Chapter One
A CAREER BEGINS
We in the Western world have long been in a period of architectural history in which the Modernists have preached an antihistorical rhetoric. Knowledge of past styles was meant to give way to originality created by functionalist analysis or made to supply the tongue-in-cheek references of a Charles Moore, Philip Johnson, or Michael Graves. To understand the period in which Henry Austin began his career, we need to think outside that box, to understand that the study of historical styles, of published precedent, was then the meat of architectural practice, that buildings emerged from drafting rooms informed by study of the past. This was a time, first, of historicism (the exact imitation of past forms), then of eclecticism (the creative mingling of such forms). Since American architects of the early nineteenth century rarely traveled abroad (although some had immigrated from overseas), and almost never to exotic areas, what they knew of the historic styles they derived from books.
In a lecture delivered at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in December 1841, Thomas Ustick Walter explained acceleration in the broad distribution of knowledge as characteristic of a progressive age. "The changes and revolutions to which the principles of taste in Architecture have been subjected [in recent years], by the ever varying progress of civilization," he said, "have multiplied styles and modes of building, almost to infinity." The distribution of information about past styles he attributed to the invention of steam-powered printing, the improvement of engraving, and, in a later emendation, photography. The press, he wrote, "that most powerful engine of civilization[,] pours forth its volumes daily." The architect now had available "the most perfect representations of the buildings of all ages and all countries ... he is enabled to study and compare, the works of every nation." Walter was merely voicing what others knew: that a library he owned or had access to was a basic tool for an aspiring member of the new profession of architect in the first half of the nineteenth century. The professional here, as in other fields such as law or medicine, was to become, or at least assume the appearance of, a learned individual.
The frontispiece to Part Two of the Pugins'' Examples of Gothic Architecture of 1836 shows a medieval monk in his cell drafting plans while all around him reference books tumble from armoires. It is a fanciful, romantic view of the medieval architect, to be sure, but it says much of importance about the needs of the emerging professional in the early nineteenth century. The availability-or better yet, the possession-of a reference library and the ability to draw were his two basic needs and his two signs of status. They set him off as a professional from the mechanic he had probably been, and from the mechanics who had previously accounted for much building design before and just after 1800 (and continued to do in frontier areas). The Pugin frontispiece is an English conception, but Thomas Cole''s famous painting, The Architect''s Dream of 1840, commissioned by Ithiel Town himself, brings the point home to America. It shows an architect in the foreground seated like an osprey on a column capital at water''s edge, surrounded by a nest of impressive folios and large drawings as he gazes off into a distance filled with his prey, the architectural monuments of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Middle Ages. Although the finished painting was not to Town''s liking, it certainly celebrated his own position as one of the country''s foremost architects and the man whose architectural library was unrivaled in the United States. These two images, the Pugins'' and Cole''s, are perfect portals to our understanding of Austin''s era, as inspiration flowed from the historic buildings published in books gathered by the architect, through his creative faculty, and onto sheets of design drawings.
This process guided Austin''s career. What may have been his first newspaper ad is accompanied by a cut of a Corinthian capital surrounded by drafting instruments, a roll of drawings, and a stack of books. (See Fig. 2.) Through this process, the early-nineteenth-century architect produced works in a large variety-if not necessarily Walter''s infinity-of architectural styles. By the association of certain styles with certain types of buildings, he created a legible built environment in which the purpose of a building could be distinguished from those of its neighbors by its reference to the architecture associated with the perceived characteristics of past societies. A cemetery gate might be Egyptian, a church Romanesque or Gothic, a government building or financial institution Classical. That a later period scoffed at the process in no way diminishes the achievements of men such as Austin.
As we have seen, Austin''s independent architectural career began in early 1837. We think of him as a New Haven architect, as indeed he was for most of his career, but in April 1838 he provided the building committee of Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford, a Gothic structure designed by Ithiel Town in 1827, with plans for the completion of its tower. His project was accepted nearly a year later, on 29 March 1839, and it has been said that he personally supervised the erection of the tower''s all-stone terminal. In what may have been a knowing allusion to this task, the New Haven Palladium in July 1841 advised its readers that Austin "is in Hartford, straightening crooked things there."
