Henry Hobson Richardson

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Henry Hobson Richardson, portrait by Sir Hubert von Herkomer
Henry Hobson Richardson, portrait by Sir Hubert von Herkomer
Trinity Church in Boston is one of Richardson's most famous works.
Trinity Church in Boston is one of Richardson's most famous works.
Richardson's work can be seen in many areas around Boston, such as this library in North Easton.
Richardson's work can be seen in many areas around Boston, such as this library in North Easton.
John J. Glessner House, Chicago, Illinois
John J. Glessner House, Chicago, Illinois
New York State Asylum, Buffalo, New York
New York State Asylum, Buffalo, New York

Henry Hobson Richardson (September 29, 1838–1886) was a prominent American architect of the 19th Century whose work left a significant impact on, among others, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Chicago.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Richardson was born at Priestly Plantation in St. James Parish, Louisiana and spent part of his childhood in New Orleans, where his family resided on Julia Row in a red brick house designed by the architect Alexander T. Wood. He was the great-grandson of inventor and philosopher Joseph Priestley. Richardson went on to study at Harvard College. Initially he was interested in civil engineering, but eventually shifted to architecture which led him to go to Paris in 1860 to attend the famed Ecole des Beaux Arts. He didn't finish his training there as family backing failed during the U.S. Civil War. Nonetheless, he was only the second US citizen to attend the Ecole—a school which was to play an increasingly important role in training Americans in the following decades. Richardson returned to the U.S. in 1865. The style that Richardson favored, however, was not the more classical style of the Ecole, but a more medieval-inspired style, influenced by William Morris, John Ruskin and others. Richardson developed a unique idiom, however, improvising in particular upon the Romanesque of southern France. The term "Richardsonian Romanesque" has sometimes misled people to assess it as one of the Victorian revival styles, akin, perhaps to Neo-Gothic, but it was actually much more personal, a synthesizing of the Beaux-Arts predilection for clear and legible plans with the heavy massing that was favored by the pro-medievalists. Richardson's work thus stands out for its innovativeness and for this some historians, Nicholas Pevsner for example, have argued that it constitutes a type of break from naive historicism and was thus quasi proto modern. But this interpretation depends to a large extent on the definition of modernism. Nonetheless, significant to Richardson's style was his picturesque massing and roofline profiles, along with his mastery of rustication and polychromy. When you see an 1880s building with massive rusticated,semi-circular arches supported on clusters of squat columns, round arches over clusters of windows on massive walls, you are seeing Richardsonian Romanesque.

If a single work of Richardson's had to be selected over others it would have to be Trinity Church in Copley Square, Boston, part of one of the outstanding American urban complexes built as the center piece of the newly developed Back Bay. The Boston Public Library was built across from it later by Richardson's former draftsman, Charles Follen McKim. The interior of the church is one of the leading examples of the Arts and crafts aesthetics in the US.

A series of small public libraries donated by patrons for the improvement of New England towns makes a small coherent corpus that defines Richardson's style: libraries in Woburn, North Easton (illustration, right), Malden, Massachusetts, the Thomas Crane Public Library (Quincy, Massachusetts), and Billings Library on the campus of the University of Vermont[1]. These buildings seem resolutely anti-modern, with the aura 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. Richardson's libraries found many imitators in the "Richardsonian Romanesque" movement.

Richardson had a frequent collaborator in Frederick Law Olmsted who devised the landscaping schemes for half a dozen of his projects.

Other works:

Richardson's work was contemporary with the residential Queen Anne style, with which his work had little affinity, except for the species known as the "Shingle Style," which evidenced his sense of massing and picturesque composition.

Richardson died in 1886 at age 48 of Bright's disease. He was buried in Walnut Hills Cemetery, Brookline, Massachusetts.

Following his death, the style that he had pioneered was picked up by a variety of other architects whose works are grouped under the name of Richardsonian Romanesque. The style was applied to various types of buildings, churches, public buildings such as city halls, county buildings, court houses, train stations and libraries, as well as residences. Stanford White and Charles Follen McKim, who each worked in his office as young men, and who went on to form the noted firm McKim, Mead and White, moved into a different, historicist Beaux-Arts mode style that became the norm around the turn of the twentieth century, replacing the Richardsonian Romanesque. Nonetheless, Richardsonian lessons of texture, massing, and the expressive language of stone walling can be felt in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Richardson found sympathetic reception among young Scandinavian architects of the following generation, the one known best in the English-speaking world being Eliel Saarinen.

What is impressive about Richardson's architecture is that he is one of the few to be immortalized by having the honor of having a style named after him. "Richardson Romanesque" is traditionally used to describe the unique buildings that he was responsible for. Richardson has been viewed as one of the most important architects in American nineteenth century history because his work was well received and highly popular. Evidence that he was received as an influential nineteenth century architect comes in the fact that five of his buildings were used in the 1885 American architects list of ten best buildings (Trinity Church in Boston, City Hall in Albany, Sever Hall at Harvard University, New York State Capital Building in Albany (as a collaboration), and Town Hall in North Easton).

Though not a Richardson design, H.H. Richardson's house in Brookline, MA should also be mentioned in any discussion of his buildings. Richardson spent much of his later years in the house and had a studio attached in order to limit travel (probably due to his health problems). The house has fallen into disrepair and was listed in 2007 as an endangered historic site[2].

