Roger Lang, 64; architect pushed for preservation

Under the visage of Alexander Parris (the 19th century architect who designed Quincy Market), Roger Lang (left) and James H. Ballou discussed plans to revitalize the market district. Mr. Lang was project manager of plans to restore the exterior of market buildings, Ballou was project architect. (globe/file 1970)

As Boston's business and political leaders looked to the skies in their effort to transform the city during the office-building boom of the 1980s, Roger Lang was an insistent voice with an urgent appeal.

Don't forget that much of the city's strength flows closer to its streets, through the brick and mortar of its past, he counseled city leaders.

Mr. Lang, chairman of the Boston Landmarks Commission before moving to Manhattan and becoming a leader of the historical preservation movement there, died March 31 in Manhattan. He was 64 and lived in the Yorkville section.

The cause was lung cancer, said Alex Herrera of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, where Mr. Lang was director of community programs and services.

As an architect in Boston with an affinity for Victorian homes, Mr. Lang was a vibrant force in saving and restoring both public and private buildings.

Even as the city extended its profile upward with gleaming glass and steel, particularly in the financial district, much of the commercial work done in the past three decades has centered on restoring its past, thanks to the efforts of Mr. Lang and others.

"As to better buildings," Mr. Lang told the Globe, "I have a ready answer: Save the ones we've got. Don't tear them down and don't screw them up."

Roger Philip Lang was born in Freeport, N.Y., and earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Michigan in 1966. He then served with the Army Corps of Engineers in Vietnam.

In 1968, he joined Perry Dean Stahl and Rogers in Boston. While there, he had a key role in the signature restoration project of modern Boston: Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall. As project manager, he oversaw the restoration of the exteriors of the buildings at Quincy Market. Those restored buildings were redesigned into the famed marketplace by architect Benjamin Thompson.

In the late 1970s, Mr. Lang became the principal in Lang Associates.

A member of the Landmarks Commission, from 1979 until 1992, he lived first in a Beacon Hill condominium before finding a house - a Victorian - in Dorchester.

Mr. Lang moved to New York City and joined the conservancy in 1992. Among the landmarks he championed there were the abandoned historical buildings on the south side of Ellis Island.

But he made it plain that neither he nor the conservancy was bound inextricably to the past. In 2000, Mr. Lang testified at the Landmarks Preservation Commission in favor of a modern entrance for the Brooklyn Museum of Art, designed by James Stewart Polshek.

"The architects have sent a wake-up call that is both appropriate and invigorating," Mr. Lang said. "To be sure, this solution is not our grandfather's Beaux-Arts."

Mr. Lang leaves his companion, Jean King of Watertown, Conn.; two sons, Jeremy of Arlington and Philip of Manhattan; a sister, Marcia Tusinski of Oxnard, Calif.; and a brother, Bruce of Chico, Calif.

Material from The New York Times was used in this obituary.