Henry Hobson Richardson
| Henry Hobson Richardson
(American architect) | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 28, 1838 Priestley Plantation St. James Parish, Louisiana |
| Died | April 27, 1886 (aged 47) Brookline, Massachusetts Walnut Street Cemetery in Brookline |
| Spouse | Julia Gorham Hayden Richardson (married 1867-1886, his death)
Six children: |
Henry Hobson Richardson (September 28, 1838 – April 27, 1886) was an American architect though born in Louisiana made most of his designs in Massachusetts.
Background
The eldest of four children, he was born on the Priestley Plantation in St. James Parish near New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents were Henry Dickson Richardson, a cotton and iron merchant, and the former Catherine Caroline Priestly, a granddaughter of the English chemist Joseph Priestley. Educated in public and private schools in New Orleans, Richardson had an aptitude for drawing. In 1855, he attended Tulane University in New Orleans before entering Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study civil engineering.
Career
Upon his Harvard graduation in 1859, his interest lay in architecture. Richardson's father had died in 1854, when Richardson was sixteen years of age. His stepfather, John D. Bein, agreed to finance studies at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France, at which he studied under Louis Jules André and worked for a French architectural firm. At start of the American Civil War, Richardson's friends persuaded him to remain in France and not fight for the Confederate States of America. After the war, Richardson settled in New York City. His first commission was a Unitarian church in Springfield, Massachusetts, completed in 1866 . Early in 1867, he wed the former Julia Gorham Hayden, the daughter of a Boston physician [1][2]
In 1867, he entered into a year-long partnership with Charles D. Gambrill, but both men found that they worked best independently of each other. His commissions came from New England, including Trinity Church, Boston, 1872, which earned Richardson a national reputation. He relocated in 1874 to Brookline, Massachusetts, where he opened a solo office in 1878. Among the structures that he designed were public buildings, libraries, commercial buildings, railroad stations, and private residences. Although most of his commissions came from New York and Massachusetts, he also designed work built in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, and from his home state New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He inspected his building projects with a focus on details. He almost single-handed revived the Spanish-French Romanesque style of architecture. Richardson influenced young architects, including Louis Sullivan, who formulated the "form follows function" dictum. Richardson was affiliated with the American Institute of Architects, the Archaelogical Institute of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Institute of British Architects.[1]
Richardson died in Brookline at the age of forty-seven of Bright's disease, a kidney ailment. He is interred in Boston. His survivors included his wife and their six children.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Richardson, Henry Hobson. A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography: Louisiana Historical Association. Retrieved on May 2, 2020.
- ↑ A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography uses these sources for the article on Richardson: Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works (1888); Henry-Russell Hitchcock, T"The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His TImes (revised 1961); Henry Hobson Richardson as a Victorian Architect (1966); Dictionary of American Biography.