Henry Bacon

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For other persons named Henry Bacon, see Henry Bacon (disambiguation).
Lincoln Memorial
Lincoln Memorial

Henry Bacon (November 28, 1866 – February 17, 1924) an American Beaux-Arts architect, is best remembered for his severe Greek Doric Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (built 1915–1922), which was his final project.


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[edit] Education and early career

Born in Reno, Nevada and raised in and around Compton, California, where his father was a civil engineer, Bacon spent a year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, before beginning in 1885 as a draftsman, briefly in Boston, and then in the office of McKim, Mead and White in New York City, the best-known American architectural firm of its time.

After four years, a fellowship enabled him to spend two years traveling abroad, drawing details of Roman and Greek architecture as far afield as Turkey, where he met his future wife, Laura Florence Calvert, daughter of a British consul. He traveled with another fellowship student, Albert Kahn who would become a leading industrial architect. Returning to the U.S. he spent a few more years with his mentor, McKim, working on projects like the Rhode Island State House in Providence, Rhode Island and serving as McKim's personal representative in Chicago during the World's Columbian Exposition, before opening his own office in 1897, at first with a partner James Brite.

His body is interred at Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington, North Carolina.

[edit] Mature work

Program from AIA Gold Medal Award honoring architect Henry Bacon, 1923
Program from AIA Gold Medal Award honoring architect Henry Bacon, 1923

Aside from the Lincoln Memorial, Bacon built the Danforth Memorial Library, in Paterson, New Jersey; the train station in the style of an Italian villa in Naugatuck, Connecticut, the Observatory, Olin Library, the Eclectic house and other buildings at Wesleyan University and the Union Square Savings Bank, New York City. His Ambrose Swasey Pavilion (1916) is one of the architectural highlights of Exeter, New Hampshire.

Bacon was very active as a designer of monuments and settings for public sculpture. He designed the Court of the Four Seasons, for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, in San Francisco. He designed the World War I memorial at Yale University. He collaborated with sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens on the Sen. Mark Hanna Monument in Cleveland, Ohio, and with Daniel Chester French on numerous

monuments, notably the Lincoln Memorial's pensive colossal Lincoln. In addition, Bacon also designed the Olin Library at Wesleyan University, the institution of which that has many of his documents and blueprints of the Lincoln Memorial.

Chesterwood
Chesterwood

Architect Henry Bacon rarely found time for private residences. There are two known residential work that are entirely attributed to him. First is the La Fetra Mansion in Summit, New Jersey, designed and built under the firm Brite & Bacon from 1897 to 1900. Mr.Bacon skillfully intergated into a residential setting many of his signature Greek Revival and Roman Renaissance elements and proportions. The resulting elegance, peace, tranquility, and sense of divine protection exuding from the comfort and functionality of a private residence, is masterfully and pleasantly astounding. The La Fetra Mansion was commissioned by industrialist Harold A. La Fetra of the Royal Baking Powder Company, which later merged with RJR Nebisco. The La Fetra Masion became residence of publisher Harry W.McGraw in the 1920’s, and then the Reed family residence of the Reeves-Reed Arboretum in Summit, New Jersey.

Another Henry Bacon private residence is Chesterwood house, the Stockwood, Massachusetts summer home and studio of his friend, famed sculptor Daniel Chester French. In 1923 President Warren G. Harding presented Bacon the American Institute of Architects's Gold Medal, making him the 6th recipient of this honor.

A Liberty Ship of the US Navy was built and named after architect Henry Bacon: SS Henry Bacon, commissioned on November 11, 1942. The ship's captain and crew served during World War II with the utmost honor and heroism, sacrificing their own lives to deliver 19 Norweigian refugees to safety under heavy attacks from 23 German torpedos bombers.

[edit] Architectural settings, bases and exedra for sculpture

  • Jesse Parker Williams Memorial, (c. 1924), Daniel Chester French sculptor, Westview Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia

Bacon died of cancer in New York City, and is buried at Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina.

During World War II a Liberty ship was named after him.

[edit] Resources

  • Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, America's Monuments, unpublished manuscript
  • Richman, Michael, Daniel Chester French: An American Sculptor, The Preservation Press, Washington D.C., 1976
  • Tolles, Bryant and Carolyn, New Hampshire Architecture: An Illustrated Guide, New Hampshire Historical Society, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1979
  • Wilkinson, Burke, and David Finn, photographs, Uncommon Clay: The Life and Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, San Diego 1985
  • Wilson, Richard Guy, The AIA Gold Medal, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1984

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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