Happy 175th Birthday to Henry Hobson Richardson

Sunday September 29, 2013 will mark the 175^th anniversary of the birth of Glessner House architect Henry Hobson Richardson.  The event will be marked with a lecture on Richardson’s influence in Chicago entitled “H. H. Richardson and his Chicago Legacy” that afternoon at 2:00pm in the coach house of the museum.  The presenter will be architectural historian John Waters, who will explore Richardson’s body of work and the influence it had on architects including Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Henry Ives Cobb.  (As a special treat, attendees will receive a piece of birthday cake – the same celebrated recipe for strawberry shortcake that Richardson called the “best ever” when he dined with the Glessners in May 1885).  For reservations or more information, call 312.326.1480.

In celebration of Richardson’s birth, we present a brief biography and overview of his works from the exhibit “Henry Hobson Richardson: Architect of the Glessner House” on permanent display in the visitor’s center of the museum.  The exhibit text was written by James F. O’Gorman, professor emeritus in the Wellesley College Department of Arts, and the author of several books on Richardson and his contemporaries, including H. H. Richardson: Architectural Forms for an American Society and Living Architecture: A Biography of H. H. Richardson.

Church of the Unity, Springfield, MA

BIOGRAPHY

H. H. Richardson (1838-1886) is a pioneer figure in the development of an American style of architecture.  Born on a Louisiana sugar plantation, he grew up in the American section of New Orleans. His mother was the granddaughter of Joseph Priestley, celebrated eighteenth-century Unitarian clergyman and chemist often credited with the discovery of oxygen; his father was a dealer in real estate, cotton, and slaves. Turned down by West Point because of a stutter, he entered Harvard College, graduating in 1859. He proved an indifferent scholar but a popular classmate. Elected to the Porcellian, an exclusive collegiate social club, much of his subsequent career rested on the contacts he made at college including future clients Henry Adams and Philips Brooks.

In 1860 he became the second American architect to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then the leading architectural school in the Western world. The fall of New Orleans to Union troops in 1862 cutoff funds from home and prematurely ended his studies, so he found work at the office of Théodore Labrouste, an important government architect. Richardson’s Parisian education thus combined theoretical exercises with practical experience. He absorbed the French system of balanced planning but rejected its classical forms. 

At the end of the Civil War he returned to the States, married Julia Gorham Hayden of Boston, and moved into a mansard-roofed house of his own design on Staten Island, New York. He formed a partnership of convenience with Charles Dexter Gambrill, and designed his first building, the Church of the Unity in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1866. During this time he also collaborated with the pioneering landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, to prepare a master plan for Staten Island.

Richardson’s career lasted just twenty years, and from 1874 until his death twelve years later, he worked out of a studio behind his residence in Brookline, a suburb of Boston. There he set up an office on the French atelier system, drawing assistants from the recently established school of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His office produced several prominent architects including Charles Follen McKim and Stanford White, two of the major architects of the next generation. A summer trip in 1882 to the Auvergne and other medieval sites in France, Spain, and Italy confirmed his choice of Romanesque as the basis for a personal style, which in time became known as Richardsonian Romanesque.  His fresh approach to those robust forms marked his later buildings, many of which were erected by Norcross Brothers of Worcester, Massachusetts.

Richardson was a hail-fellow-well-met, a man’s man who, as a New York Senator once stated, could “charm a bird out of a bush.” But his gargantuan appearance (John Glessner estimated his weight at 370 pounds) masked a deadly malady, Bright’s disease, which killed him at the age of forty-seven. Philips Brooks likened his passing to the “vanishing of a great mountain from the landscape.” The study of his life and work, written by Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, appeared in 1888 and was the first book devoted to an American architect.  It did much to spread the knowledge and influence of the Richardsonian Romanesque far beyond New England.

Trinity Church, Boston, MA

MAJOR WORKS

Richardson became the most admired architect in the country as the result of a number of significant buildings designed during the last fifteen years of his life. Five of his buildings appeared on an 1885 national survey of the ten best buildings of the United States picked by his fellow architects.  Trinity Church headed the list. He also found followers across the United States and as far afield as England, Finland, and Australia. He was the first American architect to have such a wide influence and respect abroad.

