Leonard S. Kagan, a retired architect and partner of RTK&L; Associates Inc., died yesterday of diabetes complications at his Pikesville residence. He was 52.
He began his career with the New York City Planning Commission in 1962 and worked for several other New York architectural firms before joining RTK&L; in 1969. He retired in 1991.
Mr. Kagan designed large commercial retail office buildings and shopping malls in a distinctive modern neo-classical Jeffersonian style. Some of his local projects included White Marsh Mall, Hunt Valley Mall and Commerce Place.
He was also nationally known for his work on Pentagon City, a retail-residential complex near Washington; the St. Louis Center; Plaza in New York City, which was a conversion of the old Gimbel's on 34th Street into a new department store for the retail chain; the Esplanade Mall in New Orleans; and the Rosemont Performing Arts and Entertainment Center in Chicago.
"His passion was literally design," said Dave Hudson, executive vice president and an RTK&L; partner. "He was very strong-willed in this area. In fact, his whole personality was passionate. He always fought for his projects with a vengeance and was associated with and worked on some of RTK&L;'s best projects."
In a 1985 interview with Simon Developments, a publication of the Simon Properties Group based in Indianapolis, Mr. Kagan explained his lack of architectural heroes or role models.
"I don't have any heroes. The trouble with hero worship is that if you're not careful you'll imitate. . . . If you copy, you're not going to be successful."
Speaking of his own work, he said, "I guess if you lined up all of my projects on the wall, you would see something similar in them that would come through. But very little. Because each deals with making the building part of the solution. If you approach a project with a preconceived notion of the form, I think that will be terribly unsuccessful."
Born and reared in Glen Cove, N.Y., he earned a bachelor's degree in 1965 and then a bachelor of architecture in 1967 from the University of Cincinnati, and his master's degree in 1969 from the Yale School of Architecture.
In his leisure, he enjoyed driving his Porsche, collecting decoys, listening to classical music and watching movies.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Sol Levinson & Bros., 6010 Reisterstown Road.
Surviving are his wife of 26 years, the former Ann Kathryn Roth; two sons, Jonathan Paul Kagan of Annapolis and Leonard Rory Kagan, a freshman at the University of Miami; and two brothers, Neil Kagan of Falls Church, Va., and Bruce Kagan of Port Jefferson, N.Y.
Memorial donations may be made to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, 5 Gwynns Mill Court, Owings Mills 21117.