William J. Dodd

W.J.Dodd, ca. 1900.[1]
T. Hoyt Gamble House. Old Louisville Historic District. One of Dodd's final Louisville residential designs from 1912.

William James Dodd (1862–1930) was an American architect and designer who worked mainly in Louisville, Kentucky from 1886 through the end of 1912 and in Los Angeles, California from early 1913[2] until his death. Dodd rose from the so-called First Chicago School of architecture, though of greater influence for his mature designs was the classical aesthetic of the Beaux-Arts style ascendant after the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. His design work also included functional and decorative architectural glass and ceramics, furniture, home appliances, and literary illustration.

In a prodigious career lasting more than forty years, Dodd left many extant structures on both east and west coasts and in the midwest and upper south, among the best known of these being the original Presbyterian Seminary campus (now Jefferson Community & Technical College), the Weissinger-Gaulbert Apartments, and the old YMCA building, all three in downtown Louisville. Also notable are his numerous residential and ecclesiastical designs still in use in Kentucky and Tennessee. In California, examples of his extant work include the Pacific Center and Hearst's Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Building in downtown Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mission Auditorium south of Pasadena. Some of his earliest attributed designs may be found in Hyde Park, Illinois.

Early years

Art glass window with tulip-lotus on water motif. T. Hoyt Gamble House, Louisville, KY (1912)
Major L.W. Mckee house, Lawrenceburg, KY. One of Dodd's first residential designs in Kentucky, 1886. Click on pic to enlarge.
Dodd's earliest identified design: a cottage for W.I.Beman on Blackstone Ave. Hyde Park, Chicago. 1886. Click on pic to enlarge.

William J. Dodd was born in Quebec City, Canada, in 1862.[3] Prior to emigrating from Canada to the United States and Chicago Illinois, William's English/Scots father, Edward, was an inn keeper and before that a wharfinger, and his Irish mother, Mary Dinning, was a school teacher and dressmaker.[3][4] In 1869, the family of six, then including daughters Jane (Jenny) and Elizabeth, and sons Edward Jr. and William James, moved to Chicago.[5] The 1870 Chicago Directory gives the first known address for the Dodds on south Des Plaines near the original site of the Old St. Patrick's Church. In 1871, the ill-timed move of the Dodd household to West Harrison Street in Ward 9 placed them in the path of the great Chicago fire in October of the same year.[6]

Dodd received his training in the architectural office of William Le Baron Jenney, ca. 1878-79,[7] and his first employment from 1880[8][9] through 1883[10] appears to be for the Pullman Car Company as a draftsman of architect Solon Spencer Beman's designs for the planned city of Pullman, Illinois now the Pullman National Monument.[11] Dodd's social life in Pullman was marked with athletic participation on the first Pullman competitive rowing crew.[12][13][14][15] As a member of the Pullman Rowing Club and the Pullman Pleasure Club he was often mentioned in the press accounts of fetes and dance parties that he coordinated for the young elites of Pullman and Hyde Park.[16][17][18] This sporting sociability is not merely incidental to Dodd but returns as an important feature of his later life in Louisville, with his membership in the Pendennis Club and Louisville Country Club, and in Los Angeles with his co-founding of The Uplifters Club, an offshoot of the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

In 1889 William J. Dodd married Ione Estes of Memphis, TN. Ione was from a large family of some political and historical importance in post-Reconstruction era Tennessee and in the Upland South region. While Dodd's religious upbringing was Methodism, after his marriage to Ione his denominational affiliation was Presbyterianism. The marriage produced no surviving children.