What Richardson called his free interpretation of the Romanesque style first occurred in his masterwork, Trinity Church on Copley Square in Boston, a commission he won in competition in 1872. Rejecting the thin walled Gothic Revival style with its pointed arches, then popular for Episcopal churches, he designed a vast open auditorium for the charismatic preacher Philips Brooks. The interior is a broad centralized space rising amid chancel, shallow transepts, and a shortened nave with round-arched wooden vaults. Its colorful thick walls, brilliant stained glass, and rich acoustics add to the special quality of the space. This shaping of the interior created an exterior that is a pyramid of rough hewn granite with contrasting sandstone trim capped by a massive, squat tower. The effect is that of a “mighty fortress.” It remains high on the list of major architectural achievements.

In following years Richardson created seminal works, both private and public, for cities, suburbs, and the commuter lines connecting them. For suburban or country houses he looked to geology for inspiration, piling glacial boulders into organic forms, or wrapping the structures in wooden shingles. His addition to the Robert Treat Paine house in Waltham, Massachusetts, looks as if it were emerging from the ground like an outcropping. His gate lodge for the Ames estate in North Easton, Massachusetts, seems a man-made glacial moraine. For small towns around Boston he designed granite faced public libraries and railroad depots, the latter capped with sheltering hip roofs that spread out to create ground-hugging shapes.

Among his later buildings, Richardson rated the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as the most important. A major city commission built of granite with round-arched openings and a tall tower, it radiated the “majesty of the law,” according to a local historian. The unarticulated wall surrounding the jail yard may be the most impressive run of stonework in the country; its low sprung arch with its seven-foot voussoirs is among the most powerful ever built, and served as the big brother of the 18^th Street entrance of Glessner house. 

Marshall Field Wholesale Store, Chicago, IL

IMPACT ON CHICAGO

Richardson’s influence on Chicago architecture was as strong as it was elsewhere. His major Chicago works, the Marshall Field Wholesale Store and the Glessner and MacVeagh houses, created powerful images of solid rusticated granite walls, round-arched architecture, and disciplined geometry in contrast to the caprice of the pointed Victorian Gothic. His example inspired many of the late nineteenth-century designers who shaped the architectural image of the city.

Just prior to Richardson’s death, he assigned his office to three of his assistants, and the new partnership, named Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, produced major commissions across the country as well as local iconic landmarks including the Art Institute and the former public library (now the Chicago Cultural Center). Under the name Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott, the Boston-based firm continues to occupy an important place in contemporary American architecture

Louis Sullivan owned a copy of Van Rensselaer’s book on Richardson’s work, and his local buildings loomed large in Sullivan’s mind. The Marshall Field Wholesale Store had a great affect on him in particular.  In that building, Richardson conceived a blockbuster structure, a building which “in massiveness, simplicity of lines, and . . . blending of artistic beauty with adaptability to its purpose” was unrivalled according to a contemporary critic. The architect Rudolf Schindler said it stood out from nearby works “like a meteor from another planet.” A four-square block of red Missouri granite articulated with the architect’s signature half-round arches, it echoed the gridiron plan of the city.

 For Sullivan, it was an “oasis” among its neighboring buildings which seemed a “host of stage-struck-wobbling mockeries,” as he wrote in Kindergarten Chats. He adapted the scheme of its façades for his Auditorium Building (now Roosevelt University), and in later buildings such as the Stock Exchange, he continued to use the masonry arched forms of the Richardsonian Romanesque. The salvaged archway entrance to the Stock Exchange near the Art Institute is as much a tribute to Richardson’s influence on the architects of the city as it is to Sullivan.

Under the influence of Sullivan and Van Rensselaer’s book on Richardson, the young Frank Lloyd Wright was also taken with the older man’s buildings, especially the organic qualities of his suburban work, which, although he was loath to admit it, Wright adapted to his own early domestic designs. His Heurtley house in Oak Park, for example, recalls the organizational scheme of Richardson’s Crane Memorial Library in Quincy, Massachusetts. As late as 1949, Wright’s entrance to the V. C. Morris Shop in San Francisco reprised the form of the interrupted archway of the 18^th Street entry at Glessner house.           

