Lawrenceville will go on, but a lot of people are wondering how many people it will take to continue everything Jay Bernard started.

The 49-year-old native of Warren, Ohio, died Thursday at Forbes Hospice after a yearlong struggle with stomach cancer.

To those active in Lawrenceville's fun -- from the House Tour and Art All Night to the Joy of Cookies tour and the Boys of Lawrenceville and its gourmet spaghetti dinner fund-raiser -- Mr. Bernard is considered nearly irreplaceable. He seemed unsinkable, too, so boundless was his energy on behalf of his neighborhood.

"It would take most people 100 years to do what he did in less than 50," said Margaret Stanhope, whose son Bill was Mr. Bernard's partner and co-proprietor at Jay Design, the shop he opened in 1996 on Butler Street.

Mr. Stanhope, his partner of 14 years, said the diagnosis last year presaged "what we knew was an uphill battle, but we focused on remodeling the shop. He was grading the floors even when he was going through chemo treatments. That was a testament to his spirit. He kept a good attitude. He handled it the way he handled everything in life."

Mr. Bernard was a catalyst in starting the neighborhood house tour, and the Joy of Cookies tour, an annual December event, was his idea. He fostered shelter dogs -- owning four, along with two cats -- and wrote the "Good Dog" column about adoptable pets in each issue of The Bulletin, a monthly publication of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp.

He also founded The Boys of Lawrenceville, a benevolent organization of gay men in the neighborhood.

He and Mary Anderson Hartley, an antiques store owner, were two of the planners of the first Art All Night nine years ago. The April event, which begins one evening and continues into the next day, is an exhibit of any and all artwork that people submit. It is held in a different, and larger, venue every year.

"He was the first person to show up when you opened your business," she said. "The reason the words shopping and Lawrenceville go together is because of him.

"He loved old-fashioned, wonderful things like quince and apple pie, and his whole being was about giving," she said. "He was the most generous gentleman. Let's say you gave him an old postcard. A week later, he would come to your house with a hot, steaming loaf of bread. He gave people little plantings of things. There are so many curly willows in the neighborhood because he gave so many people cuttings."

His mother, Mary Ann Bernard, said that from an early age he wanted to do things his way, "and it was always the right way. He had a flair for knowing how things should be done. He loved the details."

When he was having trouble reading in school, his parents had him tutored, she said. "The tutor told us he could read things that interested him. If he had it in mind to do, he would read about it voraciously and do it."

Trips back to Warren took longer than a few hours because he stopped to collect what looked to his mother like field weeds, she said, "but he had a plan for cooking them. Even as a child, he always liked his vegetables. He was a very discerning eater. He liked all good things."

A graduate of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, he worked as a graphic designer until the mid-1990s. In 1989, he made some bars of soap, using sardine cans as forms, to give as gifts. He got hooked and began easing away from design work. He was turning out 200 bars of soap a day by 1995 in his Oakland apartment. Within 10 years, his soaps were featured in high-end catalogs. Most of his sales were wholesale.

He also made wine, jelly, bread and stamped-tin lampshades, canned the vegetables he grew and dried herbs for cooking and flavoring vinegars.

"He was a great cook," said Mary Coleman, owner of the Gallery on 43rd Street. One gloomy weekend in the winter she said he called her. "He said, 'Have you eaten? I just made a whole bunch of soup.'

"I said, 'OK, I'll come get it,' and he said, 'No, no, I'll bring it to you.' When I opened the door, he was standing there with a bag of food, the soup and a huge loaf of homemade bread. He said 'Meals on Wheels!'"

Kitty Julian, a neighbor of Mr. Bernard's, said she knew him "like all of us did, from the fact that he was at the center of every major effort to bring people into the neighborhood. I can't imagine what it's going to be like not to have him around."

In addition to his mother, Mr. Bernard is survived by his father, James Bernard of Warren, Ohio; and three sisters, Rosanne Rossi, Kathi Bernard and Nancy Hripko, all of Warren.

There will be no visitation. Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Monday in Our Lady of the Angels Parish Holy Family Church on 44th Street. Donations may be made to Forbes Hospice or to a scholarship fund being set up in Mr. Bernard's name at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Until it is set up, checks may be sent to the EDMC Education Foundation c/o Amy Rossi, 602 Nantahala Drive, Durham, NC 27713.