There are some uncertainties in Dodd's biography. Although naturalized in 1869 upon entering the United States, from the 1890s onward Dodd claimed to be Chicago-born,[19] doing so, Jay Gatsby-like, in all kinds of public documents. In an 1897 interview with a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal [20] W. J. Dodd left the reporter, and thus posterity, with the impression that he was a native Chicagoan, that he graduated from "the Chicago schools"[21] and had been in the first graduating class of the Chicago Art Institute. The archives of the Institute do not yet support this claim.[22][23] Similarly unclear is when, in what year, Dodd began his professional practice in Louisville. The year usually offered in the histories of Kentucky architects (from Withey to Hedgepeth[24] to Kleber[25] to Luhan, Domer and Mohney[26]) for Dodd's arrival in Louisville is 1884, based on the forementioned 1897 article in the Louisville Courier-Journal. In contrast, Chicago newspapers place him still in Pullman by early 1884, thereafter taking employment as an architect with the Northern Pacific Railway upon recommendation by S.S. Beman and moving to the rail company's office in Portland Oregon only to return to Chicago (Hyde Park) and employment with the Beman brothers (S.S. and W.I) by the end of 1885 after the Northern Pacific's collapse and reorganization. The journal Inland Architect of February 1886 announces Dodd's imminent departure from Chicago to begin a partnership with O. C. Wehle of Louisville, saying: "Mr Dodd will [soon] be a valuable addition to the architects of Louisville".[27] By September 1886 Dodd is cited as partner with Oscar Wehle for the design of "a magnificent three story brown stone residence" in Louisville.[28] In November 1886, Dodd was elected to membership in the Western Association of Architects, his home city being given as Louisville.[29] Dodd first appears as a resident, a boarder, in Louisville in the 1887 Caron's Louisville Directory. The American Institute of Architects [A.I.A.] Historical Directory of American Architects has held that Dodd did not join the A.I.A. national organization until 1916[30] despite Dodd's listing in membership with the Louisville Chapter of the A.I.A. in 1912[31] and in Southern California A.I.A. chapter in 1915.[32]

Career

The John P. Starks House, ca 1898, designed by W.J.Dodd & Arthur Cobb in Old Louisville's St. James Court.[24]

Dodd spent nearly twenty seven years in Louisville. During this time his professional partners were Oscar C. Wehle, Mason Maury, Arthur Cobb, and Kenneth McDonald. Also, Dodd's output from these years contained many free-lance projects. He worked throughout Kentucky and across the midwest, specifically Illinois,[33][34] Indiana,[35] Ohio, and Tennessee,[36][37] creating structures of exceptional craftsmanship and high style, designs which traced the transitional tastes and technologies of the period before Modernism. On the east coast, extant Dodd structures from the early 1890s can be found in Virginia, in the historic Ghent (Norfolk) neighborhood.[38]

On Christmas Day 1912[39] Dodd departed the midwest to continue his professional career in the greater Los Angeles area, a period lasting until his death there in June 1930. In Los Angeles, Dodd partnered briefly with J. Martyn Haenke (1877–1963)[40] and later with William Richards (1871–1945), his longest professional partnership.

In southern California, "the Southland", Dodd's buildings are to be found in the old downtown financial district around Pacific Center, above Hollywood in Laughlin Park and Hancock Park, to the west in Rustic Canyon, Playa Del Rey and Long Beach, southeast to San Gabriel, and possibly northeast in Altadena. Related to Dodd's Los Angeles work are residences in Oak Glen[41] and Palm Springs, California.

From as early as 1893, and to the end of his life, Dodd was a mentor to talented younger designers who were new to the profession, designers with now well-known names like Lloyd Wright,[42] Thomas Chalmers Vint,[43] and Adrian Wilson,[44] often outsiders without a developed practice and contending with a new client base and fast evolving licensing standards in cities enjoying rapid expansion as was Louisville after the American Civil War and Los Angeles after World War I. The architect Julia Morgan, a mostly free-lance California designer from upstate San Francisco,[45] rare as a female in a male-dominated profession, formed a team with W. J. Dodd and J. M. Haenke as her LA facilitators and design partners for William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Building, a landmark downtown Los Angeles project completed in 1915.[46]

William Dodd's design work extended to glass and ceramics. His designs of Teco pottery are among the most sought-after and rare of the Arts and Crafts movement products introduced by the famed Gates Potteries near Chicago Illinois. He also designed furniture and art glass windows for many of his best residential and commercial buildings;[47] examples of such work by Dodd are to be seen in the Ferguson Mansion, currently the Filson Historical Society, and the Hoyt Gamble house, both of Louisville.