Other Chicago architects also looked at Richardson’s accomplishments. The exterior of Burnham and Root’s Rookery reflects knowledge of his arched style, as does their now-demolished Masonic Temple. Massachusetts-born and M.I.T.-trained Henry Ives Cobb adapted the Richardsonian Romanesque to a number of local works, including the original Chicago Historical Society building (Dearborn and Ontario), the Newberry Library, and the houses at 1811 and 2110 South Prairie Avenue.

GLESSNER HOUSE

Richardson’s Glessner house is among his finest works. Begun in 1885 and finished in 1887 by his successor firm, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the house demonstrates the courage of John and Frances Glessner to commission such an unconventional house, for it was generally misunderstood and disliked by their neighbors when first completed.

John Jacob Glessner, one of the founders of International Harvester, a farm equipment company, was deeply involved in the civic and cultural affairs of Chicago.  He served as president of the Citizen’s Association, the Commercial Club, and Rush Medical College, and as a trustee of the Chicago Orchestral Association and the Art Institute. Frances Macbeth Glessner was active in Chicago as well.  Among her social and philanthropic commitments were Fortnightly of Chicago and the Society of Decorative Arts.  She was also an accomplished pianist, silversmith, embroiderer, and beekeeper.  An extensive search for an architect led the couple to Richardson, who provided them with an ideal winter home on Prairie Avenue in which they resided from October through May each year.

Clients and architect were ill-matched in personality; the Glessners were conventional while Richardson was flamboyant. Yet they became fast friends and formed a virtually perfect client-architect relationship.  While dining together the day after first visiting their Prairie Avenue site, Richardson quickly sketched the L-shaped plan of the house. With a few practical changes, that is the plan of the house as built. The ultimate design rested on Richardson’s interpretation of such European precedents as the tithe barn at Abingdon Abbey in England (a picture of which the Glessners owned), and the Manoir d’Ango in Normandy (a photograph of which the architect had on file).  John Glessner later recorded that “from what (Richardson) told me and what his young men said afterwards, I am convinced that this house of ours is the one of all that he built that he would have liked most to live in himself.”

The austere north side of Glessner house, with its minimal window openings, rises from the street-side edge of the property and provides a stark contrast to the courtyard elevation with its large windows that provide an abundance of natural light to the interior. Its exterior design marked it as unique among the homes on fashionable Prairie Avenue. The Glessner house sits low and solid on the ground while the other houses rose high and gaunt atop steep steps. The walls of rusticated granite laid in continuous horizontal courses stood in marked contrast to the numerous small-scale and polychromed details of the neighboring houses. Richardson’s delight in “massive and quiet” architecture found its full expression in the Glessner house.  

The library of the home was inspired by Richardson’s own office in Brookline. The interior appointments of the house reflect the dawning Arts and Crafts Movement inspired by the designer and theorist William Morris in England. Richardson had visited Morris in 1882 and became one of the bearers of this new movement to America. Textiles, wallpaper, and furniture by Morris grace the interior, while dining room furniture designed by Charles Coolidge of Richardson’s office and a piano case by Francis Bacon (all made by A. H. Davenport of Boston) stamp the house as a precursor to the flood of craftwork that was to mark the turn of the twentieth century.

Richardson dressed in monk's robes

JOHN GLESSNER ON RICHARDSON

“He was the most versatile, interesting, ready, capable and confident of artists, the most genial and agreeable of companions.  Everybody was attracted to him at sight. . . All of his work was stamped with his individuality.  It had great influence upon contemporary architecture and that which immediately followed, and his early death was a distinct loss to this country.”

Glessner House Museum - A Top 10 List for 2012

It seems as though “Top 10” lists are all the rage these days; any number of them have surfaced as the year 2012 draws to a close.  The museum was the subject of at least two such lists during the year.  Illinois Meetings and Events magazine featured a “10 Things You Don’t Know About Glessner House Museum” in their Fall 2012 issue, focusing primarily on the site as a venue for weddings and events.  Soon after, Choose Chicago (the city’s main tourism website) featured a blog article entitled “10 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Glessner House.”

The year 2012 was one of the most exciting and successful in the museum’s history, so it seems only appropriate that we add our own Top 10 list to the mix, summarizing the highlights of an eventful and memorable year. 

