Ralph Adams Cram 1863-1942, American architect, b. Hampton Falls, N.H. An ardent exponent of Gothic architecture, Cram produced many collegiate and ecclesiastical works in a neo-Gothic style. Among these are part of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City; the graduate school and chapel at Princeton; and buildings at Williams, Phillips Exeter Academy, Rice Univ., and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After the withdrawal of B. G. Goodhue in 1914, the architectural firm with which he was associated was known as Cram and Ferguson.

Bibliography: See Ralph Adams Cram: Life and Architecture (Vol. I, 1995) by D. Shand-Tucci.

Cram, Ralph Adams (1863–1942). Leading Gothic Revivalist in the USA, much influenced by the works of Bodley, Morris, and Ruskin. He went into partnership with Charles Francis Wentworth (1861–97) in 1889, and together they built the Episcopalian Church of All Saints, Ashmont, Dorchester, Boston, MA (1891–1913). This brought them fame and attracted the gifted Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (1869–1924) to join them as a partner in the firm, renamed Cram, Wentworth, & Goodhue (1892–1914). After Wentworth's early death Frank Ferguson (1861–1926) joined the partnership, and Cram, Goodhue, & Ferguson rose to national pre-eminence with two important commissions: the master-plan and chapel for the US Military Academy, West Point, NY (1903–14), and the Church of St Thomas, Fifth Avenue, NYC (1906–14). The church is one of the finest works of the Arts-and-Crafts and Gothic Revival styles in America. The Graduate School Complex and Chapel at Princeton University (1911–29) were sophisticated designs, but Cram's greatest achievement (1915–41) is undoubtedly the project for the completion and Gothicizing of the Cathedral of St John the Divine, Morningside Heights, NYC, begun in a Byzantine Romanesque style in 1892 to designs by Heins and Lafarge. A respected scholar, Cram was the author of Church Building (1901) and The Substance of Gothic (1917) among other important works.

Bibliography

Cram (1924, 1925, 1930, 1966, 1967, 1969);
A. Daniel (1980);
Muccigrosso (1980);
North (1931);
Shand-Tucci (1975, 1994);
D. Watkin (1986)

CRAM, RALPH ADAMS 1863-1942

Architect

Champion of the Gothic

Ralph Adams Cram was the prime mover behind the revival of Gothic architecture in the 1910s. With his partners at the firm Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson (later Cram and Ferguson), Cram created some of the most influential church and college buildings of his era. Primarily responsible for the overall design and appearance of the firm's buildings, he is widely considered the founder and the foremost exponent of the Eclectic Gothic style in America. While remaining faithful to the pointed arches and delicate stone traceries of English Gothic architecture, this style also borrows from earlier architectural traditions to create structures on the grand scale of newer American buildings. In 1916 a reviewer said of Cram's Gothicism that he "hears its living music, and it is to him not past but eternal."

Proponent of the Spiritual

Cram was born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, on 16 December 1863, the son of a Unitarian minister. He displayed an early talent for drawing and toured Europe after high school. In 1881 he went to Boston to work as an apprentice architect for the firm Rotch and Tilden and as the art critic for the Boston Transcript. A second European tour in 1886 strengthened his interest in historical styles of art and architecture. During both his pilgrimages to the Old World he was profoundly moved by the spirituality of medieval buildings, particularly as it was embodied in the Gothic style. Becoming a High Church Anglican, he retained an awareness of mystical spirituality and an abiding love of medievalism for the rest of his life. On his return to the United States he and Charles Francis Went-worth formed the firm of Cram and Wentworth in Boston, but it was not until Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue became a partner in 1891 and Frank Ferguson joined the firm in 1899 (the year Wentworth died) that Cram began to get the important commissions that made his reputation. Cram's continued insistence on using the Gothic style eventually caused a rift between him and Goodhue, who left the firm in 1913.

Architecture, Philosophy, and Religion

Cram wrote and lectured on the desirability of medieval-style spirituality and communalism in the face of creeping individualistic materialism, publishing many popular, scholarly, and polemical books and essays. He also expressed un-popular political views, for example urging that the United States enter World War I at a time when most Americans favored neutrality.

Churches and Colleges

Cram is best known for his Gothic churches. He felt strongly that the Gothic style ought to be reserved for "ritualized" churches, but he was versatile enough to design other commissions in eclectic, modern, or neoclassical styles. His best-known work in New York City is his redesign of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. This church had originally been designed in a Romanesque-Byzantine style by the firm of Heins and La Farge in 1891, but Cram, whose firm took over the project in 1911, was able to change the overall design to his characteristic Gothic style. Cram was eventually appointed principal architect of that building, which occupied the majority of his time for the rest of his life. St. John the Divine is well known for its broad nave flanked by high columns that dwarf the visitor and lend a sense of mystery and awe to the interior. Cram also designed the Park Avenue Christian Church (1911) and St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue (1914) in New York City and the U.S. Military Academy Chapel (1910) and other buildings at West Point. Among his other notable secular buildings are the Watkins House, in Winona, Illinois; the Atwood House in East Gloucester, Massachusetts; and the Princeton University Graduate College in New Jersey, which he designed while he was supervising architect for Princeton University. He worked in a similar capacity at Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, and Wellesley Colleges—becoming the chief architect of the popularity of "collegiate Gothic."

Later Career

Cram's firm continued to "survive in the age of steel and reinforced concrete," as an article in Fortune proclaimed in 1931, and he weathered the Great Depression as well. An untiring proponent of the medieval style, Cram was working on East Liberty Church in Pittsburgh, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, when he died in 1942. (The church remains unfinished.)

Source:

Douglass Shand-Tucci, Ralph Adams Cram: Life and Architecture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995).