Often described as a founding father of historic preservation in the United States, James Marston Fitch (1909–2000) was an author, educator, critic, and design practitioner known for his trenchant writing on architectural subjects and his advocacy for the preservation of the built environment. In the words of Jane Jacobs, “Jim Fitch helped broaden the preservationists’ aims by emphasizing that the fabrics of entire neighborhoods were worthy of being cherished and showing that their humble components were as vital as the landmarks.”
Fitch’s long professional life started with designing period houses in his native Tennessee and encompassed working for the Federal Housing Authority in Washington, becoming an editor at Architectural Record, Architectural Forum, and House Beautiful, and serving for twenty-five years as a professor of architectural history in Columbia University’s School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. At Columbia in 1964 he initiated courses in architectural preservation which soon led to the country’s first graduate program to train young architects, planners and historians to preserve and restore the historic buildings and districts threatened at the time by urban renewal. Few contemporaries can so fundamentally be considered to have acted as the conscience of the architectural profession. For his reasoned yet compassionate work—his publications, his lectures, his key positions in the American profession, his foreign missions (to India, Japan, Ecuador, Italy, Lebanon, among others)—Fitch received countless awards and diplomas, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977–78), the AIA Gold Medal (1976), the ACSA Distinguished Professorship (1986) and the Louise Dupont Crowninshield Award (1985).
After becoming an emeritus professor at Columbia University, Fitch, in 1979, joined the firm of Beyer Blinder Belle as Director of Historic Preservation. During his tenure the firm undertook such projects as the restoration of the South Street Seaport, Ellis Island, and Grand Central Terminal. In order to perpetuate the intellectually rigorous philosophy and activist energy with which Fitch imbued the field, in 1988 the partners at Beyer Blinder Belle established the James Marston Fitch Charitable Trust (now Foundation). The objectives of the Fitch Foundation are to encourage and support the study of the wide range of problems encompassed by the preservation and rehabilitation of America’s historic, architectural and urbanistic heritage.
Architect Richard Blinder, a key founder of the foundation, guided it through its first decade and served as its president until 2001. Following his untimely death in 2006 while working on a cultural center in Shanghai, the partners of Beyer Blinder Belle, the Blinder family, and the board of the Fitch Foundation established the Richard L. Blinder Award in acknowledgement of his professional achievements, his service to the Foundation and his close working relationship with James Marston Fitch.
In keeping with its aim of promoting the practice of historic preservation, the Fitch Foundation will award research grants to mid-career professionals who have an academic background, professional experience, and an established identity in one or more of the following fields: historic preservation, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, environmental planning, history of architecture and the decorative arts. The grants are not envisioned as prizes for past accomplishment, but are intended to support original research and creative design. The projects must demonstrate usefulness to practitioners and the results must be in publishable form.