Building for America
by Phyllis Tuchman
JULY 21, 2011 TAGS:
If architects were immortalized on Mount Rushmore, one of the portrait faces would represent Henry Hobson (H.H.) Richardson. As it was, Richardson was a larger-than-life figure who, following the Civil War, designed a variety of building types — both public and private — that are considered to be the first to embody a distinct American style. These masterworks include churches, libraries, commercial spaces, residential houses, a state capitol, a county courthouse and jail, a chamber of commerce, and a hospital for the insane. They were constructed in, among other places, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati, and Chicago during the master builder’s brief, jam-packed life.
Like his contemporaries Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Winslow Homer, Richardson expressed the aspirations, hopes, values, and virtues of his nation after its wrenching internal conflict. Completed in 1877, Boston’s Trinity Church, with its bold central tower, banded granite and sandstone walls, and wide rounded arches, heads most lists as the greatest American building of the 19th century. Others, such as the Allegheny County complex in Pittsburgh, have popped up in unlikely places — the prison served as a set in the 1984 movie Mrs. Soffel.
Mostly constructed from sturdy stone, Richardsonian Romanesque buildings look as if they could survive the ages. Sadly, some have not. Several were demolished less than 75 years after the architect died at age 47 from Bright’s disease, a kidney disorder, on April 27, 1886. But these days, 125 years later, they’re more likely to be restored, renovated, or repurposed.
Born in Louisiana on Sept. 29, 1838, Richardson was raised, along with his brother and two sisters, in New Orleans. His father, who’d been a real estate speculator as well as a cotton broker and a slave trader, was working for his in-laws’ hardware company when he died in his mid-40s. His premature death haunted his son, who was 16 at the time. Though aspects of the architect’s practice are attributed to buildings he knew in the Big Easy, the future member of the Harvard Class of 1859 never returned home once he left for Massachusetts.
The career of Fez Richardson, as he was known into his 20s, was deeply rooted in his life in Cambridge. His future patrons were men such as clergyman Phillips Brooks, railroad executive Frederick L. Ames, and cultural commentator Henry Adams, whom he met in college or through his Crimson connections. Even his wife Julia’s brother was a classmate. And, like ships passing in the night, Winslow Homer, early in his career, sketched scenes of life at Harvard featuring the Class of 1859 for Harper’s Weekly.
Because at the time no architecture programs existed in the United States, Richardson sailed for Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While he was overseas, the Civil War broke out. He stayed abroad for six years, even when his family experienced financial hardships after the fall of New Orleans. To support himself, the young man took a job with the firm then constructing the Gare du Nord.
When Richardson returned to the United States in 1865, he settled in New York. Shortly later, he married his longtime sweetheart, and the couple, who eventually had six children, lived on Staten Island. He was, an acquaintance recalled, “of good height, broad-shouldered, full-chested, dark complexion, brown eyes, dark hair.” Eventually, though, he became so gargantuan, he’d qualify today as a contestant on The Biggest Loser. A clotheshorse as well as a gifted flutist, he stammered when he spoke. According to one admirer, “He could make a friend out of his worst enemy.” Henry Adams, for whom he designed a home across the street from the White House, admired the architect’s “overflow of life.” And client Phillips Brooks described him as someone “instinctive and spontaneous … not a man of theories.”
Between November 1866 and the spring of 1874, Richardson designed more than three dozen projects. Several churches and houses were constructed; others, including war memorials, exist only as drawings. Richardson’s commission for the red sandstone and brick Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, kept his firm, including assistants Stanford White and Charles McKim, afloat during the recession of the mid-1870s. With the backing of $100 million from New York State, the 91-acre site is currently being restored, so esteemed is it even a steep recession.
