More than 40 years ago, a group of young Manhattan architects with a shared interest in the aesthetics of old-fashioned Modernism began getting together to talk about their work, their lives and the state of the field. And in the decades that followed, even as their styles grew apart — and as they became celebrities in and beyond the world of architecture — they continued talking.

But now the group, long known as the New York Five, is shrinking: After losing its first member, John Hejduk, in 2000, a second, Charles Gwathmey, died last week.

Following the news of Mr. Gwathmey’s death, at 71, friends and colleagues from within and outside the group spoke about his weekend houses on the East End of Long Island — especially one he designed for his parents, completed in 1966 — and his additions to public buildings, like the Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art & Architecture Building at Yale, by Paul Rudolph.

But they also remembered his beginnings as one of the New York Five, or the Whites, as the group was also known because of its proclivity for white buildings inspired by the purist forms of Le Corbusier. Along with Mr. Gwathmey and Mr. Hejduk, the group included Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman and Richard Meier.