Charles W. Warterfield Jr. cared passionately about architecture. ``If architecture is strictly business,'' he once said, ``if you don't live, eat, and breathe it every waking hour, why bother?''
Charley ``bothered.'' The preeminent preservation architect in the mid-South from the 1970s until his recent retirement, and a distinguished architectural photographer whose lenses recorded thousands of images from across Tennessee over the last five decades (see ``Love Among the Ruins: 10 Pieces of Nashville Lost to the Wrecking Ball,'' Nashville Scene, Oct. 8, 1998), Warterfield died this week at the age of 72. He leaves behind a preservation ethic for us all to live up to.
Warterfield'9s mind was a virtual catalog of the city'9s architecture, both standing and fallen. But the structure that was the love of his life was the Tennessee State Capitol. For more than 40 years, Warterfield worked to restore the Capitol and its grounds. In the process, he taught the state of Tennessee how to care for its buildings.
The contributions Warterfield made to the city are too numerous to list, although the essential nature of his gifts was perhaps best described by Susan Wiltshire, a Vanderbilt classics professor who collaborated with Warterfield in the writing of the book Classical Nashville. ``Charley Warterfield had an artist'9s eye, a philosopher'9s soul, and the heart of a lover. He was a lover of his family and friends, his craft, and his city. We are all in his debt for giving us the eyes to see what was there all along.''
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