1.  Of Dolls and Murder

On March 25, we celebrated the 134^th birthday of Frances Glessner Lee with the Chicago premiere of an independent film entitled “Of Dolls and Murder.”  The feature length film, narrated by John Waters, focused on legal medicine, i.e. homicide investigation, and Lee’s significant contributions to the field, including the creation of nearly 20 meticulously detailed miniature crime scenes, which she named “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.”  Lee was appointed the first female state police captain in the U.S. in recognition of her efforts, and earned the respect of many, including Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the Perry Mason novels, who attended one of the seminars she sponsored at Harvard University.

Pictured above:  “Of Dolls and Murder” producer John Kurtis Dehn and director/writer Susan Marks posing in the coach house with Frances Lee’s traveling “Nutshells” carrying case (Glessner House Museum collection). 

2.  Vintage Car Show

The 1800 block of Prairie Avenue was transformed on Sunday June 24 when nineteen vintage automobiles, all dating to 1936 or earlier, drove on to the street for a car show that attracted many hundreds of attendees.  The stunning automobiles ranged from an all brass 1910 Ford Model T to a 1936 Chrysler Airflow Coupe. A highlight of the show was the inclusion of two Pierce Arrows from the collection of Richard H. Driehaus, dating to 1927 and 1931.  (The Glessners preferred Pierce Arrows after acquiring their first model in 1906).

Pictured above:  1931 Pierce Arrow Model 41 Dual Cowl Phaeton, courtesy of Richard H. Driehaus.

3.  Pierre Boulez

On July 19, Maestro Pierre Boulez, conductor emeritus of the Chicago Symphony, and one of the most renowned conductors in the world, came to Glessner for a private tour.  He spent over an hour touring the museum with Executive Director William Tyre, who shared stories of the Glessners and their many years of support for the Chicago Symphony from the time of its founding in 1891.

Pictured above:  Maestro Boulez poses beside the Glessners’ 1887 Steinway piano in the recently restored parlor.

4.  Glessner Family Reunion

The first weekend of August served as a wonderful homecoming for the Glessner family – 26 descendants and friends gathered at the house for a three-day reunion, the first of its kind ever held at the museum.  Four generations of the family were present ranging in age from 5 to 85, including three great-grandchildren who shared memories of John Glessner from their early years.  Friday events included an opening dinner, tours of the house (several of those present had never been to Chicago before), and a presentation on the life of John Glessner.  Saturday tours included the CAF river cruise, Tiffany in Chicago, and a tour of Second Presbyterian where the Glessners’ daughter-in-law Alice Hamlin Glessner was a member.  The weekend concluded on Sunday morning with a special visit to the Glessners’ gravesite in Graceland Cemetery.

Pictured above:  Reunion attendees gather on the curved porch on Friday August 3^rd, recreating the famous view of Frances Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class taken in 1902.

5.  125^th Anniversary Gala Celebration

The night of September 13^th was one of the most memorable ever in the 46 year history of the Museum.  On that evening, more than 200 members, supporters, and friends of the museum gathered in the Grainger Ballroom at Symphony Center to celebrate the 125^th anniversary of the completion of Glessner House.  The event was generously underwritten by a gift from Richard H. Driehaus and netted $59,500 for restoration projects.  A highlight of the event was a presentation by Board President Rolf Achilles and Executive Director William Tyre, honoring those individuals who helped to save the house from demolition in 1966.

Pictured above:  Executive Director William Tyre (at the podium) and Board President Rolf Achilles (at far right) with the gala honorees.  Photo by Tim Walters Photography.

6.  The White City

Friday September 28 saw the production of The White City: A Musical in the “coach house theatre.”  Co-sponsored by the Chicago Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, the event drew more than 100 people to watch a moving musical adaptation of the dramatic story of the creation of the World’s Columbian Exposition. 

Pictured above:  John Root (portrayed by Doug Pawlik), playwright June Finfer, and Daniel Burnham (portrayed by Jon Steinhagen).

