User:PlainsArchitecture/Sandbox
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| William Halsey Wood | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Name | William Halsey Wood |
| Nationality | American |
| Birth date | April 24, 1855 |
| Birth place | Dansville, NY |
| Date of death | March 13, 1897 |
| Place of death | Philadelphia, PA |
| Work | |
| Significant buildings | First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church, Newark, NJ St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Laramie, WY |
| Significant projects | Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York, NY |
William Halsey Wood was an American architect, born at Dansville, NY on April 24, 1855. He died at Philadelphia, PA on March 13, 1897.
Contents |
[edit] Early Life
William Halsey Wood was the youngest of four sons born to Daniel Halsey and Hannah Lippincott Wood. Shortly after his birth in 1855, the family relocated from Dansville, NY to Newark, NJ, where Daniel Wood's company manufactured varnish. Family spiritual life centered around the House of Prayer, an Anglo-Catholic congregation where the children were introduced to ritualist liturgy and William became a member of the choir, eventually serving as its director.[1]
Wood prepared for the architectural profession in a typical nineteenth-century pattern. During an unspecified time in the 1870s, he traveled to England and apprenticed in the office of George Frederick Bodley, a leading figure in the High-church or Anglo-Catholic movement within the Anglican Communion.[2] The Bodley connection is consistent with Wood's youthful experience at the House of Prayer, and that, with other family connections to the High Church party within Anglicanism, ultimately contributed to the character of Wood's own mature work.
[edit] Career
From his practice in Newark, NJ, Wood focused on two familiar building types: large single-family residences and ecclesiastical designs for the Episcopal Church. Three of his suburban homes were featured in Artistic Country-Seats by G. W. Sheldon, an 1886 publication that included work by McKim, Mead & White, Wilson Eyre and other notable turn-of-the-century designers. But church clients formed the largest part of Wood's practice, especially for his own denomination; from 1885 until his death Wood designed more than --- churches and parish buildings, all but four of them for Episcopal congregations.
[edit] Assessment
Wood died during an important transition in American architecture; a shift from the exuberance—some have said excesses—of nineteenth-century eclecticism to the functionally-based perspectives of twentieth-century Modernism. Even during his own life, Wood was seen as a participant in that process of transition.
[edit] Works
- Christ Church (Episcopal), Bloomfield, NJ (date)
- First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church, Newark, NJ (date)
- St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, Hunter/Tannersville, NY (1885)
- St. John's Episcopal Church, Passaic, NJ (date)
- St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Memphis, TN (1897-1898; completed posthumously)
- St. Matthew’s Episcopal Cathedral, Laramie, WY (date)
- St. Michael and All Angels Church, Anniston, AL (1888)
- St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Paterson, NJ (date)
- St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Chattanooga, TN (date)
- Breslin Memorial Tower, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, TN (date)
- Sixth (now St. Paul's Portuguese) Presbyterian Church, Newark, NJ (1888)
- Wickliffe Presbyterian Church, Newark, NJ (1888; demolished)
- Yaddo, Spencer and Katrina Trask residence, Saratoga Springs, NY (date)
- Zion and St. Timothy's Episcopal Church, New York, NY (date; destroyed by fire)
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Artistic Country-Seats: Types of Recent American Villa and Cottage Architecture, with Instances of Country Club-Houses by George William Sheldon (1886; reprinted 1982 as American Country Houses of the Gilded Age, edited by Arnold Lewis) [ISBN]
