Members' 25-Year Reminiscences

Harry A. Anthony, AICP

Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning – California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Former Lecturer, University of California at San Diego
Former Professor and Chairman of Urban Planning – Columbia University
La Jolla, California

I was educated in architecture and planning in Athens, Paris, and New York. Having worked as a city planner at the Paris office of LeCorbusier in the mid-1940s and later for the Marshall Plan at its headquarters in Paris, I believe I joined ASPO in 1952 while working at the New York planning consulting office of Yale university professor Maurice E. H. Rotival. After I obtained my Ph.D. in architecture and urban planning from Columbia and served as an instructor there, I was admitted to AIP in 1955 and was elected as a member in 1958, the same year Columbia made me a tenured associate professor. I was made department chairman in 1962 and promoted to full professor in 1963. Over the years, I encouraged my students to join ASPO and hundreds of them did so. Many passed the exam and became AIP members.

Concurrently with teaching, I worked for two years — 1956-58 — at the urban design section of the New York office of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and for several years later as a consultant to the planning commissions of many cities, towns, and villages in New York State and elsewhere. During 1958-64, I served as planning commissioner of Leonia, New Jersey, the New York suburb where my family and I resided.

In 1971-72, I was vice-president at the Washington, D.C., office of Doxiadis Associates, Consultants in Development and Ekistics. (I wonder how many of the old-timers still remember Doxiadis.) In 1973, AIP appointed me to the board of examiners. In 1984, the San Diego section of the California Chapter of APA honored me with a Distinguished Service Award. And in 1988, Lambda Alpha International, the Honorary Land Economics Society, honored me with its Richard T. Ely Distinguished Educator Award.

During a sabbatical leave spent at the University of California at San Diego, the family fell in love with La Jolla, a veritable paradise on earth, and we moved here following my resignation from Columbia after almost 20 years as a faculty member. In 1972, I was appointed professor and chairman of urban planning at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. I headed what was then the largest urban planning department in the country, with both undergraduate and graduate programs. In 1975, after being nominated for the distinction of outstanding professor of the entire California State University system, I was named outstanding professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and delivered the 1975 commencement address.

During the fall quarter of the academic year 1978-1979, I was scholar-in-residence at the University of British Columbia Centre for Human Settlements in Vancouver, Canada. While there, I wrote a book, The Challenge of Squatter Settlements: With Special Reference to the Cities of Latin America (University of British Columbia Press, 1979), and a monograph, La Defense a Paris – Le Quartier d'Affaires de Vancouver: Une Comparaison Urbaine (published, in French, as part of their "Occasional Paper" series by the Centre for Human Settlements, 1979). I also delivered several public lectures there and produced educational videos on planning and urban design in Paris, Stockholm, and Moscow.

After well over half a century of planning work and teaching, I consider my main professional legacy to be the many thousands of students I taught over the years, some of whom still send me yearly holiday greetings!

During my retirement, I planned and supervised the construction of a small community for the elderly in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, San Diego County, California, and a Greek Orthodox Church close by. It was my personal response to the "Points of Light" national movement initiated by President Bush #41. I was getting good pensions, our children were on their own, our mortgage was paid off, and my wife and I, who had become grandparents, felt we did not need to earn any more money. So I did not charge anything for my combined planning and architectural services; they were provided for free over a period of many years. However, I was amply rewarded:

• I enjoy the gratitude of an entire great community that through my work I made happen.
• I received the Orchid Award of the AIA-APA chapters' design awareness program in 1997.
• UCSD requested the originals of my drawings and many of my papers and planning reports for their manuscript and rare books permanent collection.
• During the consecration of the church in June 2001, Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Church of America stated that among the hundreds, thousands of churches he has visited, rich and poor, in cities and villages in many countries, there are five that he considers "masterpieces of religious architecture" and that this church is one of them! He awarded me the gold medal of St. Paul, the highest honor the Greek Orthodox church awards to a layperson.

It was a very heartwarming way to conclude my professional career!

Now well into my eighties, I do not work any more. I don't think any other profession would have given me a more satisfying life!

Image: Harry A. Anthony atop the Eiffel Tower.