7.  Open House Chicago

Over the weekend of October 13^th and 14^th, nearly 1,700 people (the vast majority of whom had never been to the museum) were treated to tours of rarely seen spaces in the museum.  The focus of the special tours, part of the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s annual Open House Chicago, was the servants’ portion of the building.  Attendees had the opportunity to see the haylofts, dovecotes, male and female servants’ quarters, and kitchen wing.  The museum was one of several sites in the Prairie Avenue District open for tours, other sites including Clarke House, Second Presbyterian Church, the Keith House, and the Wheeler Mansion. 

Pictured above:  Dovecote facing 18^th Street over the coach house, as seen from the hayloft.

8.  Glessner House at 125 Symposium

The museum partnered with the Victorian Society in America to host a symposium celebrating the 125^th anniversary of Glessner House.  Seven speakers from across Chicago and the country gathered for the day long symposium on Saturday November 10^th which focused on H. H. Richardson, the interior decoration of the house, and its preservation in the 1960s.  The symposium was preceded by an opening reception the previous evening with Richardson-scholar Kenneth Breisch presenting a talk on the architect’s influence across America.

Pictured above:  Symposium speakers Ted Hild, Kevin Harrington, Elaine Harrington, James F. O’Gorman, and Rolf Achilles.  Not pictured Mary Alice Molloy and Monica Obniski.

9.  The John J. Simmerling Gallery of Prairie Avenue History

In October, the museum accepted an extraordinary gift from long-time supporter Jack Simmerling.  The gift consisted of an amazing collection of building fragments, artwork, photographs, and documents relating to the Prairie Avenue neighborhood collected over a period of more than 60 years.  Jack witnessed the loss of many of the houses first-hand, personally rescuing the fragments himself, and recording the houses utilizing his considerable talents as an artist.  Jamie Cook, of the architectural firm of Krueck & Sexton is working with the museum to create plans to redevelop the second floor of the coach house as a gallery to display this unique and important collection documenting the history of Chicago’s first Gold Coast.

Pictured above:  A section of wall paneling from the library of the Max Meyer house at 2009 S. Prairie Avenue, designed by Burnham & Root in 1888.  Demolished 1955. 

10.  125^th Anniversary Fund

In June 2011, the museum board established the 125^th Anniversary Fund, with the goal of raising $125,000 for restoration projects.  A generous $50,000 challenge grant from Richard H. Driehaus kick-started the fund and by December 2012, a total of $209,000 had been raised.  Numerous projects will be undertaken in the next few years including the recreation of the porte cochere doors, the restoration of the corner guestroom, the renovation of the guest bathroom, and much more.  In the fall of 2012, an additional anonymous gift in the amount of $100,000 was received by the museum to fund a new geothermal heating and air conditioning system, something that has been sorely needed for many years.

Pictured above:  The first project funded by the 125^th Anniversary Fund was the recreation of the banquette in the parlor. 

Glessner House Museum Symposium November 10

On Saturday November 10, 2012 Glessner House Museum, in partnership with the Victorian Society in America, will hold a one-day symposium entitled “Glessner House at 125: Richardson’s Urban Residential Masterpiece Reconsidered.”  The event brings together seven scholars who will explore the architect H. H. Richardson, the interior decoration of the home, and its preservation in the mid-1960s.   The symposium will be preceded by an opening reception on Friday November 9 at which Richardson scholar Ken Breisch will present a lecture entitled “Situating the Glessner House: Late Richardson and the Romanesque Revival in the American West.”  An optional walking tour of the Prairie Avenue Historic District will be given by Executive Director Bill Tyre on Sunday November 11.  The symposium brochure and registration form may be downloaded at http://www.glessnerhouse.org/Events.htm.

For further information and to make reservations, call 312.326.1480.

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE:

9:30am - Welcome

WILLIAM TYRE

Executive Director and Curator, Glessner House Museum

9:45am - Keynote Speaker

JAMES F. O’GORMAN

Professor Emeritus, Wellesley College

“Herkomer’s Portrait of Richardson in Iconographical Context”

A look at the place of the likeness in the history of portraying nineteenth-century American architects.  A large heliotype copy of the Herkomer portrait displayed in the main hall is one of the few items to remain in the Glessner House continuously since the late 1880s.

