
Many people protested plans because it was close to beloved Copley Square. Then, as construction neared completion in 1972, glass panels weighing as much as 500 pounds each started falling from the facade.
Many Bostonians called the falling glass “retribution for overreaching,” Cobb told The New York Times in 2010.
The firm ordered replacement glass, but the bad publicity and litigation costs nearly drove the Pei firm to financial ruin. Cobb focused primarily on designing office buildings as the firm rebounded.
Survivors include his wife, Joan; three daughters; and three grandchildren.
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