Walter Kidney Obituary: Architectural Historian
Walter Kidney was about 8 years old when an Ionic capital on the porch of a neighboring Oakland home caught his eye.
"I thought there must be such a thing as architecture," he said in a 2002 interview, recalling that he later noticed the colonnaded entrance to the Oakland Carnegie Library.
"At that point I knew that there was such a thing as architecture, and I really liked it."
It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for Mr. Kidney, the architectural historian at Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, who died yesterday of kidney failure at UPMC Presbyterian, just a few blocks from the long-vanished summer home he knew as a child. He was 73.
His legacy includes nine books about Pittsburgh buildings, rivers and bridges, written over more than 20 years. In recent months he had been working on a memoir and a series of essays about eclectic buildings in Pittsburgh.
With the death of his sometime collaborator at Landmarks, James Denholm Van Trump, in 1995, Mr. Kidney inherited the mantle of dean of Pittsburgh architectural historians. The two couldn't have been more different in demeanor, especially in their later years. Mr. Van Trump -- Jamie, as almost everyone knew him from his television appearances -- was flamboyant and outspoken, with muttonchops and long, wild white hair. Mr. Kidney, who kept his hair closely cropped, spoke in quiet, measured tones and nurtured a droll sense of humor.
Mr. Kidney's life was the life of the mind. He cared little for appearances but collected about 3,500 architecture and design books over the decades, most of which he donated to Landmarks' James D. Van Trump Library after leaving his Mount Washington home for a Grandview Avenue apartment in 2001.
His many important contributions to Pittsburgh scholarship, almost all published by Landmarks, include books on Allegheny Cemetery, the work of architect Henry Hornbostel and a popular, 715-page survey book of Allegheny County's historic buildings.
"In architecture we have not been a particularly creative, or even tasteful, city," he wrote in the survey book, "Pittsburgh's Landmark Architecture." "Of our buildings, generally, the greatest praise we can give is that they do not quarrel with our landscape when seen from afar ... The real glory of the region, in fact, is its wonderful spaces, the vivid contours of the land and the sense of distance they create."
"I thought there must be such a thing as architecture," he said in a 2002 interview, recalling that he later noticed the colonnaded entrance to the Oakland Carnegie Library.
"At that point I knew that there was such a thing as architecture, and I really liked it."
It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for Mr. Kidney, the architectural historian at Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, who died yesterday of kidney failure at UPMC Presbyterian, just a few blocks from the long-vanished summer home he knew as a child. He was 73.
His legacy includes nine books about Pittsburgh buildings, rivers and bridges, written over more than 20 years. In recent months he had been working on a memoir and a series of essays about eclectic buildings in Pittsburgh.
With the death of his sometime collaborator at Landmarks, James Denholm Van Trump, in 1995, Mr. Kidney inherited the mantle of dean of Pittsburgh architectural historians. The two couldn't have been more different in demeanor, especially in their later years. Mr. Van Trump -- Jamie, as almost everyone knew him from his television appearances -- was flamboyant and outspoken, with muttonchops and long, wild white hair. Mr. Kidney, who kept his hair closely cropped, spoke in quiet, measured tones and nurtured a droll sense of humor.
Mr. Kidney's life was the life of the mind. He cared little for appearances but collected about 3,500 architecture and design books over the decades, most of which he donated to Landmarks' James D. Van Trump Library after leaving his Mount Washington home for a Grandview Avenue apartment in 2001.
His many important contributions to Pittsburgh scholarship, almost all published by Landmarks, include books on Allegheny Cemetery, the work of architect Henry Hornbostel and a popular, 715-page survey book of Allegheny County's historic buildings.
"In architecture we have not been a particularly creative, or even tasteful, city," he wrote in the survey book, "Pittsburgh's Landmark Architecture." "Of our buildings, generally, the greatest praise we can give is that they do not quarrel with our landscape when seen from afar ... The real glory of the region, in fact, is its wonderful spaces, the vivid contours of the land and the sense of distance they create."