10:30am

MARY ALICE MOLLOY

Architectural Historian

“Richardson’s Web: A Client’s Assessment of the Architect’s Home and Studio”

An analysis of how Richardson used his home and office to encourage his clients to accept his ideas for their projects, based on a first hand account of John and Frances Glessners’ visits with the architect during the planning phase for their home on Prairie Avenue.

11:15am

KEVIN HARRINGTON

Professor Emeritus of Architectural History, Illinois Institute of Technology

“Mies Visits Glessner House: What Was He Thinking?”

When Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, an influential architect, first arrived in American in 1938, he considered conducting his new architecture curriculum in Chicago at the influential Glessner House.  This examination provides valuable insight into the relationship between two seemingly different architects.

12:00pm - Lunch

12:45pm

ELAINE HARRINGTON

Former Curator, Glessner House Museum

“Colors, Patterns, and Seasons in the Glessner House”

The Glessners and Richardson used many themes in this significant work of architecture and decorative art, blending them into a cohesive fabric responding to the life within.  The colors and patterns of design and life that resulted from the weaving together of these themes created this outstanding seasonal urban home.

1:30pm

ROLF ACHILLES

Curator, Smith Museum of Stained Glass and Adjunct Professor, School of the Art Institute

“Neugotik (New Gothic): A Springboard to Modern in American Furniture and Interior Design”

An examination of the Glessners’ evolving tastes during the 1870s and 1880s, from the new Gothic masterpieces designed for them by Isaac Scott, to later furniture by Charles Coolidge and Francis Bacon specifically commissioned for their new home on Prairie Avenue.

2:15pm

MONICA OBNISKI

Assistant Curator of American Decorative Arts, Art Institute of Chicago

“The Impact of William Morris on the Arts and Crafts Movement in Chicago”

This talk will locate several examples of William Morris’s influence - through his ideals and his designs - in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century, including Glessner House, one of the earliest.

3:00pm

TED HILD

Illinois State Historic Preservation Official, 1972-2007

“Historic Preservation in Chicago at Mid-Century”

A description of the principles and practices of historic preservation in Chicago in the mid-20th century and an overview of early preservation battles, in order to place the preservation of the Glessner House in the context of the 1960s.

3:45pm

Concluding Remarks

4:00pm

Optional tours of Glessner House Museum

Wright's Root Exhibit Explores His Formative Years

On Tuesday September 18, 2012 at 5:30pm, Tim Samuelson, Cultural Historian for the City of Chicago, will lead a private tour of his newest exhibit “Wright’s Roots” at Expo 72 as a special fundraiser for Glessner House Museum.  Following his extraordinary exhibit on Louis Sullivan in 2010 at the Chicago Cultural Center, “Wright’s Roots” explores the early and often overlooked period at the start of Wright’s career, much of it spent working for Sullivan, whom he referred to as Lieber Meister. 

Since his death in 1959, the story of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life and career has become legendary – and has sometimes drifted into myth.  Many of today’s perspectives came from Wright’s own accounts of a professional career that spanned three quarters of a century.  His path to becoming a colorful public figure synonymous with modern architecture was filled with many little-known detours and diversions, but all contributed to his lasting fame and reputation. 

Using seldom-seen illustrations (including Wright’s unbuilt design for the Milwaukee Public Library and Museum, 1893, shown at top) and original artifacts to tell the story of his complex personal journey during the often-overlooked early period of his life and career, “Wright’s Roots” explores Wright’s formative years, ending with Wright building his studio in Oak Park.  As Samuelson stated in an interview on WTTW recently, “Wright has become legend – known as someone who pursued purely new, modern architecture.  But in trying to find himself in the late 19^th century, he experimented with different historical styles.  It was both his knowledge of the past and his idealism for modernism that made him the great architect he was.  We tried to juxtapose his early and late buildings.  In telling his own story, Frank Lloyd Wright doesn’t talk about these early experimentations with style.  He claimed he was just trying to get work to feed his family during this period.  But when you look at his work, he had certain consistent habits.  He was truly searching.”

What did Wright know about Glessner house?  Although he doesn’t mention the house specifically in his writings, he no doubt knew the building.  The house was being finished just as Wright arrived in Chicago.  And given Sullivan’s interest in the work of Richardson (the evolution of his design for the Auditorium Building after seeing Richardson’s Wholesale Store for Marshall Field being a prime example), Wright would have been exposed to the house, both in person and through architectural journals of the day.

