William 'Bill' Gillitt

    William “Bill” Gillitt, an internationally acclaimed architect, urban designer, and city  planner died peacefully at his home on Tuesday June 24, 2025, at the age of ninety-five.  

    He designed major buildings, such as the Knesset in Israel, planned new cities, such as  Columbia, Maryland, and worked as Chief of Land Planning and Project Design for the City  of Baltimore. In 1979, he founded and served as president of William Gillitt, Architect. Inc.  in Boston and Newton, Mass, designing varied projects including Concerts on the  Common, Boston Common, Boston, MA and the Music Pavilion, Pier 6, Inner Harbor East,  Baltimore, MD. Prior to opening his own practice, Bill Gillitt was Senior Associate and  Managing Architect of Moshe Safdie and Associates, Architects and Planners in Montreal  and Boston where he worked on major city planning projects including Frobisher Bay (now  Iqaluit) in the Northwest Territories, Canada, the city of Columbia in Maryland, the  Landmark Square in Stamford Connecticut, and the Keur Farah Pahlavi New Town in  Senegal (abandoned because of 1978 Iranian Revolution). While with Safdie and  Associates, he also designed the Bronfman Amphitheatre, Jerusalem, Israel and waterfront  projects including Le Vieux Port de Montréal, Montréal, Quebec, and supervised the Cité du  Havre Development and Design Guidelines. He was a Charter Member of the American  Institute of Certified Planners. 

    Bill was born in Antofagasta province, Chile in 1929, and raised in Mejillones, a shipping  port for copper and nitrates mined in the interior and carried to the coast on a narrow gauge railway. His father, Frank Sidney Gillitt, born in Northamptonshire, England and had  left England in his 20s to seek his fortune, first in Argentina and then in Chile, was the senior stac mechanical engineer for the Railway Works (aka La Maestranza) that  maintained and provided mechanical services to the entire lower Pacific basin. Bill was the  youngest of four boys (Andrew Sidney, Edward James, and Frank Norman). By the time Bill  was born, his parents had run out of names and so he wasn’t given a middle name. He was  ten years younger than his next oldest brother, Frank. Each of the boys left for England at  age 13 to continue their secondary school education at Wellingborough School, where  generations of Gillitts had been students. Because of the age dicerences, Bill grew up  mainly as an only child except for a magical year when his brother Frank moved back to  Mejillones to work at the Railway Works for a year before enlisting in the British Royal Air  Force (RAF) when WWII broke out. 

    Bill spent all his childhood years in Chile. During the winter months, because of the war, he  wasn’t sent to England to continue his secondary education like his brothers, but instead  attended Saint Peter’s School for Boys, a boarding school three train rides away from  Mejillones. During summer breaks, he returned to live with his parents. He spent his days  with the other children living in the ‘Works’ compound for the European senior stac (mainly  British) and Chilean employee. They were separated from the adjoining fishing village by an eight foot corrugated iron fence. Within the employee compound, children were given free  reign spending their time on the beach, fishing from canoes, crabbing, swimming, exploring  the trains, playing with the goats, geese, and chickens, and riding ponies. There were no  paved roads, no air travel, no television. The only car known to him was his father’s  company car, an old, boxy green Ford that had steel wheels and ran on rail tracks. 

    A turning point came for Bill when his beloved brother Frank was killed during an aviation  training exercise in Wales in 1942, prior to Operation Basalt and Frankton. Frank left Bill his  entire estate and wartime compensation. After graduating from Saint Peter’s School, Bill used the money to move to England to finish his secondary education at Wellingborough  School in the Gillitt tradition and to pursue an engineering degree from London University.  He then studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, graduating with  honors.  

    While studying architecture, he met Ram Karmi, who invited him in 1957 to join his father  Dov Karmi’s firm based in Tel-Aviv, Israel. In 1956, an architectural competition had been held for the design of a new parliament building in Jerusalem (the Knesset) for the newly  formed nation. Dov Karmi, as a highly respected architect—he had received the inaugural Israel Prize for Architecture in 1957—didn’t enter the competition because he was busy on  another project. However, the architect who won the competition turned in five different  designs that were all rejected. The Competition Committee asked Dov to intervene as an  arbiter. He agreed on the condition that his office prepare a completely new design. Dov  accepted the challenge and assigned his son Ram and Bill to implement it. However, Ram  left the project soon after, leaving Bill on his own. He met regularly with Dov to get approval  of his plans and to move onto the next phase. Sadly, Dov died in 1962, leaving Bill as the  sole overseer of the project, which (in retrospect) he unwisely turned down. The other  architects involved were not supportive of his designs. Instead they implemented ones  similar to the ones originally rejected that were similar to other parliamentary buildings in  other countries: grand structures with tall columns, reminiscent of Ancient Greek  architecture. Despite efforts to stay relevant on the project, he felt stymied and isolated  and quit. Of the portions from his original design, he was most proud of the initial parliamentary hall, based on a variety of theater auditoriums he had drafted when he first  began working for Dov’s firm. 

