John Russell Pope

John Russell Pope ( born April 24, 1874 in New York City; † August 27, 1937 same place ) was an American architect of historicism. His most famous works are the neo-classical building of the National Archives and Records Administration, the Jefferson Memorial and the West Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC

Life and work

Pope was the son of a successful portrait painter. He studied architecture at Columbia University (graduate 1894) and received a scholarship to the American Academy in Rome, a stronghold of the American Renaissance. Pope traveled to Italy and Greece in detail and documented his journey with sketches and photos. In 1896 he studied at the École des Beaux -Arts in Paris. Pope returned in 1900 to New York, was first employee of Bruce Price, and then started his own business.

Pope began his career with private houses, among other things, for the Vanderbilt family, and this activity also remained true to life. Among his larger orders include the Masonic Temple House of the Temple (1911-1915) in Washington DC and the Union Station in Richmond ( Virginia).

His works were based in style to the Gothic Revival and the Tudor style, but especially at the neoclassicism. Both the Pope's death only after 1939-1943 realized Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art and previously the Union Station in Richmond (1917 ) clearly show the model of the Pantheon in Rome.

Pope received in 1932 at the Olympics in Los Angeles, a silver medal winner in the art. As one of the last champions of historicism, however, he found in the representatives of the Modern harsh critics. An exhibition of the National Gallery of Art, " John Russell Pope and the Building of the National Gallery of Art ", but led to the reassessment of his work.

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