Tag: American architecture

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Temples of Transportation

Pennsylvania Station, New York, NY, April 24, 1962. (Library of Congress)

In 1862, arguably one of the darkest and most uncertain years for our republic, President Abraham Lincoln pressed Congress to pass the Pacific Railway Act. As North and South were being ripped apart, Lincoln, a former railroad attorney, sought to use the rails to tie East and West together.

America was still involved in the process of recovering from her terrible civil war, when on May 10, 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was celebrated as complete. The railroad had been constructed in a mad dash, as the two competing lines, Union Pacific and Central Pacific, raced to complete as much track as possible. The prize, 6,400 acres of land and $16,000 for every mile of track completed, led to a spirited competition. Union Pacific’s Thomas Durant and Central Pacific’s Leland Stanford pushed their crews on. When they met in Utah, they kept on pushing right past each other.

In a photo of a trestle by Andrew J. Russell, the bridge itself is built of fresh cut timbers—quite a contrast from Benjamin Henry Latrobe II’s beautiful railroad viaducts. This photo reveals another graded right-of-way beside the completed track, bearing witness to the competition between the two companies.

The next few decades saw the nation steadily crisscrossed with railways, as communities and permanent infrastructure replaced the rolling “hell on wheels” camps of railroad workers. As the 19th century drew to a close, railroads became the primary connection between great cities, and the various companies sought to show their importance by building grand terminals. Their desire for architectural significance would create grand entrances to the cities they served.

Of course, the great classical forms of the 1893 World’s Fair would inspire many of them. Washington, D.C., as a result of the McMillan plan for the Washington Mall, built a grand station, “monumental in character,” designed by Daniel Burnham and William Pierce Anderson. Burnham had planned the great Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, and for the Washington station, he chose a mixture of classical motifs. This station replaced a hodgepodge of railroad connections through Washington, placing tracks in tunnels and freeing the National Mall to become a grand avenue.

 

Burnham would also design the Pennsylvania Union Station for the growing manufacturing center of Pittsburgh, with its distinctive rotunda. It seems that every prominent city sought a great entryway in the form of her railway stations. America’s great classicists would find many commissions as they fulfilled that mission.

Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York Central Railroad built a monumental terminal in New York City, beginning in 1869. Designed by John B. Snook in the Second Empire Style, it would be expanded and eventually replaced in 1913, with the present Grand Central Station, designed by Charles A. Reed and Allen H. Stem. Reed & Stem were hired to build a station that would compete with another great station being built by McKim, Mead & White in that same city. That great railroad rivalry would lead to New York City having two great entryways.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was only one great railway into Manhattan—the New York Central. Cornelius Vanderbilt owned Manhattan, or so it seemed. Though the Pennsylvania Railroad was actually bigger than the New York Central, it was not able to come into New York City. Pennsylvania Railroad trains only came to the shore of New Jersey, and passengers would then ride a ferry to the docks of New York.

However, Pennsylvania Railroad President Alexander Cassatt would make a fateful trip to France to visit his sister, Mary, the Impressionist painter. There he would see electric locomotives being used to pull trains through tunnels beneath the ground. A great plan formed in his mind! It was a plan for not just one tunnel, but a series of tunnels that would bring tracks across New York’s Tenderloin District and continue on to Long Island. There, the Pennsylvania would connect with the Long Island Railroad.

But there was more. Crossing the Hell Gate Bridge would enable trains to connect with New England railroads as well. It was a brilliant, daring, and dangerous plan. The Hudson River was a mile wide, and tunneling had to be done in pressurized caissons through the muddy bottom. Engineer William McAdoo began the construction of the first Hudson tunnel in 1902, continuing an earlier tunnel begun and abandoned in the 19th century. This tunnel was completed in 1908, as were tunnels to Long Island under the East River.

Having acquired a significant amount of real estate in Manhattan—needed for right-of-way—the Pennsylvania Railroad commissioned McKim, Mead & White to build the greatest entry into New York imaginable. The result was the magnificent Beaux Arts Pennsylvania Station. Not to be outdone, New York Central hired Reed & Stem to design the competing Grand Central Station.

McKim, Mead & White would also design the James A. Farley Post Office Building as a companion to the terminal. Though this terminal was demolished in 1966, the Farley Building, with its fine Corinthian columns, remains. Its Moynihan Train Hall now provides access to the tracks of what once was Pennsylvania Station.

