When, on May 16, 2019, at the age of 102, the architect IM Pei died, he was—as Paul Goldberger put it— “the quintessential New Yorker.” What makes an architect a quintessential New Yorker? Sure, he had a townhouse on Sutton Place and a weekend house in Katonah. He left the city with scores of towers and the iconic Javits Center. He employed up to 300 architects at his office near Gramercy and had his hundredth birthday party in the Rainbow Room. But that’s not it. Rather, his status as the high-priest of New York architecture culture has to do with a particular—suspect—kind of exceptionalism that defines his preeminence in a profession known for introversion: he was charming.
Cynthia Davidson hinted at this theme in her 2016 blockbuster Log interview with Pei’s long-time business partner, Harry Cobb, who confessed “He [Pei] never had much interest in talking to architects. He was interested in the clients, or, more specifically, the patrons (…) I mean, why chat with Peter Eisenman when you could be chatting with Bunny Mellon?” Cobb went on to say that “He and Eilee…