Thomas Taylor, the innovative and prolific structural engineer responsible for many of Dallas\u2019 most important buildings, died last week at the age of 89 following a prolonged battle with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. He was working up until his final days, according to his wife, Dane Nelson Taylor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the possible exception of architect George Dahl, no figure has had a greater impact on the physical character of Dallas. Taylor was responsible for some 50 buildings in downtown alone. His contributions were essential to projects including the Dallas Museum of Art<\/a>, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center<\/a>, the\u00a0Nasher Sculpture Center<\/a>, the Perot Museum<\/a> and Thanks-Giving Square<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cConcrete soars under his guidance, steel floats effortlessly and he combines craft with purpose,\u201d the architect Ron Stelmarski<\/a>\u00a0said of Taylor at a 2024 Dallas Architecture Forum event<\/a> celebrating Taylor’s career. <\/p>\n \u201cTom Taylor was that rare engineer whose love of architecture and whose creative engineering advanced the culture of his hometown and state,\u201d said Guy Nordenson,<\/a> the distinguished New York-based structural engineer. \u201cTexas has long been a place for progressive architecture made by Texans and Texas lovers. Tom was always there to support and nurture that work.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor was born in 1936 in Houston and raised by a single mother. He studied engineering at the University of Texas at Austin,<\/a> and after his graduation in 1959 was recruited to join the Dallas-based engineering firm of Frank Chappell, who had been a member of the same fraternity, Sigma Chi. Four years later, at the age of just 26, he took over the company from Chappell, rebranding it as Datum Engineers.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n His gentle, soft-spoken demeanor conveyed a sense of authority that endeared him to generations of Dallas architects, who prized his imagination \u2014 not a trait typically associated with structural engineers. <\/p>\n Taylor left Datum in 2024 after a dispute over its management. He then joined\u00a0DeSimone Consulting Engineering <\/a>as a principal and head of its Dallas office.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among Taylor\u2019s notable early projects was the Citizens Bank (now Chase) tower in Richardson. Working with Dallas architect E.G. Hamilton, Taylor devised a system of precast concrete beams that stretched the entire width of the building fa\u00e7ade, removing the need for unsightly joints. (Their 105-foot length was only constrained by the radius of the exit ramp from U.S. 75, on which they were delivered.)\u00a0In 2006, the project was given the 25-Year Award from the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects, a rare feat for a suburban commercial building.<\/p>\n \u00a0The exposed truss system Taylor designed for the expansion of the Dallas Convention Center in the 1990s, now being demolished, allowed for what was said to be the largest column-free exhibition space in the United States. Decades later, when presented with a near-impossible construction schedule for the Irving Convention Center, he figured out a way to produce drawings in stages as the building rose, allowing the project to move forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was not just on large corporate projects that Taylor excelled; he regularly collaborated with local architects on residential projects, bringing the same imagination to works of smaller scale. \u201cThe fact he was so accessible and willing to work on small commercial and residential projects,” said Dallas architect Michael Malone, “meant design-oriented firms had a consultant who was excited about their work and enthusiastic about being part of it.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Taylor gained national prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s for his work on a pair of influential projects designed by New York architect Steven Holl, then a rising star. For the\u00a0Stretto House,<\/a> a Preston Hollow residence inspired by the work of the Hungarian composer B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k, Taylor created a roof of curving steel tubes that suggested the forms of musical notation.<\/p>\n Taylor collaborated with\u00a0Holl again on the design of the Chapel of St. Ignatius, on the campus of Seattle University, in Washington.\u00a0Faced with a limited budget, Taylor proposed building Holl\u2019s complex geometrical composition with a tilt-wall system of precast concrete panels, then used almost exclusively for industrial purposes.<\/p>\n “Thomas Taylor understood architectural intention and knew how to translate it into structure,\u201d\u00a0Holl\u2019s firm said in a statement. \u201cHis contributions to the Stretto House and the Chapel of St. Ignatius were integral to the architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n