We are saddened to share that we recently learned of the passing of Brother Charlie Dagit ’65 on March 27, 2024, at the age of 81. Our condolences go out to his family at this time.
To view the full obituary as posted by the McConaghy Funeral Home, please keep reading below.
“Noted architect Charles Edward Dagit, Jr. FAIA of Gladwyne passed away on March 27 due to complications of pneumonia. Mr. Dagit was born on July 1, 1943 to Charles E. Dagit and Janet Donnelly Dagit. He leaves behind his beloved wife of 57 years Alice Murdoch Dagit, sons Charles E. Dagit III (Chet) and John Murdoch Dagit, grandsons Charlie, Julian, Jack and Will, sisters Jane Dagit Young and Louise Dagit, daughter-in-law Molly McAlaine Dagit and many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his sister Ethel Dagit Cunningham and sister-in-law Peggy Murdoch Hughes Fulmer.
Charles was a member of an architectural dynasty founded in 1888 by his grandfather Henry D. Dagit. Among their outstanding work is the highly regarded St. Frances de Sales Church in West Philadelphia.
He graduated from Malvern Preparatory School in 1961, received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965, a Bachelors in Architecture from Penn in 1967 and a Masters in Architecture in 1968 from the world renowned Louis I. Kahn Masters Studio at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn he was a most distinguished student, winning the Dales Fellowship, the Stewardson Memorial Competition and the Schenk Woodman Competition.
After graduation, he worked for the prestigious Mitchell/Giurgola Architects and Henry D. Dagit & Sons before founding Dagit•Saylor Architects in 1970. The firm went on to win over 60 national, regional and local design awards. His first buildings – the multi-award winning Physical Education Building for Pennsylvania State University published in Progressive Architecture magazine, the Paul Miller Residence featured in House and Garden magazine, and the Monastery of St. Clare in Newtown Pennsylvania receiving international acclaim when Robert A. M. Stern proclaimed him one of the Forty Under Forty Outstanding American Architects under the age of forty in A+U Magazine – together launched his remarkable career into high gear.
In short order Mr. Dagit went on to win the AIA Philadelphia Gold Medal and a citation for Excellence from AIA Pennsylvania for the Nursing Education Building for Holy Family University. Other awards swiftly followed for the American Airlines ticket office, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Peale House, Gwynedd Mercy College Library, Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, and others.
In 1983 Mr. Dagit was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architecture, the youngest person ever to receive that prestigious honor.
He was awarded the AIA Pennsylvania Silver Medal, its highest honor, for the Pennsylvania State University Agricultural Arena which the esteemed Architectural Record magazine dubbed the best building of the 1980s.
In 2012 he was presented with the extremely prestigious Pennsylvania Gold Medal of Distinction by the American Institute of Architects for a lifetime distinguished career in architecture in a ceremony in the Rotunda of the State Capitol Building. It is the highest honor that can be conferred on a Pennsylvania architect, having only been awarded ten times in the previous twenty-five years. Mr. Dagit joined only three other Philadelphia Design Architects who had ever received it: Robert Venturi, Vincent Kling and Peter Bohlin.
Also in 2012 Mr. Dagit was honored at The Athenaeum with the coveted Thomas U. Walter Award for his contributions to architectural design, teaching and the AIA. He was only the fifth recipient ever of that august tribute.
In 1984 he won the international design competition for the Cultural Arts Pavilion for the city of Newport News, Virginia. His watercolor renderings for that competition were so masterful as to be exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at the University of Pennsylvania.
He went on in the 1990s to receive design awards from AIA Philadelphia and AIA Pennsylvania for two buildings at Shippensburg University, for the F. W. Olin Building at Ursinus College, and the Whitehead Campus Center at Haverford College. A particularly comprehensive project was the North Campus at Cornell University designed in conjunction with Alan Chimacoff of the Hillier Group. Thereafter he designed its Appel Commons Building and continued his work with Cornell on numerous other projects.
His list of academic clients also included among others: Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, The University of Vermont, The University of Virginia, Duke University, Oberlin College, The College of Wooster, Lehigh University, Bryn Mawr College, and Swarthmore College.
Beyond his career as a design architect, he entered academia as the Managing Secretary of the Stewardson Memorial Foundation from 1973 to 1985. He taught design at Temple University from 1973 to 1980, the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, and Drexel University from 1983 to 2012 and was a visiting critic at Penn and a lecturer at Penn, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and Syracuse Universities, and at International Conferences. At Drexel, in addition to conducting a seminar on the History of American Architecture based on one of the books he authored, he was a Senior Thesis Advisor for over 15 years with his students consistently winning honors for their thesis projects, a source of great pride to him.
He was very active in the American Institute of Architects serving twice on the Board of the Philadelphia Chapter of the AIA, and in 1990 becoming President elect and President in 1991 convincing the National AIA Convention Selection Committee to bring the AIA National Convention to Philadelphia in 2000. In addition he was active in the National AIA, serving first on the AIA Committee for Architecture for the Arts and Recreation and chairing a national design conference in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1978.