Cities of all sizes would build fine stations. Richmond, Virginia’s Main Street Station is an example of Italian Renaissance influence. Completed in 1901, it was designed by Wilson, Harris & Richards. It features a fine campanile, and a series of arches topped by a steep hipped roof. In Staunton, Virginia, Thomas Jasper Collins would place a bungalow style roof over a series of arches to create a distinctive train station. Built for the most part by private companies, these fine depot buildings would provide a unique identity for each metropolis they served—entering into the fabric of the republic’s civic architecture.

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Arts & Letters

American Classicism and the ‘Gentleman Architect’ Thomas Jefferson

The Virginia State Capitol rendered in an 1830 watercolor by William Goodacre. (Public Domain)

In 1784 Thomas Jefferson found himself in France as our first ambassador. While he was there he fell in love. Arrested by its striking classical beauty, the patriot became smitten with a small Roman temple in Nîmes known as the Maison Carrée (square house). Describing it as “the most perfect model existing of what might be called cubic architecture,” Jefferson sketched a design for the Capitol of Virginia, to be built in Richmond. “Very simple, noble beyond expression,” he continued in praise of the original, as he and French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau collaborated on their new design. Completed in 1788, it was, according to architectural historian George Heard Hamilton, “the first building to be so called in modern times, and the first since antiquity specifically intended for republican legislative functions … the State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia.”

The Maison Carrée in Nîmes, France, became Thomas Jefferson’s inspiration for the Virginia Capitol in Richmond. (Krzysztof Golick, cc license)

But Jefferson had not actually visited the temple in Nîmes when he designed Virginia’s Capitol—he had only seen it in a lithograph. Two years after he drew the plans, he visited Nîmes and found himself “gazing whole hours at the Maison quarée, like a lover at his mistress,” he wrote at the time. It is a fitting beginning for America’s love affair with classical architecture. Jefferson is known primarily as a founding father and statesman, but in his day, men of letters were often schooled in the principles of building design. As a prominent landowner, he would have directed the construction of his house and farm buildings, while as a civic leader, he would have done so for important public buildings as well. The Virginia State Capitol’s story really began in 1785, when the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Director of Public Buildings sent a letter to Paris, asking Jefferson for an edifice design. It was to be built on Shockoe Hill, overlooking the falls of the James River, in Richmond. Jefferson considered the site to be a perfect location for a “temple to Liberty or Justice,” and studied a number of Greek and Roman temples as potential models.

The 18th-century excavation of Pompeii had led to the publishing of some wonderfully illustrated books that became widely available in print for just such a time as his. The rich engravings of “L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures” (“Antiquity Explained and Represented in Diagrams”), by Bernard de Montfaucon, and Andrea Palladio’s “I quattro libri dell’architettura” (“The Four Books of Architecture”) would inspire America’s first classicists. When Jefferson designed the Virginia Capitol building in collaboration with Clérisseau, he based his design on just such an engraving. The bibliophile Jefferson found in France a wealth of material to inspire him, but how could he adequately convey his designs to builders an ocean away?

The builders in Virginia were skilled in working with native materials such as clay-fired brick and carved wood, often working with minimal plans as they replicated the Georgian architecture brought from England. Virginia’s Capitol would require much more guidance. Architectural model-making was already a high art in France, so Jefferson commissioned Jean-Pierre Fouquet, a master modeler, to construct a 1-60 (where 1 inch equals 5 feet) detailed model in plaster of Paris. Fouquet didn’t work cheaply, so Jefferson apparently ordered only the front and sides, leaving the back to be added later. He was compelled to explain that it was “absolutely necessary for the guide of workmen not very expert in their art.”

The Virginia Capital as it appears today—a “temple to Liberty or Justice.” (Public Domain)

Fouquet had an impressive résumé. Jefferson wrote of him: “an artist who had been employed by the … ambassador of France to Constantinople, in making models of the most celebrated remains of ancient architecture in that country.” Indeed, his work would inform the high design of L’École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts). It also informed the work of Virginia’s most celebrated architectural amateur. Fouquet’s model for the Virginia Capitol was quite detailed, right down to the positioning of tie rods. It was shipped to Virginia as a guide for the artisans—a proportional representation of Maison Carrée to be sure. But today it shows one major change that Jefferson made: the fluted Corinthian columns of the original have been replaced with simpler Ionic columns. Perhaps this was a kindness to the artisans who had to build it. Perhaps it was a matter of taste. At some point in the 1870s, Jefferson sketched a design concept for a future Virginia Capitol that featured the Ionic order.

