EDWARD J. LOGUE He loved cities, loved them with an informed and orderly passion. Ed Logue's lifelong love affair with cities enhanced the lives of hundreds of thousands. His insistence on high standards of design influenced a generation of architects and planners. In New Haven, Boston, New York and around the world, he left a legacy of economic revival animated by what he called "planning with people." Ed Logue did not court controversy, nor did he duck it. Those who knew him knew that the slower he talked, the faster he was thinking. Born in Philadelphia, he was a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School. In World War II, he was a bombardier and won eight Battle Stars. He worked for Connecticut Governor Chester Bowles and served on the embassy staff when Mr. Bowles was US ambassador to India. In 1954, Ed Logue got into the urban renewal field when he became development administrator of New Haven. He helped transform that city until 1960, when the new mayor of Boston, John F. Collins, asked him to revive the sagging fortunes of New England's largest city. Although Boston is a clannish city where politics is a contact sport, Ed's focused patience won over skeptics. He spent hours at kitchen tables in neighborhoods genetically hostile to "outsiders." Years later, the residents of places like Marskdale Gardens and Savin Hill Green can be grateful for his persistence. Boston's most notable urban renewal project during his tenure was Government Center, which replaced Scollay Square, the honky-tonk haven for sailors and undergraduates. To design the land use pattern, Ed hired an aspiring architect, I. M. Pei. "Just as Charles Bulfinch put his stamp on a changing Boston at the beginning of the 19th century, Ed Logue made a lasting contribution to the Boston of the 20th century," said Thomas H. O'Connor, the Boston College historian, an authority on Boston's history. A summer resident of Martha's Vineyard, Ed sponsored conservation efforts, including the Vineyard Open Land Foundation. He died in West Tisbury in January of 2000 at 78. In 1967, Ed tried elective politics, running for mayor of Boston. He lost, but was not out of public service for long. From Albany, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller called, asking Ed to head the state's Urban Development Corporation. He accepted, and in six years supervised 50 building projects and 33,000 housing units throughout the state. He changed the weed-strewn wastes of Welfare Island off Manhattan into the thriving town renamed Roosevelt Island. Visitors to the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London encounter a phrase at the tomb of its architect, Christopher Wren: Si monumentum requiris circumpsice. "If you seek his monument, look around you." On a fine summer day by the East River, those who look at Roosevelt Island can think happily of Ed Logue. - Martin F. Nolan © 2003. FRIENDS OF EDWARD J. LOGUE.