Richard Upjohn

Richard Upjohn (1802-1878) was an English-born American architect whose expressive vocabulary of Gothic design helped to make this style popular in the mid-19th century.

Richard Upjohn was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset-shire, on Jan. 22, 1802. At the age of 27 he went to America with his wife and son. Upjohn became a skilled cabinetmaker before entering the profession of architecture, which explains his penchant for precise, meticulous architectural decoration. Detailed Gothic buildings probably gave him more pleasure to design and construct than the currently popular Greek revival style, whose proportions he could approve but whose paucity of decoration was to him absurd.

In 1830 Upjohn settled in New Bedford, Mass., where he was listed as a carpenter and worked in the office of an oil and lumber merchant. Within 3 years Upjohn began designing buildings. The first was a house for Isaac Farrar in Bangor, Maine (1833-1836), in the prevailing Greek revival style. His first church was St. John's, Bangor (1836-1838; destroyed), in the Gothic style, with which he was thereafter identified.

In 1839 Upjohn moved to New York when he was asked to design a new Trinity Church (1839-1846). It is now considered his finest ecclesiastical work. In plan, decoration, and character it is modeled after the church building concepts of the English Ecclesiologists, who believed in returning directly to medieval architecture and liturgy for inspiration. The effect is clear and precise, though to some extent it lacks integration between ornament and structure.

Trinity Church set the tone for numerous other Gothic churches throughout America, and it helped Upjohn get a large number of commissions which placed him at the top of his profession. His other notable churches are the Church of the Ascension, New York City (1840-1841); Christ Church, Brooklyn (1841-1842); Grace Church, Providence, R.I. (1847-1848); Grace Church, Utica, N.Y. (1856-1860); St. Peter's, Albany, N.Y. (1859-1860); Central Congregational Church, Boston, Mass. (1865-1867); and St. Thomas's, New York City (1868-1870)—all designed in variations of the Gothic theme.

Upjohn's public and commercial buildings were generally done in an Italianate style with semicircular, arched windows and doors. They are monotonous in the repetition of motifs and lack compensating decoration.

Sporadic attempts to form an association of professional architects were made for 2 decades before Upjohn and 12 other New York architects organized as the American Institute of Architects in 1857, with Upjohn as first president. The list of members soon included all the best architects of the era, and the institute is still central to all professional activity in the country.

Rural Architecture (1852) is Upjohn's only complete book, though many drawings and photographic views of his buildings appeared in contemporary magazines. He died in Garrison, N.Y., on Aug. 16, 1878. His most important pupil was his son Richard M. Upjohn.

Further Reading

The definitive book on Upjohn is Everard M. Upjohn, Richard Upjohn: Architect and Churchman (1939; repr. 1968). □

Richard Upjohn 1802–78, American architect, b. England. He came to the United States in 1829. A skilled cabinetmaker and draftsman, he lived first in Manlius, N.Y., and then in New Bedford, Mass., where he set himself up as an architect. His first commissions were private houses in Bangor, Maine (1833–36). He had executed St. John's Church, Bangor (1836–39), and several smaller commissions when in 1839 he was engaged to rebuild Trinity Church, New York City. Moving to New York, he established an office there. The new Trinity Church (1846) was carefully modeled on English examples and inaugurated a new phase in the Gothic revival. Upjohn designed the old St. Thomas's Church in New York City (later burned), several churches in Brooklyn, the chapel of Bowdoin College, smaller Gothic churches, and many residences. He was a founder of the American Institute of Architects and its first president (1857–76). His son, Richard Michell Upjohn, 1828–1903, architect of the Connecticut State Capitol, was associated with his father.

Bibliography: See E. M. Upjohn, Richard Upjohn, Architect and Churchman (1939).

Upjohn, Richard Michell (1828–1903). English-born American architect, the son of Richard Upjohn. He worked closely with his father, becoming a junior partner in 1853. The earliest building for which he alone appears to have been responsible was Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York (1853–4). He introduced an almost Rogue High Victorian Gothic style to the USA, as at the Grace Church, Manchester, NH (1860), and the spiky, rather frantic north gates of Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York (1861–5). The Connecticut State Capitol, Hartford (1872–8), a showy American interpretation of Continental Gothic Revival, with many gables, crested roofs, and an extraordinary (and somewhat incongruous) high cupola, is his most famous work. He published an influential paper on Colonial architecture in New York and the New England States in 1869.

Bibliography

D. Curry & Pierce (eds.) (1979);
Dictionary of American Biography (1948);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Proc. of the Third Annual Convention of the AIA (Nov. 1869), 47–51;
E. Upjohn, E. M. (1939)