Heins & LaFarge

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The New York-based architectural firm of Heins & LaFarge, composed of Philadelphia-born architect George Lewis Heins (1860–1907) and Christopher Grant LaFarge (1862–1938) - the eldest son of the artist John LaFarge, famous especially for his stained glass panels - were responsible most notably for the original Romanesque-Byzantine east end and crossing of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, and for the original Astor Court buildings of the Bronx Zoo, which formed a complete ensemble reflecting the esthetic of the City Beautiful movement. Heins & Lafarge provided the architecture and details for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the first subway system of New York.

Early career

The two young men met at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and trained together in the Boston offices of Henry Hobson Richardson. In 1886, they opened their office. Heins was the man on the site; LaFarge was the principal designer.

In 1888, a design competition for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the most prominent project of its kind in the US, was entered by 68 architectural firms, and won in 1891 by Heins & LaFarge, with an eclectic design, based on Romanesque forms but with many Byzantine and Gothic elements, dominated by a massive spired tower over the crossing[1] The cornerstone was laid December 27, 1892, but unexpectedly, massive excavation was required before bedrock was hit. Heins & LaFarge completed the east end and the crossing, temporarily roofed by Rafael Guastavino with a tiled dome (still standing). The Chapel of St. Columba was consecrated in 1911, but the death of Heins impelled the Cathedral trustees to hire a new architect Ralph Adams Cram, whose nave and west front would be continued in French Gothic style.

The other prime commission in New York City was the Fourth Presbyterian Church (1893–94), now Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, at West End Avenue and West 91st Street on the Upper West Side, a tribute to their joint master. The rusticated masonry façade with a sparing use of Venetian Gothic and Richardsonian Romanesque details and the square corner bell tower with a crenellated parapet embellished with gargoyle gutter-spouts reveal Richardson's training. Fine stained glass may be from Tiffany studios, or may be by John LaFarge, the architect's father, which would make them even rarer.

Enoch Grand Lodge, Brooklyn

An exercise in a somewhat subdued Richardsonian manner, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn, is Heins & LaFarge's Reformed Episcopal Church of the Reconciliation (1890), now the Most Worshipful Enoch Grand Lodge of the Order of Masons. It too has a corner tower that is octagonal and embedded in the volume of the church in a most Richardsonian manner, though the materials used are tame, brick, now painted, rather than Richardsonian rustication.

The domed crossing of St. Matthew the Apostle, Washington DC, 1893

In Washington DC, the church, now Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, was begun in 1893, to designs of LaFarge. It is a brick structure of an abbreviated Latin cross floorplan with such a prominent crossing dome, raised on an octagonal drum lit by ranges of arch-headed windows, that has something of the aspect of a centrally-planned Greek cross. The interior is rich with frescoes and mosaics and inlaid marble floors in full American Renaissance manner. The first mass was celebrated on June 2, 1895, and the completed church was dedicated in 1913. The firm designed other notable Catholic Churches including the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Providence RI and Holy Trinity Church, West Point, NY.

Mid career

In 1899, Heins was appointed New York State architect by Governor Theodore Roosevelt, and he designed interiors for the first buildings at the State University of New York, Albany: the Auditorium and the Science and Administration Buildings.[2] He held that position until his death in 1907. While serving in that capacity his office designed the Flushing Armory, Geneva Armory, Gloversville Armory, Medina Armory, Rochester Armory, and Oneonta Armory.

Yale St. Anthony Hall, with later-added Dormitory, no longer extant

LaFarge, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) often served on advisory committees for the schools of architecture at Columbia University, M.I.T. and Princeton University, and also as trustee and secretary for the American Academy in Rome.[3]

Roosevelt was also a prime mover behind the creation of the New York Zoological Society, for whom the partners designed the original nucleus of buildings (1899–1910, now called the Astor Court) as a series of pavilions symmetrically grouped round the large sea lion pool, all in a sturdy brick and limestone Roman Ionic and Doric, with the heads of elephants and rhinos, lions and zebras projecting festively from panels and friezes. The central Administration Building (1910), offering an arched passageway to the zoo's outdoor spaces, has complicated domed spaces formed of Guastavino tile.