Jefferson himself would not return to Virginia from France until 1789, meaning his most prominent civic design was built entirely without his direct supervision. The builders, possibly led by Samuel Dobie, eliminated the front stairs, opting instead for a couple of smaller side entrances. This was done to provide better lighting for the basement offices. The result was a grand portico awkwardly perched on a raised foundation. Jefferson’s interior design was radically changed as well. A gallery was constructed in the meeting space, supported by brackets. There would be no columns—Jefferson had wanted columns. This design change would prove disastrous when it collapsed in 1870, injuring 251 people and killing 62.

Initially, the Virginia Capitol and Jefferson’s other works were not painted white. Tan- and sand-colored paint added contrast between pilasters and panels, mimicking the colors found in antiquity. Stucco and white paint were added around the turn of the century. In 1904, classical architect John Kevan Peebles designed two wings to house the assembly chambers, attached by hyphens to each side of the original building. The front stairs envisioned by Jefferson were added as well. Peebles would later distinguish himself by designing pavilions for the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exhibition, Virginia’s first world’s fair. One thing that has remained constant in the Virginia Capitol building is the display of the 1788 life sculpture of George Washington, by Jean-Antoine Houdon, which has remained in the central rotunda since its arrival in 1796.

If 19th-century engravings are any indication, the building seems to have indeed become symbolic of Jefferson’s civic ideals. It rises above the bustle of the city like the Parthenon above Athens in a number of artistic representations. Jefferson would continue to influence American civic architecture. Both his Monticello estate and his subsequent design for the University of Virginia’s Academical Village are directly inspired by Andrea Palladio’s illustrations of Roman villas. The Pantheon inspired his central building at the University. As these classical forms took shape in brick and wood, Jefferson became a hands-on manager. He would make numerous changes to Monticello, tearing down and rebuilding whole portions of it. He personally designed three Virginia county courthouses, as well as a number of private homes. His enduring work has inspired legions of Virginia builders since.

Bob Kirchman is an architectural illustrator who lives in Augusta County, Virginia, with his wife Pam. He teaches studio art (with a good deal of art history thrown in) to students in the Augusta Christian Educators Homeschool Coop. Kirchman is an avid hiker and loves exploring the hidden wonders of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

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Arts & Letters

An ‘Academical Village’ as a Model for a New Republic

"A Map of the State of Virginia," 1827, by Herman Böÿe, engraved by Benjamin Tanner, features this illustration of the University of Virginia's Academical Village, as seen in 1826. (Herman Böÿe’s 1859 Map of Virginia. Library of Congress)

If you had traveled with the Marquis de Lafayette to the Piedmont region of Virginia in 1824, you would have been amazed to come upon a beautifully proportioned village being built in the finest tradition of Renaissance planning. Ten pavilions connected by colonnades extending from a great building resembling the Roman Pantheon rose impressively above the rolling fields of Albemarle County. Lafayette had come as the guest of Thomas Jefferson to the University of Virginia’s nascent Academical Village, Jefferson’s last major architectural project. Lafayette and Jefferson dined together with James Madison and almost 400 dignitaries on the top floor of the still-unfinished Rotunda (the recreated Pantheon) and savored the view of the surrounding countryside.

R.D. Ward wrote of the occasion: “The meats were excellent, and each eye around us beamed contentment. It was contentment arising from the performance of the most sacred, the most grateful duty. It was the offering of liberty to him who had gratuitously aided to achieve it. In the language of Mr. Madison, it was ‘Liberty, where virtue was the guest, and gratitude the feast.’”

Andrea Palladio inspired the ‘Academical Village,’ a Renaissance village in frontier America. (Bob Kirchman)

The university that Jefferson so proudly presented to his compatriot in the cause of liberty was a project that the third president had long cherished in his heart. The seeds were first planted when Jefferson himself was a student at the College of William & Mary, located in Williamsburg, the capital of Colonial Virginia. Jefferson began acquiring what would become his extensive collection of books—and the first library of the University of Virginia. He purchased a treatise on classical architecture, in a shop close to the college, and so began his study of the art of building. He would eventually acquire “A Book of Architecture” and “The Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture,” by James Gibbs; “Parallèle de l’architecture antique avec la moderne” (“A parallel of the ancient architecture with the modern”), by Roland Fréart de Chambray and Charles Errard; as well as “The Four Books of Architecture,” by Andrea Palladio. He was certainly also acquainted with Bernard de Montfaucon’s “L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures” (“Antiquity Explained and Represented in Diagrams”), which features a detailed illustration of the Roman Pantheon. These were the guiding texts for America’s most prolific amateur architect as he set to work designing an institution of higher learning.