The commission for Trinity Church in Copley Square, in 1872, also came at an opportune time, establishing the young man’s reputation. By the time the Episcopalian house of worship was dedicated, he still wasn’t 40. The massive undertaking involved the finest stonemasons and wood craftsmen as well as painters John La Farge and Edward Burne-Jones, who designed the stained glass windows. Like many European churches and cathedrals, the building is an ecclesiastical shrine that became a symbol of the city. It majestic interior replete with colorful windows and gleaming organ pipes was tailored to the oratorical prowess of Phillips Brooks. Refurbished several years ago, the Back Bay building is as splendid as ever.
By the end of the 1870s, Richardson’s health had begun deteriorating. Some have suggested that he let his weight balloon because, expecting his life to be shortened as his father’s was, he denied himself neither food nor drink. The last phase of his career should have been its middle. From his home offices in Brookline, he designed one great building after another. This includes public libraries in Quincy, Malden, and Woburn (Mass.); the Ames family’s gatehouse, residence, and other work on their North Easton compound; and, in Chicago, the Glessner House as well as the Marshall Field Wholesale Store.
All remain remarkable achievements. In his open-stack libraries, you want to curl up and read. The interior of Crane Memorial Library in Quincy, restored in 2001, has yellow pine woodwork, wide planked floors, a working fireplace, and chairs and tables the architect himself designed. The exterior’s low-lying, horizontal orientation was admired by Frank Lloyd Wright and partly influenced his Prairie Houses.
As for the Ames family’s seemingly boulder-sided structures, they blend into the landscape and become one with nature. When he used stone on the Glessner House, Richardson made the Chicago residence look safe and fortress-like outside, in contrast to the warmth and comfort of the interiors. And the same material on the outer walls of Marshall Field transformed the commercial store into a Florentine palazzo.
Three artists who emerged during the 1960s are among H.H. Richardson’s recent champions. Tony Smith, the abstract sculptor who was close friends with Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, once lived across the street from the Glessner House and admired its boldness. On http://archrecord.construction.com/architecturevideo/interviews/frank_stella.asp ,painter Frank Stella describes the library in Malden as “a defining influence on my life in every way.” Asked about the library in Quincy, where he was raised, Minimalist Carl Andre recently cited the “beautiful exterior with a wonderful interior; it’s both gloomy and inviting, like a warm hearth in a dark room.”
Almost 150 years later, Richardson seems to have nailed it when he characterized his work as “bold, rich, living architecture.”
Phyllis Tuchman writes about art and artists for Obit.
Like his contemporaries Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Winslow Homer, Richardson expressed the aspirations, hopes, values, and virtues of his nation after its wrenching internal conflict. Completed in 1877, Boston’s Trinity Church, with its bold central tower, banded granite and sandstone walls, and wide rounded arches, heads most lists as the greatest American building of the 19th century. Others, such as the Allegheny County complex in Pittsburgh, have popped up in unlikely places — the prison served as a set in the 1984 movie Mrs. Soffel.Mostly constructed from sturdy stone, Richardsonian Romanesque buildings look as if they could survive the ages. Sadly, some have not. Several were demolished less than 75 years after the architect died at age 47 from Bright’s disease, a kidney disorder, on April 27, 1886. But these days, 125 years later, they’re more likely to be restored, renovated, or repurposed.
Born in Louisiana on Sept. 29, 1838, Richardson was raised, along with his brother and two sisters, in New Orleans. His father, who’d been a real estate speculator as well as a cotton broker and a slave trader, was working for his in-laws’ hardware company when he died in his mid-40s. His premature death haunted his son, who was 16 at the time. Though aspects of the architect’s practice are attributed to buildings he knew in the Big Easy, the future member of the Harvard Class of 1859 never returned home once he left for Massachusetts.
The career of Fez Richardson, as he was known into his 20s, was deeply rooted in his life in Cambridge. His future patrons were men such as clergyman Phillips Brooks, railroad executive Frederick L. Ames, and cultural commentator Henry Adams, whom he met in college or through his Crimson connections. Even his wife Julia’s brother was a classmate. And, like ships passing in the night, Winslow Homer, early in his career, sketched scenes of life at Harvard featuring the Class of 1859 for Harper’s Weekly.
