Architect/Developer John Portman Dead at 93

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John C. Portman Jr., the architect and developer whose post-modernist, and sometimes controversial, style 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 helped revitalize 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 racially and 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.”

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