Franklin Toker, a towering professor at the University of Pittsburgh whose passion for art and architecture illuminated conversations with friends and paved the way for a litany of critically acclaimed books, died on April 19 after a battle against a rare form of Dementia. He died 10 days before his 77th birthday.
Toker was born in Montreal in 1944 and studied at McGill University, Oberlin College and Harvard University. He first made a name for himself on the international art scene in the 1960s when he led the excavation of an architecture fund under the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Critics welcomed two volumes of his “Florence Duomo Project” published, although Toker had not survived the last two installments. In Florence, Toker also met his future wife, Ellen, who was then a Masters student at Middlebury College.
In 1974 the young couple moved to Pittsburgh, where Toker taught architectural history at Carnegie Mellon University. As a past president of the Society of Architectural Historians, Toker won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979. In 1980 he made the jump to the Arts and Architecture program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he worked until his retirement in 2018.
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Toker was deeply inspired by Pittsburgh. Long before magazines referred to Pittsburgh as the “Paris of the Appalachians” or one of the “most liveable” cities in America, Toker published volumes about its architecture and built environments. He wrote Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, EJ Kaufmann, and America’s Most Extraordinary House, a lively book on Wright’s Fallingwater in southwestern Pennsylvania that the New York Times named one of its notable publications of 2003.
“I think what made Frank stand out for me was that he found a very strong following among the students,” said Barbara McCloskey, a colleague of Toker who started teaching at the University of Pittsburgh in 1990, a large auditorium shortly . This was the result of his ability to exude warmth and excitement about his work. “
Toker got an admirable rating of 4.0 on the RateMyProfessors.com website this week.
“He really cared about the students,” said Ellen Toker. “He took great care of all the people who needed housing.”
Rabbi Stephen Steindel said Toker’s warmth and excitement went well beyond his dissertations. Steindel lived a block from the Tokers for decades, and the families’ children often played together.
“He was warm and warm and welcoming and actually calmed people down,” said Steindel, rabbi emeritus with the Beth Shalom congregation. “All you were worth when you asked for his help, he was a game.”
Steindel led a funeral service for Toker at Beth Shalom’s cemetery last week. Cantor Gideon Zelermyer of Shaar Hashomayim, the Montreal congregation where Toker celebrated his bar mitzvah about six decades ago, offered a recorded cantorial prayer for the service.
Toker’s family regularly attends services at the Squirrel Hill Youth Synagogue. Toker had served as president of the lay-run synagogue.
“When he was holding a synagogue meeting and they were all in his living room, you didn’t feel like you were in a synagogue meeting,” said Rebecca Spiegel, the current president of the youth synagogue. “You felt like friends of the Tokers there. He always brought insight into the synagogue – he always left it so that we could learn something. It will be a huge loss for the youngsters. “
While at Young Peoples, the Tokers’ love for Israel and passionate sense of Zionism blossomed, said Ellen Toker. Toker frequently led the Israel Bond Appeal during the High Holiday Services and visited the Jewish state several times.
Ultimately, however, Toker was a product of the city he referred to as the hometown for more than 45 years. His book “Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait” received an Award of Merit in 1986 from the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
“He was a Pittsburgh fan in every way,” said Ellen Toker.
Pittsburgh, in turn, was a fan of Toker. In 2018, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto honored him with a proclamation declaring a day in his honor.
“Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait” celebrated the city and gave an impression of Pittsburgh outside of the city, McCloskey said. “His work had a broad, broad impact.”
Drew Armstrong knows the book well. The Toronto-born, friendship professor of arts and architecture regularly reviewed and dog-eared Toker’s book as he explored neighborhoods during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Armstrong, who has been teaching at Pitt since 2005, first met Toker when Armstrong was interviewing for the professorship at the school.
“[Toker] When he was here, he taught most of the architecture classes – he was a workhorse, ”said Armstrong. “And it’s so closely tied to Pittsburgh and the built environment that it’s extraordinary. In my experience, it is quite unusual for a university professor to be associated with the city in which he lives. “
Katheryn Linduff also worked with Toker – but much longer. She estimates that she and her trusted colleague logged almost 40 years at the University of Pittsburgh. Last week, Linduff fondly remembered the quiet mornings with Toker in the Frick Fine Arts Building, where the two colleagues talked about their various projects.
“Franklin Toker of the red suspenders, the red academic regalia, the red fedora, the bicycle, the city tours, the incomparable style of presentation is remembered with unusual memories by his academic colleagues, his students, his community partners, his friends, his synagogue “Wrote Linduff in a letter to Ellen Toker. “Born in Montreal, he was a true Pittsburgh man like never before – a Pittsburgh landmark, a walking historical plaque and a top-class world-class scholar at the University of Pittsburgh.
“Frank was able to explain and excite everyone about the moment of digging the crypt under the cathedral in Florence, the backstory of Fallingwater and the ethnic base of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods and buildings, the importance of human discovery!” Linduff continued. “What was his secret? He was a gifted, dedicated, and relentless public intellectual who focused his energies on reaching as many people as possible and conveying the joy of discovering the nuances of human behavior deep in the past or present. “
Toker’s “clear and deep devotion” to his wife, Ellen, and to his family also shaped his colleagues, said McCloskey, who worked alongside the prolific professor.
“If you knew anything about Frank, that was what you knew,” she said.
Steindel said Toker’s loss will be widespread in Pittsburgh – and not just in the city’s Jewish community.
“The talent and amazing brain, the language, the insights, the sensitivity, his ability to translate everything into lectures and commentary – he was a voice of Pittsburgh as he was a voice of the cathedral excavation, as he was the voice of a tour guide in Montreal, ”said Steindel. “He was just an amazing, amazing guy. He was sweet and giving as well as principled and brilliant. “
In 1970 Toker’s “Church of Notre-Dame in Montréal” won the Alice David Hitchcock Prize of the Society of Architectural Historians. He also received the Porter Prize from the College Art Association for his work in The Art Bulletin.
“From the Notre Dame Church in his hometown of Montreal to his ‘Dome’ excavations next to the Basilica in Florence and everything in between, Frank Toker was a local celebrity and an international superstar among us,” said Steindel at Toker’s grave last week.
“At the end of his magnum opus, Frank wrote, ‘There has never been a house like Fallingwater and there will never be a house like Fallingwater,'” said Steindel.
“For everyone who has ever heard his clear voice on the podium with his slides on the screen behind them, for all of his colleagues who valued and celebrated their connection with him, for friends from so many walks of life, for everyone who saw him in Montreal, Florence, western Pennsylvania, and around the world will never see a Franklin Toker again. ” PJC
Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh.
