click to enlarge - Courtesy of Susan Teare
- Bill Truex
William H. Truex Jr., an architect whose vision and work shaped visual, social and commercial aspects of Burlington, died of heart failure on Sunday, according to his wife, Jill Williams. He was 85 and known as Bill.
Truex was a founding partner of the Burlington architecture firm
TruexCullins, which he established in 1968 with the late Eugene Alexander. Within a decade of founding his firm, Truex began working on a design project that would transform Burlington: turning Church Street, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare, into a pedestrian mall that was closed to cars.
His concept was informed by similar destinations in European cities — in particular the Strøget in Copenhagen, Denmark — said architect Rolf Kielman, a principal at TruexCullins.
“He was always what we might refer to as a 'citizen architect,'” Kielman said, noting Truex's service on various civic boards." He was very involved in community betterment from a physical standpoint."
Church Street had been “a typical downtown drag,” Kielman said, “where teenagers went to drive down the street to see and be seen.”
Its transformation was gradual, starting with a weeklong fair during which a couple of blocks were shut down and furniture and planters were moved in. By 1981, the pedestrian street was in place. Its implementation coincided with the election of Bernie Sanders as mayor.
click to enlarge - Courtesy TruexCullins
- TruexCullins founders Gene Alexander, left, and Bill Truex
The car-free space was “egalitarian in nature,” Kielman said. The street became available to and usable by everyone — “our community’s outdoor living room,” as Kielman called it.
“Certainly it helped reinforce Burlington’s emerging progressive personality at that point,” Kielman observed. “Between Church Street and Bernie’s ascent to be mayor, [it] spoke to the personality of our community: its vibrant nature and its willingness to take a risk, both politically and from an urban design standpoint.”
The Church Street Marketplace is recognized “as a hallmark of good town planning throughout this country and beyond,” Kielman said.
click to enlarge - Courtesy TruexCullins
- Church Street Marketplace plan
Truex was born in Connecticut and grew up in Manchester, N.H. He was an only child; his father worked in the insurance business, according to Williams.
Truex attended Dartmouth College and studied architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he earned his master's degree. In Vermont, he lived in Burlington and at a camp in Grand Isle, which he transformed into a year-round home.
“It was like a laboratory,” Kielman said of the Grand Isle house. “It went all over the place.”
Truex and his first wife, Lucille, had two sons, Scott and Eric. When Eric was a boy, he died of leukemia. Eric's death “led Bill to a very, very deep and emotional involvement with blood centers throughout the United States,” Kielman said.
The first of Truex’s design projects in that field was the Red Cross building on North Prospect Street in Burlington, a contemporary brick building that Kielman said possesses “sculptural qualities."
“Mostly, it’s a fine building in terms of what people are able to do in there,” Kielman said. Other blood centers Truex designed are in Richmond, Va., and Hartford, Conn.
“He wasn’t just a designer of buildings,” Kielman said. “He was a maker of public space and a maker of essential things that we all need.”
Another Truex project in Burlington is Fern Hill housing for the elderly on North Prospect Street. Kielman described himself as “obnoxious and young” at the time Truex suggested he work on the project.
“‘Take it where you want it to go,’" Kielman recalled Truex encouraging him. “Bill was somebody who didn’t hoard these opportunities and keep them to himself.”
Truex was concerned about creating a work environment that attracted good people and was an appealing and interesting place to work, according to Kielman.
“The sky was the limit,” he said. “Designing things — it’s like perpetual kindergarten. It’s great fun.”
Asked to describe Truex’s aesthetic, Kielman said, “He followed his heart.”
click to enlarge - Courtesy TruexCullins
- Bill Truex at his drawing table in the 1970s
Karl Fandrich, operations and IT director at TruexCullins, suggested that one of Truex's significant legacies is a project that he made sure was
not constructed: a highway along the waterfront from Route 127 to the city's South End.
“Rather than having a beautiful community recreation and park resource that we have today — the beautiful waterfront — it could’ve been a highway,” Fandrich said. “That’s one of the things he told me he was absolutely keen didn’t happen. And he put his foot down and made sure it didn’t.”
Truex loved boats. In retirement, he and Williams took a year-long trip in a vessel Kielman described as a "porky little tug boat." They traveled around the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers and up the Intracoastal Waterway.
“It was an incredible experience,” Williams said. “For Bill, it was about being on the water.”
Truex wrote his own obituary, Williams said. “He wanted clarity in terms of what he had accomplished in Burlington that he was very proud of,” she said.
In life, however, he found it awkward to be in the presence of people who praised his professional achievements, Williams said.
A celebration of Truex’s life will be held in late August. “It will be someplace in Burlington,” Williams said. “Hopefully a place that is part of who Bill is — or was.”