Renowned urban planner, wife commit suicide

David Wallace, 87, and his wife Joan were 'seriously ill,' police say. An award-winning architect and planner, Wallace was known for his innovative work in major cities.

by MICHAEL J. MISHAK

The bodies of award-winning architect and urban planner David A. Wallace and his wife, who both had apparently committed suicide, were discovered on Monday morning, July 19, in their Chestnut Hill home, police said.

Public Affairs officer Sheila Smith, told the Local the couple had been "seriously ill.” Wallace, 87, a founding partner of the renowned urban design firm Wallace Roberts & Todd LLC, suffered from prostate cancer. His wife, Joan, 83, had heart disease. Her health had reportedly worsened last week.

A hospice worker found the couple at around 11 a.m. when she entered the couple's Moreland Circle home. She immediately called 911. The Wallaces, Smith said, had evidently consumed “some type of “concoction” and were found with plastic bags over their heads. They appeared to have been dead for "a few days," Smith said.

The couple left notes, but police did not disclose their contents.

Wallace retired from his firm in 1991, but continued as part-time director of special projects. In a career that spanned more than five decades, Wallace and his firm helped revitalize Baltimore and its Inner Harbor. He also developed a plan for Lower Manhattan in response to the construction of the World Trade Center's twin towers.

Wallace was awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2002, and the American Planning Association's Distinguished Leadership Award in 2003.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, Wallace taught planning at Penn for 18 years, and was a longtime Chestnut Hill/Mt. Airy resident. He was also a World War II veteran.

From 1953 to 1957, Wallace served as director of planning and development for the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, where he developed a "friendly, but instinctive" rivalry with Edmund Bacon, the city's esteemed director of city planning.

During that time, Wallace introduced a new development approach, which was based on the belief that a strong and vibrant downtown was the vital anchor to a city's overall revitalization. Other cities, including Baltimore, would use that model in the ensuing decades.

His memoir, Urban Planning My Way, was published in March. Started in 1961, the book is dedicated to his wife, his firm and the Ford Foundation, who arranged a $10,000 advance for the book more than four decades ago.

The book's dedication, Wallace joked in his memoir, "is my coming to terms with this obligation; late but better late than never."

In the early 1960s, after stints in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore, Wallace, a Germantown High School graduate, returned to the city to teach at Penn and start a private practice. Wallace and his wife bought a four-story Norman-French farmhouse in West Mt. Airy's French Village, just across from Chestnut Hill, according to Wallace's memoir. The move "saved my sanity," he said. The neighborhood was "a great place to start my new life," Wallace wrote. Later, the couple moved to Chestnut Hill.