Adolf Cluss
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| Adolf Cluss | |
 Adolf Cluss, 1900 |
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| Personal Information | |
|---|---|
| Name | Adolf Cluss |
| Nationality | German American |
| Birth date | July 14, 1825 |
| Birth place | Heilbronn Germany |
| Date of death | July 24, 1905 |
| Place of death | Washington D.C. |
| Work | |
| Significant Buildings | Arts and Industries Building |
Adolf Cluss (July 14, 1825-July 24, 1905) was a German-American immigrant who became one of the most important architects in Washington, D.C., in the late 19th century, responsible for the design of numerous schools and other notable public buildings in the capital.
He was born in 1825 in Heilbronn in the Kingdom of Württemberg in south-west Germany. His father was a master builder, and young Cluss set out as an itinerant carpenter when he left Heilbrunn at age nineteen. In his travels, he met and became a friend of Karl Marx and a supporter of communist principles at a time of political and revolutionary ferment in Germany. He joined the Communist League and became a member of the Mainz Worker Council. The failure of the German revolutionary movement in 1848 led him to leave Germany when he was twenty-three, along with other Forty-Eighters who emigrated to the United States at that time. In the United States, he continued his political activity into the 1850s, maintaining an extensive correspondence with Marx and Engels and writing and publishing political articles for the German-American community.
Settling in Washington, D.C., Cluss also began building a highly successful practice as an engineer and architect. In the following decades, from the 1860s to the 1890s, he was responsible for designing scores of major public buildings, including at least eleven schools, as well as markets, government buildings, museums, and residences. By 1872, he had become City Engineer and a member of the Board of Public Works, overseeing some of the civic improvements that transformed Washington in the 1870s: street paving, sewer construction, and the planting of thousands of street trees.
Cluss's schoolhouse designs were particularly innovative and influential, though only two of his red-brick school masterpieces remain, Franklin School and Sumner School in downtown Washington. He designed four major buildings on the National Mall, including the still-standing Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building. Two of the city's major food markets, Center Market and Eastern Market, were built to his design, and the latter, completed in 1873, still functions as a market on Capitol Hill.
Cluss was also active as a builder of mansions for the Washington elite. In 1880, he was hired to create what became Washington's first apartment building, Portland Flats, an ornate, six-floor, 39-unit creation on the south side of Thomas Circle. Architectural historians believe that all of Cluss' residential creations have been demolished--Portland Flats was torn down in 1962 to make way for an office building.
Red brick was Cluss' favorite building material; that, and his early communist sympathies, led some to dub the "Red architect" a man who in later life became a confirmed Republican.
A descriptive list of Cluss's known buildings and an interactive map showing their locations can be found here. [1]
[edit] External links
- Adolf Cluss, An International Exhibition Project
- Goethe-Institut in Washington, DC: Notes on Adolf Cluss
- Washington Post: "Red Architect" Adolf Cluss
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cluss, Adolf |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cluss, Adolph |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | architect |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 14, 1825 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Heilbronn, Germany |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 24, 1905 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Washington D.C, United States |