He was invited to join the AIA National Committee on Design in 1980 and remained a vigorous member for four decades. He served as chair of its National Awards Task Force 1983-1985, chair of the Gold Medal Task Force 1985, and in 1991 he conceived and chaired the largest ever National Design Conference of the Committee on Design here in Philadelphia featuring the Philadelphia School of Architecture. In 1993 he was appointed Vice Chair of the Committee on Design and in 1994 he rose to its Chairmanship.
Never losing focus on Pennsylvania, he was Chair of the AIA Pennsylvania Leadership Forum in 2000-2003, Chair of the AIA Pennsylvania PAC 2003-2007 and a member of the AIA Pennsylvania Board of Directors 2008-2010 as well as the AIA Philadelphia Board of Directors 2008-2010.
Mr. Dagit served on countless national, regional, and local AIA Awards Juries, as well as juries for Progressive Architecture, House and Home Magazine, the City of Washington D.C. Design Awards Program, the Department of Defense Awards Program, and Bricks in Architecture Honor Awards. Decades-log vigorous
In 2013 he was appointed by Governor Tom Corbett to the Department of General Services Selections Committee to choose architects and engineers for numerous projects throughout the Commonwealth.
Mr. Dagit’s work has been published in Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, The Japan Architect, Interiors Magazine, L’Industria delle Construzioni, Yale Perspecta, House and Garden, House and Home, and A+U Magazine, among others. Philadelphia Magazine published a lengthy feature article about his firm and his design role, and he himself authored architectural articles for The Philadelphia Inquirer, A+U Magazine and SCUP Quarterly Magazine.
Mr. Dagit was an accomplished author. Two of his pieces in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1989 were “The Age of Fluff is on the Way Out” and “Broad Street Blooms Anew as the Avenue of the Arts.” He published two books, one entitled “Louis I. Kahn – Architect, Remembering the Man and Those Who Surrounded Him” which enjoys two dozen Five-Star reviews on Amazon, more than any other book on Lou Kahn. It was also translated into Estonian and published there, Louis I. Kahn’s birthplace. To mark Kahn’s 120th birthday, Mr. Dagit was honored at the Estonian Consulate in New York and was interviewed at the Scandia House in New York and live streamed to Estonia. His second book titled “The Groundbreakers – Architects in American History, Their Places and Times” is a fascinating study of American architectural entrepreneurs.
Mr. Dagit designed and constructed his own house in Gladwyne, winning an AIA Philadelphia Citation for Excellence in Design in 1972. The house was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Today Magazine. He was also an avid gardener, creating a Japanese garden to complement the house. The garden has been on multiple garden tours and was featured in a lengthy article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “A Mostly Japanese Garden” in 2010.
Mr. Dagit was extremely active in his community, serving as President of the Gladwyne Civic Association 1981-1982, shepherding the introduction of Waverly Heights into the community and instituting in honor of Gladwyne’s 300th Anniversary the now much loved annual Memorial Day Parade. And he was President of The Gladwyne Free Library 1990-1991, leading it through an unprecedented capital campaign and architectural reconceptualizing with major renovations.
He served on numerous other Boards of Directors in including The Down Town Club, and the Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, the University of Pennsylvania Sphinx Senior Society, and the University of Pennsylvania Mask and Wig Club where he and his partner Peter Saylor significantly renovated and preserved their historic clubhouse. From 1979 to 1987 he served on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Zoo as Chair of the Long Range Planning Committee and the Building and Grounds Committee. He subsequently designed two buildings for the Zoo, the Animal Health Care Center and the McNeil Avian Center.
Mr. Dagit painted prolifically, mostly in oil but in watercolor architecturally. He also sculpted in metal, played piano, loved golf, logging limitless hours with friends on the links at Merion Golf Club, and was a stand-out on the dancefloor, much to the joy of his devoted wife and partner in life Alice. But his real passion was sailing. He was a National Champion. He sailed both Moths and Comets and won the National Championship in the Moth Class in 1972. Mr. Dagit and Alice sailed the Chesapeake of course, but also internationally, including Italy, France, Greece, the North Pacific and the Virgin Islands.
In addition to Merion Golf Club, Mr. Dagit belonged to The Carpenters’ Company of Philadelphia which is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year, The Mask and Wig Club and The Sphinx Senior Society of the University of Pennsylvania, Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, the Margaret Roper Forum, and previously The Union League.
Relatives and friends are invited on Friday April 12th, Visitation from 10:15 to 11:00 AM with Mass of Christian Burial at 11:00 AM at St. John Vianney Church, 350 Conshohocken State Rd., Gladwyne PA. Interment will follow in Calvary Cemetery.
Donations in his memory may be sent to the North Philadelphia inner-city school he supported, St. Malachy School, 1012 W. Thompson Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122 or, for scholarships and grants for local families, to The Emergency Aid, 221 Conestoga Road, Suite 300, Wayne PA. 19087.”
