Long-time Sonoman Paul Vieyra passes away

Architect championed art and design.|

This story was slated to run Friday, June 15, but a production error led to the piece being cut off before the end. Here it is again in its entirety.

Architect Paul Vieyra died in Sonoma on Memorial Day, May 28, following a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in February. He was 84. An accomplished actor and a lauded architect, Vieyra was a noted taste-maker and bon vivant.

Born in South Africa, Vieyra moved to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, eventually joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon where he was cast in multiple productions with Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Despite his success as a stage actor, Vieyra turned his attention to another passion: becoming a registered architect after five years of study at the Thames Polytechnic in London. When he moved to New York to pursue a post-graduate degree in architecture at Columbia University, he met Stanley Abercrombie and the two became lifelong companions. The men married when it became legally possible and were partners for 51 years.

“He was very witty, very funny,” Abercrombie said. “Just a wonderfully lively person to be with.”

Vieyra and Abercrombie came to Sonoma from New York in 1997, staying at the Sonoma Mission Inn after a professional commitment in San Francisco. “I had come to San Francisco for an event at Showplace Square, and the woman who was head of publicity, Sherry Baker, lived in Sonoma and commuted to the city every day,” Abercrombie said. “She said, ‘I’ll treat you to a weekend in Sonoma and show you around,’ and so we did, and we absolutely fell in love with it.”

The pair bought property at the end of Seventh Street East and built a showpiece home of their own design. “We bought that piece of land 10 years before we were able to move here,” Abercrombie said. “And we designed our house over and over again while we were in New York.”

Vieyra and Abercrombie lived in that house for almost 20 years, amassing a vast collection of art and architecture books. Two thousand of those books were donated to the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, where Vieyra was a founding member. He served several terms on SVMA’s board of directors and-with Abercrombie-designed many of its early exhibitions. SVMA built a library off its main gallery to accommodate the endowment of books, and named the space in their honor. The remaining 10,000 books from the men’s collection were bequeathed to the California College of the Arts, in Oakland.

In the decades he spent working as an architect in New York, Vieyra worked for two premier firms: Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and Genlser Associates. He designed the Paleo restaurant in Manhattan, the New York Times’ advertising department, Payne Webber’s New York headquarters, 6 Chase Manhattan bank buildings in Latin America, the Kuwait Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the trading floors of Credit Suisse in Toronto, Cantor Fitzgerald, Chase Manhattan, and Nomura, all in Manhattan. Three of the trading floors designed by Vieyra were destroyed in the 9/11 attach on the World Trade Center.

By then, though, Vieyra was retired to Sonoma, where he applied his architectural expertise as a member of the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation and the head of its annual award jury. He served on the committee that worked to restore Hooker House, and was a member of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society.

Vieyra’s final decline was swift but sure, and he died peacefully at home at age 84. “He was in good shape until the last month, and then he had round-the-clock nursing service and hospice care,” Abercrombie said. “He stayed right at home in his own bed, and was always kind and sweet.”

“Just a few days ago I talked to a friend in San Francisco who said his mother had had Alzheimer’s for 21 years.” Abercrombie said, pausing for a moment to gather himself. “In many ways, we were lucky.”

Contact Kate at kate.williams@sonomanews.com

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