Roger K. Lewis, architect who explored the capital with wry eye, dies at 83

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Roger K. Lewis, architect who explored the capital with wry eye, dies at 83
For more than 30 years, Mr. Lewis’s Shaping the City column and his drawings in The Washington Post tracked the region’s evolution.


Roger K. Lewis at an event by the American Institute of Architects in Washington. (Family photo)

By Brian Murphy
October 8, 2024 at 7:42 p.m. EDT

Roger K. Lewis, an architect who turned his fascination with urban planning into a more-than-30-year run at The Washington Post with eclectic columns and wry cartoons on topics ranging from rising rents to shrinking public spaces, died Oct. 2 at his home in D.C. He was 83. ... The cause was complications after kidney surgery, said his wife, Eleanor Lewis.

Mr. Lewis arrived in the Washington area in 1968 as a professor at the University of Maryland’s newly formed school of architecture. He soon added a second career by launching an architectural firm, Roger K. Lewis & Associates, that took on projects such as residential developments and community centers across the United States and in countries including Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Venezuela.

In the early 1980s, the editor of The Post’s real estate section, Albert Crenshaw, was looking for a new columnist. He normally brought in architects and others for several weeks as guest writers. Mr. Lewis offered to lend a hand. ... Crenshaw said he expected Mr. Lewis to be another short-term presence after his first piece debuted in 1984. “But he became so popular with readers that we just kept going,” Crenshaw recalled in an interview.

Mr. Lewis’s Shaping the City column appeared in The Post on varying schedules until 2022, bringing readers his musings and insights on areas such as architectural criticism, city planning, housing prices and historic preservation.

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A 2014 drawing by architect Roger K. Lewis that accompanied his Shaping the City column in The Washington Post. (Roger Lewis/Montagu House Publishing)

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By Brian Murphy
Brian Murphy joined The Washington Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. Murphy has reported from more than 50 countries and has written four books.follow on X @BrianFMurphy