Phoebe Stanton, an outspoken guardian of Baltimore's
architecture and an art history
professor emerita at Johns Hopkins, died Sept. 24 at Union
Memorial Hospital of complications from heart disease and
emphysema. She was 88.
A memorial gathering will be held at 11 a.m. on
Wednesday, Oct. 8, at the War Memorial Building on City
Hall Plaza.
Stanton moved to Baltimore with her husband in 1954,
began lecturing at Johns Hopkins that same year and spent
decades shaping both the skyline of her adopted city and
the lives of her students. Hopkins alumna and Butler, Md.-
based architect Ann F. Hagerty described Stanton as a
"guiding force."
"In my senior year, I decided at the last moment to
pursue architecture," Hagerty said. "I asked Phoebe if she
would support me, and she said yes, because if she were to
do it all again, she would be an architect."
After losing touch with Stanton, Hagerty contacted her
again in 1995 for counsel on moving her New York City firm
to Baltimore. Stanton met with her former student and
dispensed advice just as she had 20 years before, Hagerty
said. "[She gave] that extra touch that gets you where you
need to be, and I only hope I can do the same in some way
for the next generation. In addition to her guidance, her
energy in the field was equally inspiring. She demonstrated
that women were not only needed, but if they believed in
their message, they would be heard."
Over the years, city planners heard plenty from
Stanton, recently described by Sun architecture critic
Edward Gunts as Baltimore's "design conscience," "a
tireless public servant" and a tough critic with a soft
side. She joined the city's Commission for Historical and
Architectural Preservation in 1963 and began serving on
Baltimore's Design Advisory Panel in 1970, attending what
would be her last meeting in June. Over 33 years and
through the terms of four mayors, Baltimore boomed under
her watch as redevelopment swept the city, Gunts wrote.
"She could be crotchety, irascible, tart-tongued with
presenters, calling a building 'dreadful' or 'horrid' if it
were deserved," Gunts wrote. "She could get caught up in
the poetry of a design, as she did with the swirling curves
of the American Visionary Art Museum. Either way, for 33
years she was a brilliant and passionate champion of the
city, continually exhorting architects and landscape
architects to do better. And every once in a while, they
did."
In addition to her architectural advisory board
memberships, Stanton was an architectural critic for the
Sunday edition of The Sun from 1971 to 1976. She
also authored several articles and two books, The Gothic
Revival and American Church Architecture: An Episode in
Taste 1840-1856, published in 1968 by the Johns Hopkins
University Press, and Pugin, published in 1971 by
Thames and Hudson.
From her start as a lecturer in the History of Art
Department, Stanton moved through the ranks and was named
the William R. Keenan Jr. Professorial Chair of the
department in 1971. She retired from the university in
1982, but her spirit continues to foster the growth of
Hopkins students through the Mattin Center.
"[Stanton's] Intro to Art History survey course was
formative and created in me a lifelong passion for the
arts," said Johns Hopkins alumna Christina Mattin, whose
commitment to a student arts center made the facility a
reality. "Over the years, my interest in the arts grew, and
I have visited countless museums. I became more convinced
of the importance of the arts in a comprehensive
education."
Born Phoebe Baroody in a suburb of Chicago, Stanton
earned a bachelor of arts degree from Mount Holyoke College
in 1937 and a master's degree in modern European history
from Radcliffe College in 1939. Her graduate studies at
Leland Stanford University were interrupted by her wartime
employment with the Navy and the Board of Economic Welfare.
She earned her doctorate in 1950 from the University of
London and worked at the American Embassy in London for
three years before moving to Baltimore. Through the years,
she also taught at Reed, Bryn Mawr and Goucher colleges.
Stanton is survived by a son, Michael Stanton,
chairman of the Department of Architecture and Design at
the American University of Beirut. Her husband, Daniel J.
Stanton, who died in 1966, was a planner and urban renewal
administrator.