Extant buildings

Pacific Mutual Life Building, Los Angeles (in 2012). Dodd & Richards design of 1919.[48]
Three Dodd Teco designs from 1905 Teco Catalog[49] of the Gates Potteries Co.
Dodd designed Teco vase No. #87 (ca. 1902[50]). Size: 12" x 8". See Teco Catalog[49] of Gates Potteries.
Design of a Cooking-Stove 1887 W.J.Dodd, Louisville KY [51]
Illustration by W.J.Dodd for an 1893 essay "Gondola Days" by F. Hopkinson Smith published by Southern Magazine
Illustration by W.J. Dodd for a 1895 story on Japanese themes in a magazine.[52]

Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee

California

See also

References

  1. ↑ Notable Men of Kentucky at the Beginning of the 20th Century (1901-1902). Benjamin LaBree, ed. Geo. G. Fetter, pub. Louisville KY: 1902 p. 159
  2. ↑ The L.A. Times of March 2, 1913 announces the purchase of a residence by Dodd; Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer trade journal of May 10, 1913 records that Dodd had recently been granted his certificate to practice in Southern California by the State Board of Architecture.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Quebec City Wesleyan Methodist Church records, leaf 21, baptismal record of December 17, 1862 (birth date: September 22, 1862)
  4. ↑ U.S. census records of 1870 and 1880. These records identify Edward Dodd (Sr.) as a brick mason by trade; Mary turns to "Keeping house" and millinery work.
  5. ↑ 1860 Census of Canada indicates an infant daughter named Sarah who does not reappear in the 1870 census.
  6. ↑ 1871 Chicago Directory
  7. ↑ The Autobiography of Irving Kane Pond, "The Sons of Mary and Elihu". Edited by David Swan and Terry Tatum with an introduction by Guy Szuberla and contributions by Dennis Domer. Published posthumously by The Hyoogen Press, Oak Park, IL in 2009. pp. 82-84.
  8. ↑ Chicago Directory of 1880 gives an address for W.J. Dodd, 156 Michigan Avenue, the headquarters of the Pullman Car Company; his occupation is given as 'draughstman'. The 1880 census has his residence on South Water Street, the family home, and his occupation is 'architect'.
  9. ↑ Twentieth Annual Report of the Chicago Board of Trade for the Year ending 1877. Compiled by Charles Randolph. Knight & Leonard Printers. Chicago: 1878. Page 194 establishes the address of the Pullman Car Co. as 156 Michigan Ave.
  10. ↑ Chicago Daily Tribune, June 26, 1887: p. 14 "Pullman Rowing Club"
  11. ↑ Designation of Feb. 19, 2015 http://blog.preservationnation.org/2015/02/19/big-win-pullman-historic-district-now-national-monument/#.VOavYoY8LCQ
  12. ↑ Pasavento, Wilma. "Sport and Recreation in the Pullman Experiment: 1880-1900". Journal of Sports History, Vol. 9.2, Summer 1982
  13. ↑ Chicago Daily Tribune: July 31, 1882, p. 8
  14. ↑ Chicago Daily Tribune: Oct. 22, 1882, p. 1
  15. ↑ Chicago Daily Tribune: June 26, 1887, p. 14
  16. ↑ Chicago Times, December 31, 1881: "Pullman Pleasure Club"
  17. ↑ Chicago Times, March 24, 1882: "Pullman Socialbility"
  18. ↑ Hyde Park Herald, April 25, 1885: "A Fond Farewell"
  19. ↑ Rand, McNally & Co.'s Handbook of the World Columbian Exposition. Compiled by Stuart Charles Wade. Published by Rand, McNally & Co., 1893, p. 194
  20. ↑ Louisville Courier-Journal. 1897: March 13, Section 2 "Building", p. 8
  21. ↑ Published lists of graduates of the Chicago public school system from years 1859-1881 do not include William J. Dodd. In particular see "Report [of the] Superintendent of Chicago Schools, Vol. 25 (1878-9), Vol. 26 (1879-80), Vol. 27 (1880-1)
