Samuel Alleyne Otis, Jr.

Samuel A. Otis, Jr. died on September 1, 2021 in the Cambridge house where he had lived for more than 50 years. Houses were important to Sam, and he collected them the way some people collect art – he fell in love with their beauty and character. Over his lifetime he had acquired (and often restored) homes in Vinalhaven, Maine; Tortola, BVI; Buttonwood, Rhode Island; and Block Island, Rhode Island as well as his sprawling Victorian in Cambridge. Sam Otis especially loved islands.

Sam was born on April 7, 1935 in Providence, Rhode Island to the late Jeannette (Lowry) and Samuel A. Otis, Sr. He grew up in and around Providence and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1961 where he majored in art and painting. Later, he continued his education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a Master’s degree in Urban Planning. He began his career at the Watertown-based architecture firm, Sasaki-Dawson & DeMay.

In 1968 Sam joined the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) where he worked for nearly 20 years and became the Assistant Director of Urban Design. He was involved in many of the transformational development projects that have changed the Boston cityscape including the Charlestown Navy Yard, Faneuil Hall, the South End, and the Seaport District. He was well known, respected and enormously well-liked by the architects, planners and developers he worked with. His good humor, his innate calm demeanor, and his sense of fairness made him a popular team member on BRA projects.

After he left the BRA he began his own business redeveloping and rehabbing buildings in several Boston neighborhoods. Sam would evaluate the potential of buildings and then bring in financial, construction and architectural partners as needed. He worked closely with a former BRA colleague, John Sloan, who became a lifelong friend.

Despite his demanding career as an urban planner and redeveloper, Sam always carved out time to pursue his art. His RISD education served him well. He was an accomplished printmaker, and both his watercolors and his pen & ink drawings were appreciated for their beauty and intricate detail.

In addition to his artistic and planning skills, Sam was a fine athlete. He played tennis, high school football, and ran marathons. His love for islands encompassed being on or just sailing around them. He got his first sailboat as a young boy and became an excellent sailor who intimately knew the waters around Rhode Island. At one point in his early 20s he was on an oil tanker in a storm off the Carolinas. The tanker responded to a distress call from a sinking boat nearby. Despite the storm and high seas, Sam went over the side clinging to nets, and saved a drowning man by grabbing his hand and pulling him to safety.

In the late 1960s Sam got caught up in a uniquely Cambridge phenomenon known as The ReadEasy. The ReadEasy encompassed many activities from its center in an old MBTA building located where the Charles Hotel now stands. Sam taught life drawing classes on an upper floor. Others offered psychotherapy and other pursuits. The ReadEasy also had a moveable beast, a donkey named Jenny who got hitched to a cart led around Harvard Square selling “the great books”.

Sam married twice. He met his first wife, Meredith Winter in 1951 when she was 16 years old. They married in 1958 and had two children, Melissa Winter Otis of Cambridge and Samuel Alleyne III of Philadelphia. That marriage ended amicably in 1971. He met Ann Wolpert at the BRA and after a courtship that lasted nearly a quarter century, they married in 2001. Theirs was an exceedingly happy relationship filled with adventures, travels, blended family gatherings, and, of course, houses. Ann died in 2013.

In addition to his children, Sam leaves behind his sister Susan Otis Brown of Providence and four grandchildren: Benjamin Alden Wellington, Avery Otis Williams, Alden Francis Otis and Samuel Alleyne Otis IV.

Sam’s house is a straight shot between Harvard Yard and the Radcliffe Quad. For all of Sam’s talents and activities, he was a man of simple pleasures, and one of his favorite pastimes was to sit on the front porch of his house watching the passing parade of students, professors, neighbors and their dogs. Every fall he took particular pleasure seeing the new crop of Harvard students hurrying back and forth. “Aaah,” he would say. “We’re watching the future walk by.”

Donations in Sam’s memory can be made to the Block Island Nature Conservancy on Block Island, PO Box 1287, Block Island, RI 02807.