Allen Trousdale, an architect and world traveler, died at his home in Norfolk on Feb. 21. He was 79 years old and divided his time between Norfolk and Brooklyn.

Born in Monroe, Louisiana on Dec. 2, 1940, to parents Briscoe and Frances (Miller) Trousdale, Allen attended Tulane University, graduating in 1963 with a degree in architecture. He then joined the United States Army military service and was deployed to Vietnam, where he was stationed in the coastal city of Nhatrang. On his discharge, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he earned a master’s degree in architecture.

In 1970, he married Sabina Cronin, an interior designer, and together they restored several historical residences, both in New York and Newburyport, Mass.

While an associate at the architectural firm of Oppenheimer, Brady and Associates in the early 1970s, Trousdale took part in the historic preservation of a number of New York houses, including the Wyckoff House in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the oldest house in New York State, built as part of the farming community of Nieuw Amersfoort in 1652; and the Jonas Wood home in lower Manhattan, built in 1804, which was moved to Harrison Street a few block north of the World Trade Center as part of a row of historic houses in the Washington Street Urban Renewal Area.

In the 1990s, by then a principal at the Newark-based architectural firm, Grad Associates, Trousdale responded to the growing need for more prisons, applying himself to what he called, in a New York Times quote, “the unfortunate challenge” of prison design. “It’s unfortunate that the need is so great,” said Trousdale. He referred to prisons as “schools of last resort,” contending that when they are designed and run properly, they provide opportunities for finishing high school and learning trades for men and women who had dropped out of the system.

The new section of Trenton State Prison, a futuristic building in bright shades of red and blue, represented Grad Associates’ attempt to humanize prison design.

By 2010, Trousdale had risen to managing partner of what was then known as GRAD Associates, but the firm, which in the early 2000s completed the Harborview office complex in Jersey City and the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Building in Newark, faltered in the economic downturn and was forced to shut down. It was also in that year that Trousdale lost his wife Sabine, unexpectedly, to complications of pneumonia.

In retirement, Trousdale traveled extensively, often driven by his interest in architecture—to China and North Korea; to Mendoza, Argentina, from Santiago, Chile, by an arduous crossing of the Andes; and, only three months ago, to eastern Turkey to see Armenian monasteries. It was on a trip to Iran that he met Sukey Wagner, who brought him to Norfolk because he loved chamber music. She had just bought a house on Emerson Street, and the two came to an arrangement. “I bought it,” said Wagner, “he renovated it, and the agreement was that he would buy me out if he took to the town, or that we would sell it if he decided not to stay. He bought me out.”

In Norfolk, Trousdale was known as an avid bridge player, a perennial host to summer fellows of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and a talented and bright man with deep intellectual interests.

Allen Trousdale is survived by a brother, John Miller Trousdale, and two nephews. Arrangements for a memorial service are still pending.