Suzanne Williams and David Fenton Michie Todd

SUZANNE WILLIAMS, daughter of MARY SUZANNE VOTAW and EDWARD VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, was born November 11, 1916 in Reid Memorial Hospital, Wayne County, Indiana,⁴⁹¹⁷ and died April 26, 2014 in New York City, New York, New York.⁴⁷¹⁷

She married DAVID FENTON MICHIE TODD on September 1, 1942 in New York City, New York.¹¹⁷⁷³ He was born February 22, 1915 in Middletown, Ohio,⁷³⁷⁷ and died March 31, 2008 in Manhattan, New York, New York.¹¹⁷⁷⁶

• Descendant Reports
  • Timothy Hall Descendant Report (Ancestor of Suzanne Williams)
  • James Crawford Descendant Report (Ancestor of Suzanne Williams)

Personal Information

David F. M. Todd

• was a U.S. Army Veteran of World War II; served in the Pacific¹¹⁷⁷⁶
• was an architect¹¹⁷⁷⁶

Education

Marriage Announcements and News

Dayton Herald, March 8, 1942¹¹⁷⁷²

Suzanne Williams And David Todd Engaged to Wed

RICHMOND—Announcement is being made of the engagement of Miss Suzanne Williams, daughter of Edward V. Williams, of Richmond, and Mrs. Fred B. Dechant, of Middletown, to David F. M. Todd, son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Chalmers Todd, of Middletown. Miss Williams is the granddaughter of Mrs. Lewis G. Reynolds, of Richmond, formerly of Dayton.

Miss Williams attended Westtown school, near Philadelphia, and was graduated in 1938 from Bryn Mawr college. She studied as an apprentice teacher at Shady Hill school, Cambridge, Mass., and now is on the faculty of Hathaway-Brown school, Cleveland.

Mr. Todd attended Phillips Exeter academy, Exeter, N. H., and was graduated in 1937 from Dartmouth college, where he was a member of Theta Delta Chi. He received an architectural degree from University of Michigan in 1940 and now is associated with W. Ray Yount, architectural engineer, in Dayton.

Dayton Sunday Journal-Herald, September 6, 1942¹¹⁷⁷³

From New York Tuesday came information that Miss Suzanne Williams, daughter of Mrs. Fred B. Dechant of Washington, D. C., and David Todd, son of Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Todd of Superior avenue, were united that day at the "Little Church Around the Corner." The bride's sister, Miss Patricia Williams of Washington, attended her, and the bridegroom had his father as his best man.

Obituaries

New York Times, April 2, 2008¹¹⁷⁷⁶

David Todd, Architect and Official, Dies at 93

David F. M. Todd, an architect of the towering Manhattan Plaza complex who later brought an imperturbable style to the chairmanship of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 93 and lived in a town house on the Upper East Side that has a garden of his own design.

His death was announced by his son, Gregory.

In effect, Mr. Todd had two careers: the first as an architect in private practice and the second, beginning at the age of 69, as a public official. He joined the landmarks commission in 1984 and was elevated to chairman in January 1989 by Mayor Edward I. Koch. Mr. Todd served in that post for the last year of the Koch administration.

As controversies ? and any number of large egos swirled around him, Mr. Todd maintained a reserved, flinty, no-nonsense demeanor. His gravelly voice seemed ideally suited for his plain speaking.

“He is an experienced architect who combines sense with sensibility,” said a New York Times editorial welcoming Mr. Todd’s appointment in 1989. “Further, he has the ability to distinguish landmarks from dross without abusing the city’s architectural heritage or giving in to obstructionism.”

Mr. Todd assumed the post toward the end of a building boom, when the real estate industry was chafing and complaining steadily about landmarks designations and regulations. By his own account, he did not fit the mold of the ardent preservationist.

“I am more tighter reined on the designation side,” he said in a 1989 interview. “I am more inclined toward architectural quality level as a decisive criterion. The historical or cultural sides can be stretched, strained and rationalized. To my mind, too many things can fit under those headings.

“On the regulatory side, I’m looser reined,” Mr. Todd continued. “We sometimes have a tendency to view every landmark as an equally sacred object.”

David Fenton Michie Todd was born on Feb. 22, 1915, in Middletown, Ohio. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1937 and received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Michigan in 1940. Two years later, he married Suzanne Williams, who survives him.

After Army service in the Pacific in World War II, Mr. Todd joined the architectural firm of Harrison, Ballard & Allen in 1946. In 1957 he became a partner in the renamed firm, Ballard, Todd & Snibbe, which after 1967 was known simply as David Todd & Associates.

Its best-known project, completed in 1977, was Manhattan Plaza, which fills a square block bounded by 42nd and 43rd Streets and Ninth and 10th Avenues. The design, by Mr. Todd and Robert Cabrera, called for 45-story, red-brick apartment buildings on each end of the long block, with a low-rise structure between them.

Even though the towers would dwarf the surrounding tenements, Mr. Todd said the plan actually deferred to the neighborhood to the north. “Larger structures in midblock would have cut the sunlight,” he said in 1974, “and would have destroyed the small scale of the midblock areas as well.”

Among Mr. Todd’s other clients were Lehman College in the Bronx, the Collegiate School on the Upper West Side, the State University of New York, Princeton University and resorts in Puerto Rico and St. Martin.

Public housing and the theater were his foremost interests as an architect. In 1965, Mr. Todd urged that money be spent for a higher quality of subsidized housing, indirectly criticizing officials who “trembled at the sight of stimulating and interesting designs on the ground that they ‘looked too expensive.’ ”

Until Mr. Todd was 90, he and his wife spent almost half of each year in the village of Venasque in southern France. But he could also be found in his garden in the East 90s.

“I’m really a housebody,” he said when he was named landmarks chairman. “I love tinkering. I love puttering. One thing that concerns me now is, who is going to keep up the house?”

New York Times, April 29, 2014⁴⁷¹⁷

TODD—Suzanne Williams, 97, passed away peacefully in New York City on April 26, 2014. Beloved wife of David F.M. Todd from 1942 until his death in 2008, and beloved mother of Gregory F.W. Todd, who survives her. Born in Richmond, IN of Quaker roots, she attended Westtown School and Bryn Mawr College, where she majored in Archeology. She and her husband moved to New York from Allied-occupied Korea following WWII. She was a case worker, then director, of the Girls Service League, obtained an MSW from Columbia in 1959, and then worked on research in the fields of child development and juvenile justice. From a first visit in 1988 to a final visit in 2008, she and her husband spent part of each year in Venasque, France, a small village which they grew to love as a second home. A private memorial service will be held at a later date. As a professional, a mother, a neighbor, and a friend, she will be deeply missed by all.

Census Records

Date	Location	Enumerated Names
April 5, 1930252	Richmond, Wayne, Indiana	Walter Scott Vaughan Mary Vaughan Edward Vaughan Williams Mary Suzanne Votaw Suzanne Williams Mary Patricia Williams