Henry Hobson Richardson

Henry Hobson Richardson 1838-86, American architect, b. St. James parish, La., grad. Harvard, 1859, studied at the École des Beaux-Arts; great-grandson of Joseph Priestley. He was a major representative of romanticism in American architecture and was noted for his revival of Romanesque design. After employment in Paris, he began practice (1866) in New York City but moved to Brookline, Mass., in 1874. Trinity Church in Boston (1872-77) was his first monumental work; its French Romanesque design was a departure from the Gothic revival that controlled contemporaneous American architecture. In it and in subsequent works Richardson developed a free and strongly personal interpretation of Romanesque design. The style, known as Richardson Romanesque, spread and won many followers, exerting a great influence upon the building arts of the period, especially in the young, growing cities of Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. Richardson's buildings showed strength, simplicity, and a skillful employment of varied materials. In his country houses of wood he produced a distinct American type. He elevated the position of the minor crafts in his work, and to artists such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John La Farge he entrusted the important units of decoration. Among Richardson's principal works are the New Brattle Square Church, Boston; public library, Woburn, Mass.; courthouse and jail, Pittsburgh; Sever Hall and Austin Hall, Harvard; parts of the state capitol at Albany, in association with Eidlety and Olmsted; Glessner House, Illinois Institute of Technology; and the Marshall Field wholesale store, Chicago.

Bibliography: See H. R. Hitchcock, The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times (1936, rev. ed. 1961); J. K. Ochsner, H. H. Richardson: Complete Architectural Works (1982); J. F. O'Gorman, H. H. Richardson (1987) and Living Architecture (1997).

Richardson, Henry Hobson (1838–86). Influential and brilliantly gifted American architect. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts (1860–2), and worked in Paris under Labrouste's elder brother, Théodore (1799–1885), and then Hittorff, before returning the USA (1865). He entered into partnership with Charles Dexter Gambrill (1834–80—a former partner of Post), who acted mostly as business manager, leaving Richardson free to concentrate on design. With his Brattle Square (1870–2) and Trinity (1872–7) Churches, Boston, MA, he established his reputation as an architect of great power, scholarship, and originality. Trinity Church is an assured essay in freely treated Romanesque Revival, with a monumental crossingtower, apsidal chancel, and gritty exterior, clearly influenced by contemporary French round-arched churches such as St-Augustin, Paris, and the works of Vaudremer, but the massiveness and strength also suggest an influence from Burges, some of whose publications Richardson had in his collection. With the geometrical emphases inherent in using the semicircular arch, Richardson gradually moved towards evolving his own style, using rock-faced rustication to give added weight to his buildings, as in the 7-storey Marshall Field Wholesale Warehouse, Chicago, IL (1885–7— demolished 1930). Round-arched too was his Allegheny County Court House and Gaol (1883–8), the staircase of which was ingenious and thrilling in terms of spatial interpenetration. At the Gaol, the massive oversized voussoirs, clearly derived from Florentine precedents, suggested the Sublime. Richardson was also attracted to the Arts-and-Crafts movement, and designed many fine and original houses, some of which were in the Shingle style, but all were ingenious, beautifully crafted, and organized with great sensitivity to their sites, especially those on the New England coast. Among his best domestic buildings were the Watts Sherman House, Newport, RI (1874–5), the Paine House, Waltham, MA (1884–6), the Glessner House, Chicago (1885–7), and the Stoughton House, Cambridge, MA (1882–3). His work influenced McKim, Mead, & White, Root, and Sullivan, among others.

Bibliography

M. Floyd (1997);
Harrington (1993);
Hitchcock (1966, 1966b, 1977);
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, ix/1–2 (Mar. & May 1950), 25–30;
Meister (ed.) (1999);
L. Mumford (1924, 1931);
Ochsner (1982);
O'Gorman (1987a, 1997);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Rensselaer (1969);
V. J. Scully (1971, 1974);
Jane Turner (1996)