In his book Three American Architects (The University of Chicago Press, 1991), James F. O’Gorman examines the impact of Richardson on both Sullivan and Wright.  As an example, he points to the design of the Victor Falkenau houses in Chicago, for which Wright was the delineator of the sketch that appeared in the Inland Architect in June 1888.  O’Gorman points out that Wright may have well been the designer of the houses as well and mentions several features, “his rock-faced, horizontal ashlar wall, his semicircular arches, his mullioned and transomed basement windows, and his trabeated upper openings divided by chubby columns” as all being inspired by the Glessner house.  O’Gorman goes on to mention the plan of the dining room and the “Richardsonian breadth” of the staircase at the Blossom house at being further indications of the impact of Glessner house on a young Wright.  For his design of the Winslow House the counterplay between symmetry and asymmetry once again harkens back to Richardson’s Glessner house – a formal symmetrical façade with a central entrance surrounded by axially balanced regular window openings, with the asymmetry created with the addition of a porte cochere to the left side.  Likewise, the asymmetrical and relaxed arrangement of the backsides of the houses echoes a similar attempt to create less formal family spaces. 

O’Gorman concludes by stating that “it should be clear that Wright’s appropriation of Richardsonian forms, at least soon after his initial experiments at the Falkenau houses and elsewhere, cannot be construed as copying.  With Sullivan’s tutelage, Wright quickly developed these characteristic features to his own ends, evoking their spirit while transforming their details as he sought his own vocabulary.  By the mid-nineties Wright had adopted Richardson’s emphasis on a disciplined architecture whose impact depended upon the integrated combination of elemental tectonic forms.  And by the end of the decade he was ready to generate out of this and other sources an architecture all his own.”

No architect works in a vacuum.  Both consciously and unconsciously they are impacted by the work of their fellow architects.  How they take that information and interpret it in their own works separates the “boys from the men.”  In “Wright’s Roots,” Tim Samuelson explores those early influences and shows how Wright’s genius took root in the architecture of his day, but soon led down a path that forever changed the face of American architecture. 

For tickets to this very special tour of “Wright’s Roots,” call Glessner House Museum at 312-326-1480.  Prepaid tickets are required and cost $25 each, with proceeds benefiting the museum’s House & Collections Committee Fund.

Lecture on Richardson and the Landscape on May 17

On Tuesday May 17 at 7:00pm, the museum will host the next installment in its ongoing H. H. Richardson lecture series.  That evening, architectural historian Timothy N. Wittman will speak on “Henry Hobson Richardson in the Landscape.”  This presentation will investigate Richardson’s interest in nature and the relationships between architecture and landscape.  Seen in the context of his time, Richardson’s interest in nature is exemplary of the attention nineteenth century Americans paid to the wilderness, and the nostalgia they felt for the lost innocence of simpler, pre-industrial times.  Of particular interest is the professional relationship between Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, the great landscape architect that gave us Central Park and the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition.  Richardson and Olmsted were neighbors and collaborated on several projects, built and unbuilt.

In the new permanent exhibit on Richardson to be unveiled June 1 at the museum, author and scholar James F. O’Gorman says of the influence of landscape on Richardson’s work:

“For suburban or country houses he looked to geology for inspiration, piling glacial boulders into organic forms, or wrapping the structures in wooden shingles. His addition to the Robert Treat Paine house in Waltham, Massachusetts, looks as if it were emerging from the ground like an outcropping. His gate lodge (shown above) for the Ames estate in North Easton, Massachusetts, seems a man-made glacial moraine. For small towns around Boston he designed granite faced public libraries and railroad depots, the latter capped with sheltering hip roofs that spread out to create ground-hugging shapes.”

Timothy N. Wittman teaches on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and works as a independent historic preservation consultant.  He is currently writing the new audio tour narrative for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park.

The lecture will be held in the Beidler Room at Glessner House Museum, 1800 S. Prairie Avenue in Chicago.  The cost of the lecture is $10 per person, and $8 for museum members.  Reservations may be made by calling 312-326-1480.