Because at the time no architecture programs existed in the United States, Richardson sailed for Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While he was overseas, the Civil War broke out. He stayed abroad for six years, even when his family experienced financial hardships after the fall of New Orleans. To support himself, the young man took a job with the firm then constructing the Gare du Nord.When Richardson returned to the United States in 1865, he settled in New York. Shortly later, he married his longtime sweetheart, and the couple, who eventually had six children, lived on Staten Island. He was, an acquaintance recalled, “of good height, broad-shouldered, full-chested, dark complexion, brown eyes, dark hair.” Eventually, though, he became so gargantuan, he’d qualify today as a contestant on The Biggest Loser. A clotheshorse as well as a gifted flutist, he stammered when he spoke. According to one admirer, “He could make a friend out of his worst enemy.” Henry Adams, for whom he designed a home across the street from the White House, admired the architect’s “overflow of life.” And client Phillips Brooks described him as someone “instinctive and spontaneous … not a man of theories.”
Between November 1866 and the spring of 1874, Richardson designed more than three dozen projects. Several churches and houses were constructed; others, including war memorials, exist only as drawings. Richardson’s commission for the red sandstone and brick Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, kept his firm, including assistants Stanford White and Charles McKim, afloat during the recession of the mid-1870s. With the backing of $100 million from New York State, the 91-acre site is currently being restored, so esteemed is it even a steep recession.
The commission for Trinity Church in Copley Square, in 1872, also came at an opportune time, establishing the young man’s reputation. By the time the Episcopalian house of worship was dedicated, he still wasn’t 40. The massive undertaking involved the finest stonemasons and wood craftsmen as well as painters John La Farge and Edward Burne-Jones, who designed the stained glass windows. Like many European churches and cathedrals, the building is an ecclesiastical shrine that became a symbol of the city. It majestic interior replete with colorful windows and gleaming organ pipes was tailored to the oratorical prowess of Phillips Brooks. Refurbished several years ago, the Back Bay building is as splendid as ever.
By the end of the 1870s, Richardson’s health had begun deteriorating. Some have suggested that he let his weight balloon because, expecting his life to be shortened as his father’s was, he denied himself neither food nor drink. The last phase of his career should have been its middle. From his home offices in Brookline, he designed one great building after another. This includes public libraries in Quincy, Malden, and Woburn (Mass.); the Ames family’s gatehouse, residence, and other work on their North Easton compound; and, in Chicago, the Glessner House as well as the Marshall Field Wholesale Store.
All remain remarkable achievements. In his open-stack libraries, you want to curl up and read. The interior of Crane Memorial Library in Quincy, restored in 2001, has yellow pine woodwork, wide planked floors, a working fireplace, and chairs and tables the architect himself designed. The exterior’s low-lying, horizontal orientation was admired by Frank Lloyd Wright and partly influenced his Prairie Houses.As for the Ames family’s seemingly boulder-sided structures, they blend into the landscape and become one with nature. When he used stone on the Glessner House, Richardson made the Chicago residence look safe and fortress-like outside, in contrast to the warmth and comfort of the interiors. And the same material on the outer walls of Marshall Field transformed the commercial store into a Florentine palazzo.
Three artists who emerged during the 1960s are among H.H. Richardson’s recent champions. Tony Smith, the abstract sculptor who was close friends with Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, once lived across the street from the Glessner House and admired its boldness. On http://archrecord.construction.com/architecturevideo/interviews/frank_stella.asp ,painter Frank Stella describes the library in Malden as “a defining influence on my life in every way.” Asked about the library in Quincy, where he was raised, Minimalist Carl Andre recently cited the “beautiful exterior with a wonderful interior; it’s both gloomy and inviting, like a warm hearth in a dark room.”
Almost 150 years later, Richardson seems to have nailed it when he characterized his work as “bold, rich, living architecture.”
Phyllis Tuchman writes about art and artists for Obit.
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