Cram, Ralph Adams

views updated May 18 2018

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)