[edit] Chronological list of extant works[3]

1867

Grace Episcopal Church - Medford, MA


1868

Benjamin W. Crowninshield House - Boston, MA

H. H. Richardson House - Clifton, Staten Island, NY

Alexander Dallas Bache Monument - Washington, DC

William E. Dorsheimer House - Buffalo, NY


1869

Brattle Square Church - Boston, MA

Buffalo State Hospital - Buffalo, NY


1871

Hampden County Courthouse - Springfield, MA

North Congregational Church - Springfield, MA


1872

Trinity Church - Boston, MA


1874

William Watts Sherman House - Newport, RI


1875

Hayden Building - Boston, MA

R. and F. Cheney Building - Harford, CT

New York State Capitol - Albany, NY


1876

Rev. Henry Eglinton Montgomery Memorial - New York, NY

Winn Memorial Library - Woburn, MA


1877

Oliver Ames Free Library - North Easton, MA


1878

Sever Hall - Cambridge, MA


1879

Oakes Ames Memorial Town Hall - North Easton, MA

Rectory for Trinity Church - Boston, MA

Ames Monument - Sherman, WY


1880

F.L. Ames Gate Lodge - North Easton, MA

Bridge in Fenway Park - Boston, MA

Stony Brook Gatehouse - Boston, MA

Thomas Crane Public Library - Quincy, MA

Dr. John Bryant House - Cohasset, MA

City Hall - Albany, NY


1881

Austin Hall - Cambridge, MA

Boston & Albany Railroad Station - Palmer, MA

Pruyn Monument - Albany, NY

Rev. Percy Browne House - Marion, MA

Old Colony Railroad Station - North Easton, MA


1882

Grange Sard, Jr., House - Albany, NY

Mrs. M.F. Stoughton House - Cambridge, MA


1883

Billings Memorial Library - Burlington, VT

Emmanuel Episcopal Church - Pittsburgh, PA

Converse Memorial Public Library - Malden, MA

Boston & Albany Railroad Station - South Framingham, MA

Connecticut River Railroad Station - Holyoke, MA

Allegheny County Buildings - Pittsburgh, PA

Robert Treat Paine House - Waltham, MA


1884

F.L. Ames Gardener's Cottage - North Easton, MA

Immanuel Baptist Church - Newton, MA

Boston & Albany Railroad Station - Newton, MA

Ephraim W. Gurney House - Beverly, MA


1885

Benjamin H. Warder House - Washington, DC

Bagley Memorial Fountain - Detroit, MI

John J. Glessner House - Chicago, IL

Boston & Albany Railroad Station - Wellesley Hills, MA

Union Passenger Station - New London, CT


1886

Sir Hubert Herkomer House - Bushey, Hertfordshire, England

Dr. H.J. Bigelow House - Newton, MA

I.H. Lionberger House - St. Louis, MO




[1].

[edit] Images

Albany City Hall, Albany, New York

Brattle Square Church, Boston, Massachusetts, with sculpture by Frédéric Bartholdi (who did the Statue of Liberty)

Trinity Church, Boston

Cheney Building, Hartford, Connecticut

Allegheny County Courthouse, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Grace Episcopal Church, Medford, Massachusetts

Old Colony Railroad Station, North Easton, Massachusetts

Ames Gate Lodge, North Easton, Massachusetts

Oakes Ames Memorial Hall, North Easton, Massachusetts

Ames Free Library, North Easton, Massachusetts

Thomas Crane Public Library, Quincy, Massachusetts

Converse Memorial Library, Malden, Massachusetts

Winn Memorial Library, Woburn, Massachusetts

John J. Glessner House, Chicago, Illinois

Robert Treat Paine Estate, Waltham, Massachusetts

William Watts Sherman House, Newport, Rhode Island

Sever Hall, Harvard University

Austin Hall (Harvard University)

Ames Monument, Laramie, Wyoming

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Breisch, Kenneth A,. Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America: A Study in Typology, MIT Press, 1997
  • Floyd, Margaret Henderson, Henry Hobson Richardson: A Genius for Architecture, Monacelli Press, NY 1997
  • Hitchcock, Henry Russell, The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times, Museum of Modern Art, NY 1936; 2nd ed., Archon Books, Hampden CT 1961; rev. paperback ed., MIT Press, Cambridge MA and London 1966
  • Larson, Paul C., ed., with Susan Brown, The Spirit of H.H. Richardson on the Midland Prairies: Regional Transformations of an Architectural Style, University Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and Iowa State University Press, Ames 1988
  • Meister, Maureen, ed., H. H. Richardson: The Architect, His Peers, and Their Era, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1999
  • Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl, H.H. Richardson: Complete Architectural Works, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1984
  • Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl, and Andersen, Dennis A., Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and the Legacy of H. H. Richardson, University of Washington Press, Seattle 2003
  • O'Gorman, James F., Living Architecture: A Biography of H. H. Richardson, Simon & Schuster, NY 1997
  • O'Gorman, James F., H. H. Richardson: Architectural Forms for an American Society, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1987
  • O'Gorman, James F., H. H. Richardson and His Office: Selected Drawings, David R. Godine, Boston 1974
  • Roth, Leland M.,A Concise History of American Architecture, Harper & Row publishers, NY, NY 1979
  • Shand-Tucci, Douglas, Built in Boston: City and Suburb, 1800 - 1950, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA 1988
  • Van Rensselaer, Mariana Griswold, Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works, Dover Publications, Inc. NY 1959 (Reprint of 1888 edition)
  • Van Trump, James D., "The Romanesque Revival in Pittsburgh," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 16, No. 3 (October 1957), pp. 22-29
  • Richardson's present day successor firm, Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott

[edit] External links