    In Israel, Bill met his ex-wife, Miriam Schnur, a naturalized American citizen. In 1959, they  were married in Scotland and spent their honeymoon traveling across land visiting great  architectural sites on their return to Israel. Shortly after their wedding, due to Miriam’s visa  requirements as a naturalized citizen, he left Israel to move back to the United States with  her. He worked for various firms in New York City, New Haven, Los Angeles, and Baltimore,  focusing mostly on urban planning, development, and the massive highway construction  initiatives that characterized much of the 1960s. 

    In 1972, he joined Moshe Safdie and Associates, Architects and Planners in Montreal as  Senior Associate and Managing Architect. While in Montreal, he focused much of his ecorts on developing the burgeoning regional center towns of Canada’s distant territory of  what is now Iqaluit, and designing a futurist planned community in Western Senegal commissioned by the then Queen of Iran, Farah Pahlavi. That project never came to fruition  because of the 1978 Iranian Revolution. 

    He returned to the United States in 1978 when Safdie’s firm split into two: the  francophones remained in Montreal while the Anglophones moved to the Boston area. Bill settled in Newton, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He accepted a position as  adjunct professor of architecture at Harvard while working in the Safdie Boston ocice. In  1979, he founded his own firm, William Gillitt Architect, Inc. His practice focused on  commercial buildings, urban planning, and residential homes. He was also deeply  committed to enriching the quality of life in Newton, serving as the Chair of the Mayor's  Advisory Committee for the New Main Library, Newton, Co-Chairman of the Newton Comer  Gateway Beautification Committee, Board Member of the Newton Arts Center, and Chair of  the Commonwealth Avenue Task Force. He remained practicing as an architect for the  remainder of his life, with his final proposal for a residential community on a bridge  spanning the Mass Pike. 

    Bill was a consummate artist and creator of all manner of things. He was a talented painter,  whose paintings have been displayed in art shows on the east and west coasts of the U.S. as well as on the island of Tortola. He held a weekly “Art Night” for decades when the group  would gather at his house (or online during the pandemic), eat together and make art. The  members of Art Night changed over the years, but it was those afternoons and evenings  when he made some of his closest and longest lasting friends.  

    Taking example from his father Frank, Bill planted vegetable gardens where ever he lived.  They were always verdant, even in the short growing season of Montreal. While in Montreal,  he developed a passion for winter sports, cross-country skiing every weekend, sledding  with his wife and children, and devising a slope made from snow for tobogganing that went  from the roof of the house to the bottom of the garden. He was the person who could figure  out a fix for anything, always thinking outside the box. He was also an accomplished  seafarer and fisherman, immensely proud of his catboat, a single mast sailboat he named Mejillones and kept on Cape Cod. He sailed yachts for weeks at a time with his friends in  the Caribbean. He always felt most comfortable near or on the ocean, spending summers  on Nantucket going to the beach and long rod casting into the surf for bluefish with his  daughter. Later in life he livied in Mashpee on Cape Cod from Memorial Day until October, fishing, crabbing, clamming, beach combing, or on his beloved catboat. 

    He was also passionate about his genealogy, digitizing a family tree with data from a  relative. He created a Facebook group for all Gillitts by blood or marriage to update the tree  and recover missing branches. The lineage now traces back to 17th-century  Northamptonshire, and Bill’s research extended it to Normandy, where "Gillitt" was a  French form of "William"—making his name, amusingly, William William.

    Perhaps his ultimate achievement was his own house in Newtonville. He purchased a lot  thought to be unusable due to an extreme slope that would wear away at any foundation.  Bill took it as a challenge, designing a house that integrated the steep drop into its design rather than fight against it. He even designed interior portions of the house, such as the  staircases, and personally built the furniture fit his vision. 

    Bill lived a remarkable long life. His mind was sharp until the very end. He wanted to be  kept in the loop about everything pertaining to his care and news about family and friends,  whom he recognized and remembered details about when they came to visit. He did the  crossword daily until he entered hospice in November 2024 and even afterwards although  he couldn’t see or speak clearly, he would say each letter to the answer out loud. It was his  body that failed him, otherwise right now he’d probably be busy working on a crossword  puzzle, playing sudoku, tending to his garden, having a glass of wine with friends and  neighbors, or hosting Art Night. 

    Bill is survived by his longtime loving companion of over thirty years, Barbara Adner, ex-wife  Miriam, his two children, daughter Cobina and his son-in-law Corin Danu Asmara and their  two children, Coraya and Coda and his wife Theresa, his son Adam, nieces Jackie, Penny,  Allison, and Francis, and their children in England, South Africa and Australia, and a wide reaching community of friends in Newton and around the world. 

    Bill requested there be no funeral or memorial service for him. In lieu of sending flowers,  please consider making a donation in Bill’s name to the Newton Arts Center  https://newartcenter.org or by calling (617) 964 3424.

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