  22. ↑ Research offers a possible explanation for this biographical uncertainty; Dodd may have received his earliest technical training under the auspices of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (1879-1882), the immediate predecessor to the Art Institute; the academy boasted an architecture and design curriculum. W.L.B. Jenney was on the board of the Academy.
  23. ↑ Chicago Daily Tribune, June 29, 1879, p. 8 "The New Academy" by W.L.B. Jenney
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Hedgepeth, Marty Lyn Poynter. The Victorian to the Beaux-Arts: A study of Four Louisville Architectural Firms, McDonald Brothers, McDonald & Sheblessy, Dodd & Cobb and McDonald & Dodd. M.A. Thesis, 1981 University of Louisville
  25. ↑ Kleber, John E., Editor. The Encyclopedia of Louisville, University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, KY:2001
  26. ↑ Luhan, Gregory A., Dennis Domer and David Mohney. The Louisville Guide. Princeton Architectural Press, 2004
  27. ↑ Inland Architect & Builder. Vol 7, No. 1, p. 8: February 1886
  28. ↑ "Among the Plumbers." Sanitary News: Weekly Journal of Sanitary Science, Vol. 8 May 1 - October 31, 1886, p. 270 Google Books Web 22 Dec 2013
  29. ↑ American Architect and Architecture: Vol. XX, July–December. 1886
  30. ↑ http://www.aia.org/about/history/aiab082017. As of Dec 2013, the database is currently not available online. Contact A.I. A. archivist at nhadley@aia.org
  31. ↑ Catalogue of the First Exhibition: Louisville Chapter American Institute of Architects. 1912, pp. 6-7
  32. ↑ Architect and Engineer: v. 43-44 - 1915, p. 118 "New Chapter Members"
  33. ↑ Inland Architect & Builder. Vol 6, No. 6, p. 104: December 1885
  34. ↑ Rand, McNally & Co.'s Handbook of the World Columbian Exposition.Rand, McNally & Co., 1893, p. 194
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 35.2 35.3 Hedgepeth, p. 95
  36. ↑ Johnson, Eugene J. & Russell, Robert D., Memphis: An Architectural Guide. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville: 1990
  37. ↑ Hedgepeth, p. 98
  38. ↑ Yarsinske, Amy Waters. "Ghent: John Graham's Dream, Norfolk, Virginia's Treasure". The History Press, Charleston, South Carolina, 2006, p. 64.
  39. ↑ Louisville Courier-Journal, Thursday Dec. 26, 1913 POINTS ABOUT PEOPLE - "Mr. and Mrs. William James Dodd left last night for Los Angeles where they will make their home..."
  40. ↑ Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer Vol. 11, October 25, 1913 p. 12 "PERSONAL NOTES AND TRADE NEWS - Archts. J. Martyn Haenke and W. J. Dodd have dissolved partnership. Mr. Haenke to continue the business at the present offices...Mr. Dodd has not announced his plans but will continue in practice."
  41. ↑ Sanders, J.R. Oak Glen and Los Rios Rancho. Arcadia Publishing: 2006, p. 26
  42. ↑ Lloyd Wright papers, 1920-1978. Unpublished correspondence. Box 20 "W.J. Dodd - Landscaping". UC Los Angeles: Special Collections, Young Research Library.
  43. ↑ McClelland, Linda Flint. Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service - 1916 to 1942. National Register of Historic Places Interagency Resources Division of the National Park Service: 1993 Chp. IV, p. 1.
  44. ↑ A.I.A. professional listing for Adrian Wilson: 1962
