Cope & Stewardson

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Cope & Stewardson (1885-1912) were an architecture firm best known for their academic building and campus designs. They are often regarded as Masters of the Collegiate Gothic style. Walter Cope and John Stewardson established the firm in 1885, and were later joined by Emlyn Stewardson in 1887. The firm went on to became one of the most influential and prolific Philadelphia firms to span from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Between 1886 and 1904 they made formative additions to the campuses of Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.

The University of Pennsylvania Quadrangle Dormitories.

Although Walter Cope and John Stewardson were major exponents and purveyors of the Collegiate Gothic architectual style which swept campuses across the country in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, they were equally adept at other styles and other building types. Their earliest important commission was Radnor Hall at Bryn Mawr College (1886), when, ironically, they replaced Cope's mentor Addison Hutton as campus architects. Commissions shortly followed for buildings on the campuses of the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Washington University in St. Louis (which were part of buildings designed for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair). Although these academic buildings were their hallmark, other projects included residential, commercial, institution, and industrial buildings.

As important as their contribution to the architecture of Philadelphia and its environs is the role which Cope & Stewardson played in architectural education. Great numbers of young apprentices and would-be architects passed their days of training in the office, making it a general stopping place for many architects who would later become famous in their own right. In 1923 the annual T-Square club exhibition catalog published a photograph of the Cope & Stewardson office from about 1899. Included in the number of partners and younger architects are: Walter Cope; John A. MacMahon; James O. Betelle (later of Newark, NJ); Emlyn Stewardson; S. A. Cloud; Wetherill P. Trout; Herbert C. Wise; James P. Jamieson; Eugene S. Powers; E. Perot Bissell; Louise Stavely; Charles H. Bauer (later in Newark, NJ); William Woodburn Potter; John Molitor, Camillo Porecca; and C. Wharton Churchman.

1 Walter Cope (1860-1902)
2 John Stewardson (1858-1896)
3 Some Architectural Buildings
4 External links

[edit] Walter Cope (1860-1902)

In 1860, Walter Cope was born and Christened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Thomas P. Cope and Elizabeth Waln Stokes Cope. After graduating from the Germantown Friends School, he attended classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1883. A year later, he traveled to England and France and in 1885 the firm of Cope and Stewardson was established.

Cope was a founding member of the T-Square Club in 1883 and later served as vice-president, secretary, treasurer, president, and as a member of the executive committee. He was also a Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania from 1892 to 1902. After teaching at Penn, he became a Professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Cope was also part of the investigating committee appointed to study conditions governing the new State Capitol Building competition in 1901. From 1896 to 1898 he was chairman of the committee on the restoration of Independence Hall.

[edit] John Stewardson (1858-1896)

John Stewardson, son of Thomas and Margaret Haines Stewardson, was born in 1858. His early education had been in private Christian schools in the Philadelphia area. He continued his studies at Adams Academy in Quincy, Massachusetts from 1873 to 1877. After graduation, he entered Harvard College, but left in 1878. He briefly continued he studies at the University of Pennsylvania and than joined the Atelier Pascal in Paris, France. In 1882 he returned to Philadelphia, working first in T. P. Chandler's office and then in the office of Frank Furness.

In 1884 he returned to Europe to travel through Italy and Belgium. A year later, he joined in personal practice with Walter Cope. They were joined in 1887 by John's younger brother Emlyn L. Stewardson, who had recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in civil engineering.

In 1892, Stewardson joined the University of Pennsylvania as staff lecturer in their new School of Architecture. He was also one of the founding members of the T-Square Club, serving in 1885 and 1891 as president of that organization. He also served as treasurer of the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1886.

He is credited with the taste for English Gothic Revival which Cope & Stewardson used in their collegiate buildings. Talbot Hamlin, in his biographical description, for the Dictionary of American Biography notes that, following Stewardson's trip to England in 1894, the buildings at the University of Pennsylvania, which were on the boards at the time, changed from stone structures to brick with stone trim.

Stewardson's career was abruptly halted in 1896 when he died following a skating accident on the Schuylkill River, where he had gone for an afternoon's outing with his friend Wilson Eyre.