The Pantheon was the model for Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda. Bernard de Montfaucon’s “L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures” (“Antiquity Explained and Represented in Diagrams”) provides a detailed drawing. (L’Antiquité expliquée et représentée by Bernard de Montfaucon, public domain)
The Rotunda is actually smaller than the Roman Pantheon. (Bob Kirchman)

When young Jefferson attended William & Mary, it was essentially housed in one large building, the Wren Building, which still dominates one end of Duke of Gloucester Street today. Jefferson had proposed an addition to the College of William & Mary in the late 1700s, along with a few proposals for reform of that institution—they weren’t well-received by the administration, leading Jefferson to pursue his vision in Charlottesville, Virginia, as his career drew to a close. The villa designs of Palladio, the great Renaissance architect, had inspired Jefferson’s own home, Monticello, and furthermore, on a plot of land visible from the “Little Mountain,” would also inspire a new kind of college campus—a fitting “academical village” for a new republic. Renaissance architecture had sought to open up the congestion of medieval towns with plazas and squares, and Leonardo da Vinci had even conceptualized a redesign of Milan along those lines in the wake of deadly bubonic plague outbreaks that ravaged the city in 1484 and 1485.

But it was a French hospital that likely gave Jefferson his most powerful inspiration. The Hôtel-Dieu had a unique problem that Jefferson became aware of when he was in Paris. This hospital in the heart of the city had been the center of France’s health care system since the Middle Ages. It was housed in a single building that was overcrowded and conducive to the spread of disease. Louis XVI had been concerned by reports of its mortality rate. In 1787, plans for four separate hospitals that could replace Hôtel-Dieu were drafted by Jean-Baptiste Le Roy with assistance from scientists Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours and the Marquis de Condorcet, both of whom were friends of Jefferson. Le Roy’s plans called for a series of pavilions connected by colonnades, with a Palladian site plan for each campus. Though they were never actually built, these campus designs might have inspired Jefferson to write in support of the hospital model for Virginia’s new university: “An academic village instead of a large and common den of noise, filth, and fetid air. It would afford the quiet retirement so friendly to study and lessen the dangers of fire, infection, and tumult. This village form is preferable to a single great building for many reasons, particularly on account of fire, health, economy, peace, and quiet.”

Pavilion VII, view at the colonnade. (Bob Kirchman)

By 1817, Jefferson had laid out his campus in an open “U” similar to Le Roy’s designs, collaborating with Dr. William Thornton and Benjamin Henry Latrobe. The Rotunda would command one end of his lawn, flanked by 10 pavilions connected by two colonnades. The other end would open to the rolling hills of Albemarle County. He said of it: “Now what we wish is that these pavilions they will shew themselves above the dormitories, be models of taste and good architecture, & of a variety of appearance, no two alike, so as to serve as specimens for the architectural lectures.” Indeed, each featured a distinctive employment of one of the classical orders in columns and entablature. The lower level of each pavilion would house classrooms, and the upper story would be an apartment for a professor. “Each unit, identified with one of the 10 ‘sciences useful in our time’ was to be inhabited by a professor who taught that subject.” Students were to be housed in rooms that opened into the colonnade. An outer series of buildings known as the Range provided additional housing and kitchens.

A view down the colonnade connecting the pavilions. (Bob Kirchman)

The University of Virginia was still being constructed when Lafayette visited in 1824. Classes began the next year, with five professors (all recruited from Europe) and a few dozen students. The faculty eventually expanded with the hiring of American teachers. As the student population grew, the need for more space prompted the building of a four-story annex to the Rotunda in 1851. This huge addition created precisely the kind of structure Jefferson had sought to avoid, but he had passed in 1826 and was no longer there to guide improvements. In 1895, the Rotunda Annex burned to the ground. In an attempt to save the original Rotunda, the portico connecting it to the burning annex was dynamited. The fire was still able to leap to the Rotunda and it was gutted. Though students and faculty rushed in to salvage books and artworks, much of Jefferson’s library was lost. Today the Rotunda stands after many restorations, still very much a “temple of knowledge and enlightenment.”

The curved brick walls of the Rotunda. (Bob Kirchman)