Architecture historian Vincent Scully dies at 97

NEW YORK — Yale University scholar Vincent Scully, a revered architecture historian and professor who inspired generations of students ranging from David McCullough to Maya Lin, has died at age 97.

Scully died Nov. 30 at his home in Lynchburg, Va., the school announced. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

A native of New Haven, Conn., the home of Yale, Scully was a Yale undergraduate who joined the faculty in 1947 and remained for more than 60 years. He was known for his innovative ideas and compelling style as a lecturer, attracting standingroom-only audiences and often receiving ovations when he finished.

“Because of Vince, architects, urban planners, historic preservationists and landscape architects have gone about their work with a sharper eye and keener understanding,” Yale President Peter Salovey said in a statement.

Attuned to architecture’s place in the larger culture, Scully was a critic of urban renewal in the 1960s and ’70s and became a leading advocate of historical preservation. He also reversed his early support for the Modernist style, telling the Yale Bulletin & Calendar in 2004 that Modernism “was a simplistic view of architecture. It was predicated on an arbitrary aesthetic. It was totalitarian in its mode of thinking. Everybody had to do things one way.”

Architect Philip Johnson called him “the most influential architecture teacher ever.” McCullough, who attended Yale in the 1950s, would credit Scully with inspiring his prize-winning book on the Brooklyn Bridge, “The Great Bridge.”