Peter Dominick, Jr., Top Denver Architect, 67; heart attack while cross country skiing
orpheus
his illustrious career came in the early 1990s, when he presented his
design for the Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World to Michael
Eisner, then chairman of Disney.
On Friday, as news of the death of the 67-year-old architect made its
way through the community, several pointed to the three Disney resort
hotels as well as many other projects as Mr. Dominick's legacy.
Dominick died Thursday, apparently from a heart attack, while cross-
country skiing near Aspen.
For decades, Dominick designed hotels, office buildings, homes and
interiors throughout the country. For Disney, Dominick's firm also
designed the Animal Kingdom Lodge in Orlando, Fla., and the Grand
California Hotel in Anaheim, Calif.
His initial presentation to Eisner made a deep impression.
"Michael Eisner leapt up from the conference table to examine the
drawing more closely, challenging his creative team to accept our
idea," Dominick wrote about the meeting.
"During these halcyon years of Disney, when Eisner was being hailed as
a modern-day Medici, we worked with one of the great creative
companies of its time and collaborated with the most talented
designers, working at their most creative boundaries."
Dominic died skiing with his wife, Philae Carver, and friends at the
Ashcroft Ski Touring Center, about a dozen miles from Aspen, according
to the Pitkin County Sheriff's Department.
Bystanders and members of the ski patrol attempted CPR, even using a
portable defibrillator, to no avail. He was pronounced dead at the
Aspen Valley Hospital at 5:25 p.m.
After graduating with a master's degree in architecture from the
University of Pennsylvania in 1968, Dominick traveled the world in
search of inspiration and in protest of Richard Nixon's presidency.
"I decided to travel the world, to leave the United States until Nixon
was no longer president," Dominick wrote.
His 31/2-year journey took him to the South Pacific, Asia, India, the
Middle East and Africa before he returned to the United States eight
months shy of Nixon's impeachment.
Mr. Dominick once wrote an essay describing the "polarities of my
practice, a love of nature and the outdoors and a fascination with
cities."
"You should have seen him fish," said his cousin, Tim Connors. "My
God, could he throw a fly line."
His death shocked friends, relatives and associates.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That is horrible," Denver
architect David Tryba said when told of Dominick's death. "He was so
young and vibrant."
Dominick's legacy is how much time, effort and energy he devoted to
making Denver a better place, Tryba said.
"Whenever I talked with him, our discussion was always about how much
potential we have here."
In addition, his firm, 4240 Architecture, designed almost $1 billion
in projects since he and Randy Johnson founded it in May 2003. In
Colorado, clients include Vail Resort Development Co.; East West
Partners, the developer of the Riverfront neighborhood in the Central
Platte Valley; and Forest City, developer of Stapleton.
"Peter was a great architect, no doubt about it," said Chris Frampton
of East West Partners. "He is one of the best there is. The stuff he
has done will set the tone for downtown for the next 100 years. Peter
is a big deal. Plus, he is a great guy, too."
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper met Dominick "when I had this wild idea
to open the Wynkoop (Brewing Co.) in 1987. He was one of the three
architects we interviewed. We didn't hire him, but he actually did
help us by giving us a lot of advice and encouragement."
Hickenlooper said Dominick approached everything he did with "joy and
intensity. And he was kind of classic within his firm as being a
servant leader. He wanted to create exciting buildings and
communities, and that was what it was about. It was not about him as
an individual."
Dominick's father, also named Peter, was a U.S. senator from Colorado
from 1963 to 1975.
Dominick was born in New York City but came to Colorado in 1946 when
he was 5 years old.
Growing up, he had a horse that he sometimes rode to a one-room
schoolhouse, where he was the only first-grader. At 14, he was sent to
St. Mark's School in Framingham, Mass., where he studied English,
math, Latin, philosophy, music and religion.
When he entered Yale, he decided not to follow his father into law
after taking an architecture course from the "electrifying" Vincent
Scully, who was a noted art and architecture professor and author.
"A life of creativity rather than a precedent-focused career as a
lawyer, which my father encouraged, began to germinate as a
possibility," Dominick wrote in The Colorado Fellows Book, in a
chapter titled "Values, Dreams, Inspirations."
At first, he studied history and religion at Yale.
"History would take me to law school; religion would take me to
philosophy," Dominick wrote. "Architecture took me to a new, huge
world, a world of thought and art, a world of history and culture, a
world of the sacred and profane."
Denver architect Curt Fentress said he always thought of Dominick as a
friend.
"And he was a neat guy, too," Fentress said. "Gosh, he died doing
something he loved."
Dominick would agree.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children, James and
Philae.
Funeral arrangements had not been set Friday afternoon.