Heins & LaFarge, 1894-1913, Yale St. Anthony Hall, New Haven, no longer extant
In 1910 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician.

University commissions were also in their oeuvre. At Yale, their rusticated Richardsonian Romanesque design for a chapter building of St. Anthony Hall, also known as the Delta Psi fraternity, stood from 1894 to 1913. Their ornamental iron gates were re-used in the 1913 successor by Charles C. Haight. Original building described in and pictured at: Later building with re-used gates at In 1899, Heins & LaFarge built the Houghton Memorial Chapel at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Richardsonian in its recessed entrance, dominating central tower and interpenetrating Romanesque massing. Also in 1899, at the United States Military Academy, West Point, they erected the Roman Catholic chapel of the Most Holy Trinity, also hearkening back to their Richardson apprenticeship with an essay in rusticated granite, with a battlemented corner tower and a heavy arcaded porch. It was enlarged in 1959.

The Metropolitan Club, Washington DC, 1908

End of career

In 1903 Heins & LaFarge were commissioned to design the Municipal Building for Washington DC.

In 1904 they were commissioned to design the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St James in Seattle by Bishop Edward J. O’Dea, whose diocese had purchased property on Seattle’s First Hill and demanded a cathedral “that must surpass anything in the West.” The Italian quattrocento design features tall, paired campanili at the west end and a central dome. The firm sent two young architects, W. Marbury Somervell and Joseph S. Coté, to oversee construction on the site, who went on to establish a thriving architectural practice in Seattle. The cornerstone ceremony took place on November 12, 1905. The cathedral was completed in 1907 and solemnly dedicated on December 22, 1907. Unhappily, under the weight of two feet of wet snow the dome collapsed on the afternoon of February 2, 1916, dropping 400 tons of masonry eighty feet into the empty cathedral, shattering every window and leaving a gaping hole that exposed it to the elements. The cathedral reopened on March 18, 1917, but with a flat roof over the crossing. The central repositioning of the altar in response to reforms of the Second Vatican Council has finally brought it into the position envisaged by the architects.

IRT Control house at Bowling Green, 1905

Beginning in 1901, Heins & LaFarge designed subway stations[4] and buildings for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company under the direction of the chief engineer, William Barclay Parsons.[5] When the Interborough Rapid Transit opened on October 27, 1904, its showpiece station was City Hall, designed by Heins & LaFarge using uninterrupted sweeping Guastavino-tiled arches and vaults which incorporated shaped skylights and mosaics and polychrome terracotta panels. Throughout the original stations the polychrome faience panels (from Grueby Faience Company, Boston, and Atlantic Terra Cotta Company of Staten Island and New Jersey) were designed by the firm.[6] The partners' control house for the IRT is at Bowling Green at the corner of Battery Park in the Dutch Renaissance manner reminiscent of New Amsterdam. A few Heins & Lafarge subway entrances survive, notably at 72nd Street (Broadway). Lafarge was replaced by Squire J. Vickers as architect in charge in 1908.

Notes

  1. ↑ Heins & LaFarge sketch.
  2. ↑ State University of New York campus buildings.
  3. ↑ "Finding Aid". American Academy in Rome records, 1855-[ca.1981], (bulk dates 1894-1946). Archives of American Art. 2011. Retrieved 17 Jun 2011. 
  4. ↑ The subway's engineers had designed the utilitarian spaces before Heins & LeFarge were brought on board to render them attractive.
  5. ↑ An exhibition incorporating architectural drawings, objects, and archival images was held at the New York Transit Museum annex at Grand Central Terminal, March–July 2007.
  6. ↑ See New York City subway tiles.

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