Henry Hobson Richardson

Henry Hobson Richardson ( born September 29, 1838 in St. James Parish, Louisiana, † April 27, 1886 in Brookline, Massachusetts ) was an American architect.

Biography

Henry Hobson Richardson was born in Louisiana. He was a great-grandson of the inventor and philosopher Joseph Priestley.

From Senator Judah P. Benjamin, he received a letter of recommendation for West Point. He also passed the entrance exam, but then had to go to Harvard because his father had died and Harvard was the cheaper solution. Richardson studied 1856-1859 at Harvard College. At first he showed interest in the civil engineering, but later switched to architecture, after which he went in 1860 to Paris and attended the École des Beaux -Arts. After Richard Morris Hunt, he was the second U.S. citizen who attended the École. With the pressure of poverty in the neck, because it was his family during the American Civil War no longer support, he worked at a French Archtiketen, for which he created drawings for some public buildings. He earned his living while studying. He returned to America and made on January 1, 1866 his own architectural firm in New York.

In February 1859, he met Julia Hayden, the sister of a fellow student, whom he married in Springfield, Massachusetts in January 1867. 1876 ​​the couple moved to Brookline, a suburb of Boston, where Richardson lived until his death, and also had his offices.

In his work the next few years Richardson but not preferred the classic style of the École des Beaux -Arts but was rather inspired by the medieval architecture of Europe, whom he met during his time in France. He particularly favored this Romanesque, he advanced to his own style, the so-called Richardson Romanesque.

Among his employees were Charles F. McKim and Stanford White, the renowned architects were also.

Richardson died in 1886 at the age of 47 years to a malfunction of the kidneys and was buried in the Walnut Hills Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Work

His first assignment was in 1869 the Church of the Unity in Springfield, the city in which he also married. The now demolished church already showed its focus on medieval architecture, but was in contrast to his later work, rather than influenced by the Gothic Romanesque. In 1870, he was with the construction of the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, which was later renamed HH Richardson Complex, its first major order. This complex is also considered the birthplace of the Richardson Romanesque, Romanesque Revival a form that is characterized by particularly bulky -looking building. But his most famous work is the Trinity Church in Boston. After the old church had not survived the Great Boston Fire of 1872, Richardson was hired for the new building, which he completed in 1877. In his relatively short career, he designed a number of important buildings, especially for public and institutional purposes. In addition to the Trinity in Boston (1874 ), the Witherspoon Hall at Princeton (1877 ) Sever and Austin Halls for Harvard University (1880 and 1884 ), stone bridges in the Back Bay Fens (1880 ) and numerous libraries and railway depots in the Boston area. Among his other important orders were the Albany City Hall (1880 ), the Allegheny County Building in Pittsburgh ( 1883-8 ), the Glessner House in Chicago ( 1885-97 ) and the prominent department store of Marshall Field in Chicago ( 1886).

Early 1970s was the Haines house discovered when his design, also a department store in Boston. That was interesting, as it was with the family of his wife, Julia Gorham Haines, whom he had married on January 3, 1867 in connection.

In the next few years he built in the New England states, some libraries that are all very similar stylistically. In addition, he designed for the Boston & Albany Railroad six stations, while not quite as massive act like his other buildings, but still unmistakably bear his signature. In addition, he belonged 1875-1883 to the architect team that built the New York State Capitol in Albany. The Great Western Staircase in this building, which is also known as the Million Dollar Staircase, was designed by him.

Another work of him stands in Chicago on the South Prairie Avenue to number 1800th This is the John J. Glessner House. The house was taken on April 17, 1970 as a historic monument by the NRHP with the number 70,000,233.

Swell

• Glessnerhouse.org
• Emporis.com
• Henry Hobson Richardson - Page 539-542. Publisher: Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Volume 22 ( May 1, 1886)
• Richardson, the architect and the Cincinnati chamber of commerce building. Publisher: Cincinnati Astronomical Society 1914

Further Reading

• Robert Schmitt: The Architecture of H.H. Richardson and His Times. Publisher: The MIT Press; second edition 1966. ISBN 978-0-2625-8005-2
• Jeffrey Karl Ochsner: HH Richardson: Complete Architectural Works. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. Reprint edition. ISBN 978-0-2626-5015-1
• James F. O'gorman ( Author), Cervin Robinson ( Photographer): Living Architecture. Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition, 1997. ISBN 978-0-6848-3618-8
• Margaret H. Floyd: Henry Hobson Richardson. A genius for architecture. Photographs by Paul Rocheleau. Publisher: The Monacelli Press; First Edition edition, 1997. ISBN 978-1-8852-5470-2