  45. ↑ Wilson, Mark A. Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty. Gibbs Smith Publishers: 2007, p. 200. Wilson quotes architect Cynthia Ripley saying: "she was accepted and respected in an all-male field as the only independent woman architect at that time."
  46. ↑ Los Angeles Examiner, June 28, 1914, pt IV, p. 3: "Architects for the Examiner Bldg." Microfiche - Los Angeles Central Library
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 Hedgepeth, p. 96
  48. ↑ LA Times: Aug. 3, 1919, p. V16 "Office Building for Pacific Mutual Life"
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 http://www.tecopottery.info/catalog.pdf
  50. ↑ Brush & Pencil: An Illustrated Magazine of the Arts of Today. 1902, Vol. 9, p. 292. Chicago
  51. ↑ With "granular roughenings embellished by representations of chrysanthemum vines". United States Patent Office. Design No. 17,420: June 28, 1887. From same decade in which Louis Comfort Tiffany popularized the chrysanthemum pattern.
  52. ↑ Scott, Mary McNeill. "Yako - The Sickness the Fox Send" published in The Southern Magazine, Louisville KY: Vol. 5, No. 28, January 1895, pp. 361-372. Illustrations for story by W.J. Dodd. Basil W. Duke, editor.
  53. ↑ Inland Architect and News Record, Vol. VI, No. 6, Dec. 1885, p. 104
  54. ↑ Sanitary News: Weekly Journal of Sanitary Science, Vol. 8, p. 270. May1-October 31, 1886. Chicago.
  55. ↑ Louisville Courier-Journal, Dec. 21, 1886, p. 4. "Happily Mated: Marriage of Major L.W. McKee, State Senator..."
  56. ↑ 56.0 56.1 56.2 Inland Architect, Vol. 17, No. 2, p. 28
  57. ↑ Samuel Thomas Papers 1963-2012, Box. 97, University of Louisville Library
  58. ↑ Yarsinske, p. 64
  59. ↑ 59.0 59.1 NRHP Nomination Form: August 1981. M.A. Allgeier, researcher
  60. ↑ Louisville Courier-Journal, Nov. 27, 1896, p. 9
  61. ↑ 61.0 61.1 61.2 Hedgepeth, p. 94
  62. ↑ Hedgepeth, p. 99
  63. ↑ 63.0 63.1 Hedgepeth, p. 97
  64. ↑ Louisville Courier-Journal, Mar. 15, 1910, p. 7 "At present, Mr. Dodd is at work on his handsome new residence in the court adjoining the homes of Cale Young Rice and Henry J. Powell and expects to soon have it finished."
  65. ↑ The Weekly Artisan, April 16, 1910, p. 30: "Buildings that will need furniture".
  66. ↑ Louisville Courier-Journal Dec. 16, 1910, p. 2 News article lists Dodd's address at 1448 St. James Ct.
  67. ↑ Casto, Marilyn Dee. Actors, audiences, and historic theaters of Kentucky. University of Kentucky Press: 2000, p. 76. Also, see Hedgepeth, p. 107
  68. ↑ Hedgepeth, p. 103
  69. ↑ Kleber, p. 250
  70. ↑ Louisville Courier-Journal, Aug. 11, 1912, p. 7
  71. ↑ Louisville Courier-Journal, Dec. 28, 1912, p. 10. T. H. Gamble removes from 644 S. 2nd St. to 119 West Ormsby Ave.
  72. ↑ Building and Engineering News, Volume 17, Issue 2, August, p. 4
  73. ↑ Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1930 p. D6 "Architect Erects Home in Hillside Location"
  74. ↑ Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1930 p. D6 "Architect to Occupy Residence Along Seashore"

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William J. Dodd.
Ca. 1950 image of 8207 Delgany Ave. Playa Del Rey, California. "Architect to Occupy Residence Along Seashore…Construction work has started on a seven room Spanish-type home for W.J.Dodd. The Dodd home…is situated on sloping ground and overlooks the ocean." LA Times, March 16, 1930. Dodd dies after a sudden brief illness in June 1930. Photo courtesy of Tom McMahon and Sharon Miller. Used with permission.