Gray Smith, planner with community focus
In the four decades that the urban planner Gray Smith made Philadelphia his home, he never lost his peculiar Southern twang, which resembled a pickup truck reversing on gravel. He also never hesitated to use that voice to speak out on behalf of dozens of neighborhood, preservation, and social causes, and he delighted when opponents denounced him as a gadfly.
In the four decades that the urban planner Gray Smith made Philadelphia his home, he never lost his peculiar Southern twang, which resembled a pickup truck reversing on gravel. He also never hesitated to use that voice to speak out on behalf of dozens of neighborhood, preservation, and social causes, and he delighted when opponents denounced him as a gadfly.
That voice went silent Thursday, April 29, when Mr. Smith suffered a heart attack. Mr. Smith, 69, will be eulogized Wednesday, May 5.
Mr. Smith's career as a community activist began almost as soon as he arrived in Philadelphia in 1967 to work as an architect, and it continued until his death. Mr. Smith spent time last month preparing to testify against a controversial City Council bill allowing large signs on East Market Street buildings.
"He stood up for what was right and never worried about losing business because of it," said Mary C. Tracy, who heads the Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight (SCRUB) and opposes the sign bill. She credits Mr. Smith with helping her to establish the organization.
Mr. Smith, who wore a thick gray beard and commuted to meetings by bicycle, mostly lost his battles. Yet he could claim some victories that had a lasting impact on the city. He helped lead a battle in the 1980s to save the Reading Terminal Market from demolition as part of a Convention Center project.
Born into a wealthy Nashville family and radicalized by the civil rights movement, Mr. Smith often acknowledged that he loved nothing better than a good fight.
"Maybe it's the rebel in me," he told an interviewer. "I have to admit it's frustrating because you win one and you lose 15, and the people you're fighting against are basically just stubborn and stupid."
Mr. Smith, who obtained a master's degree in architecture from Tulane University, had little patience for people who quietly justified bad policies. His favorite adjective of derision was "lily-livered coward."
"Architects," he once told an interviewer, "are the most lily-livered people in the world." He made the remark even though he was president, in 1982, of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
He made plenty of enemies. Once, while leading a neighborhood uprising over nuisances at a South Philadelphia take-out called Broccos, Mr. Smith came home to find a bullet through his window. He led a 40-year crusade at the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections, an agency he considered corrupt, inept, and antiquated.
And Mr. Smith's disputes with former City Councilman Franny Rafferty were so intense that the official always greeted him with an extended middle finger, whether they met on the street or in City Hall.
It wasn't always obvious, but fighting the system was a sideline for Mr. Smith. He spent a decade working as an architect on public housing and preservation projects before setting out on his own in 1975.
He rented space on the top floor of Sylvania House, then a down-at-the-heels office tower on Locust Street. After his first marriage dissolved, it became a place to sleep as well as work, his second wife, Roxanne Galeota, recalled.
In the early years, Mr. Smith specialized in developing small-scale neighborhood plans for places like Mount Holly and nonprofit neighborhood groups.
"He was a pioneer of that type of planning," said John Gallery, a former city planner who now heads the Preservation Alliance. "He was the person that so many community organizations turned to for professional assistance."
Most recently, he testified as an expert witness on behalf of a group fighting to prevent development in Burholme Park by Fox Chase Cancer Center. The group won.
Mr. Smith spent years in the '80s on the board of the now-disbanded South Street Neighborhood Association, fighting nuisance incursions.
The list of groups that Mr. Smith defended includes the owners of the sinking Logan homes, residents of Philadelphia's public housing, and accessibility advocates. He fought battles to prevent the demolition of John F. Kennedy Stadium, the Victory Building, and the Philadelphia Naval Hospital.
Besides his wife, Mr. Smith is survived by daughters Raquel, Greta Ellison, and Stacy Bertuccelli; a son, Christian; and seven grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, May 5, at Bringhurst Funeral Home, 225 Belmont Ave., Bala Cynwyd, with internment to follow in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd.