David F. M. Todd (February 22, 1915March 31, 2008) was a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

-based

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

. Todd was best known for designing the

Manhattan Plaza Manhattan Plaza is a large federally subsidized residential complex of 46 floors and at 400 and 484 West 43rd Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City. Opened in 1977, it has 1,689 units and about 3,500 tenants. 70% of the tenants are from ...

complex and serving as

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of the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1989 and 1990.

Early life

David Fenton Michie Todd was born in Middletown, Ohio, on February 22, 1915. He graduated from

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

in 1937 before receiving his bachelor’s degree in

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1940. He married Suzanne Williams in 1942. Todd served in the

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in the Pacific during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Career

David Todd joined the Harrison, Ballard & Allen

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in 1946, following the end of World War II. He became a full partner in the firm in 1967, and it was renamed Ballard, Todd & Snibbe. In 1967 the firm was simply known as David Todd & Associates. Some of Todd's notable clients included the

State University of New York The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

Lehman College Lehman College is a public college in the Bronx borough of New York City. Founded in 1931 as the Bronx campus of Hunter College, the school became an independent college within CUNY in September 1967. The college is named after Herbert H. Lehma ...

, the Collegiate School on the

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Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, as well as vacation resorts in St. Martin and

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. However, Todd's personal interest in architecture often centered on theaters and

public housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...

. Todd advocated that money be spent to improve the

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in subsidized public housing beginning in 1965.

Manhattan Plaza

Todd's architectural firm's best-known project was the

. The design for the Manhattan Plaza, which was designed by David Todd and Robert Cabrera, called for two large, 45 story

red brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

apartment buildings An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are man ...

on either end of the block, with lower buildings in between them. The Manhattan Plaza project encompasses a single large, city square block surrounded 42nd Street and 43rdd Street and Ninth Avenue and Tenth Avenue. Todd explained his choice to place the large apartment buildings on the ends of the block, rather than the center of it, saying that, "Larger structures in midblock would have cut the

sunlight Sunlight is a portion of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, in particular infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. On Earth, sunlight is scattered and filtered through Earth's atmosphere, and is obvious as daylight when t ...

and would have destroyed the small scale of the midblock areas as well.”

Death

David Todd died in Manhattan on March 31, 2008, at the age of 93. He was survived by his wife, Suzanne Williams.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Todd, David 1915 births 2008 deaths Architects from New York City 20th-century American architects Dartmouth College alumni Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning alumni United States Army personnel of World War II Preservationist architects People from Middletown, Ohio