Who is the 19th century American architect who is so renowned that he has a Romanesque-style named for him?
MANILA, Philippines - He was born on September 29, 1838 in Louisiana, and spent part of his childhood in New Orleans, where his family resided in Julia Row in a red brick house designed by the architect Alexander T Wood. He was the great grandson of inventor and philosopher Joseph Priestly who is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen.
He went on to study at Harvard College, initially taking civil engineering, but eventually shifting to architecture. This led him to Paris in 1860 to attend the famed Ecole des Beaux Arts in the atelier of Louis Jules Andre.
Upon returning to the US in 1865, the style that he favored was not the more classical style of the Ecole, but more a medieval inspired style, influenced by William Morris, John Ruskin, and others.
He however developed a unique idiom, adapting the Romanesque of southern France.
In 1869, he designed the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane in New York, the largest commission of his career and his first appearance of his eponymous Romanesque style. A massive sandstone complex, it is a National Historic Landmark and is presently the subject of an extensive restoration process.
In 1872, the Trinity Church in Boston solidified his national reputation and provided major commissions for the rest of his life. It was also a collaboration with the construction and engineering firm of the Norcross Brothers, with whom he would work on some 30 projects.
A series of small town libraries donated by patrons for the improvement of New England towns makes a small coherent corpus that defines his style: libraries in Woburn, North Easton, Malden, Massachusetts, the Thomas Crane Public Library, and the Billings Memorial Library on the University of Vermont campus.
These buildings seem resolutely anti-modern, with the atmosphere of an Episcopalian vicarage, dimly lit for solemnity rather than reading on site.
They are preserves of culture that did not especially embrace the contemporary flood of newcomers to New England. Yet they offer clearly defined spaces, easy and natural circulation, and they are visually memorable.
He also designed nine railroad stations for the Boston and Albany Railroad as well as three stations for three other lines. These buildings were more subtle than his churches, municipal buildings, and libraries, but still unmistakably his.
He played such an important role during his day that in a poll of the American Architect and Building News in 1885 for the “10 buildings, which the subscriber believes to be the most successful examples of architectural design in the country, half of the top ten choices were his. The Trinity Church in Boston topped the list; while his other works on the list included The Albany State Hall, the Sever Hall in Harvard University, the New York State Capital, the North Easton Town Hall in Massachusetts.
Significant to his style was his picturesque massing and roofline profiles, along with his mastery of rustication and polychromy, semi circular arches supported on clusters of squat columns, and round arches over clusters of windows on massive walls.
Last week’s question: What is the name of this mosque in Istanbul, Turkey?
Answer: Suleymaniye Mosque
Winner: Ann Logronio of Imus, Cavite
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