John C. Portman Jr., the architect and developer whose post-modernist style, while sometimes controversial, won him acclaim while altering the skylines of Atlanta and cities around the world, died Friday. He was 93.
No single architect shaped Atlanta’s skyline like Portman, who gave the city the Hyatt Regency, Peachtree Center, AmericasMart and the Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel. He also left his stamp from San Francisco to Shanghai, and revitalized Times Square with his famed New York Marriott Marquis.
Portman also backed numerous civic and philanthropic causes, and was a founding member of Atlanta's Action Forum, a coalition of black and white business leaders, who worked to make Atlanta more economically inclusive and preserve Atlanta's reputation as the "city too busy to hate."
Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young once said of Portman that “there is no one who has done more for Atlanta.”
Read and sign the online guestbook for John Portman.
To read the full obituary at myAJC.com on the life and legacy of John Portman, click here.