The Palladium went on to say that it had learned "that there ha[d] never been a professional architect in that city until Austin opened an office there." He had already decided to explore the architectural waters of the place. Between January 1839 and June 1841, for two and a half years, he placed ads in the Hartford Daily Courant announcing his presence. One version of the ad (30 July 1840, for example) gave his once address as "over No. 4 State Street, where he will be engaged for a few weeks, in designing and drawing plans and specifications for Public Buildings, Villas, Farm Houses, and Cottages, in every variety of Architectural style, and will superintend the same when desired. Persons who contemplate building, and consider beauty, convenience and economy of any consequence, will find it for their interest to call." It should be noticed that Austin''s emphasis on style led him to leave out mention of structural consideration as of less concern to a prospective client than the tug on his purse, or perhaps as one who apparently began his career in the building trades, he assumed it to be too basic to warrant mention. The notice substituted budgetary consideration for structure in the time-honored Vitruvian architectural triad of Utilitas, Firmitas, Venustas (use, strength, beauty). Just three weeks prior to the date of this announcement, he had placed an ad in the Palladium back in New Haven saying that he would be in that city "for a few weeks." This suggests that for part of this time, at least, he bounced back and forth between the state''s alternate capitals, perhaps riding the cars of the newly opened New Haven and Hartford Railroad. As we shall see, he certainly designed one of his first New Haven houses and the Grove Street Cemetery gate while nominally located in Hartford.
The text of a second Courant ad (18 March 1841, for example) differs from the first and is in fact the more important. Austin''s "Office and Library" were now in Kellogg''s Building, No. 136 Main Street. He repeats the services previously offered but adds that "All who feel an interest in Architectural improvement are invited to call at his office, where he will be happy to offer them every opportunity of examining, gratuitously, his collections of books and drawings. Persons who contemplate building, and consider beauty, convenience, and economy, of any consequence, may find it for their benefit to call and examine before they commence." "Architectural improvement" paralleled the idea of the progress of civilization that Walter and other contemporaries saw as characteristic of their age in general and of their country in particular.
The combination of graphics and publications was the signifier of the emerging professional architect in the early years of the nineteenth century. Austin had entered architecture in the ambience of Ithiel Town and his rich library. It was an orbit that included, among others, A. J. Davis, Town''s erstwhile partner and Austin''s nearly exact contemporary. As we have seen, Town had written a letter introducing Austin to Davis in July 1839, near the beginning of Austin''s Hartford sojourn. As part of establishing the profession, some architects became advocates for popular education in the field, or what Mary Woods has called "entrepreneurship." Town''s library was open to anyone with an interest in the arts, and members of his circle followed his example. Davis, like Walter, lectured on architecture in popular forums. In an 1841 talk to the Apollo Association in New York, for example, Davis urged the education of the public in the value of emerging professional services. He practiced what he preached. In about 1836 he announced in newspaper ads an exhibition of his "models in plaster; drawings, engravings, and books, representing the most remarkable buildings of ancient and modern times; with plans of public edifices, and rural residences in course of erection in various parts of the U.S." at his office and library, and invited the public to "conversations" in which he proposed discussing his and others'' works with "those interested in Architectural Improvements." Judging by his own similarly worded ads, and presumably in practice (although there is no known record of his lecturing in public), Austin followed Davis''s example. There can be no doubt that the beginning architect kept an eye on the more experienced one. Although they were contemporaries, Davis''s career was then much in advance of Austin''s.
A man who apparently took advantage of Austin''s offer to visit his office and library was one L. Roy, who wrote from Hartford to a friend in Champlain, New York, on 18 August 1841 that he awaited the return of "Mr. Austin, the architect whom I wish to employ drawing plans and specifications." "I am anxious," Roy continued, "to have a house perfectly proportioned and am therefore unwilling to move without professional advice." This sounds as if Austin had wooed him among his books and drawings. It also sounds as if a client like Roy thought of Austin primarily as a form giver rather than a constructor. Roy included his own rough sketch of what he wanted but acknowledged that "perhaps Mr. Austin will show me an entirely different plan, which I shall like better."
I do not know whether Mr. Roy got his Austin house, but a check of local directories suggests that it was never erected on the site at Garden and Myrtle streets on which he had intended to build. The architect''s office during the Hartford years did attract a number of other clients, however. Among them were the Kellogg brothers, whose name appeared on the Main Street building in which Austin had his office and library in 1841. E. B. and E. C. Kellogg were lithographers who, among other things, produced the plates for the edition (copyright 1845) of Chester Hills''s The Builder''s Guide, in which, as we shall see, Austin published a series of designs for cottages and villas. The Daily Courant for 21 September 1842 contains an article copied from a Boston paper in which the anonymous writer says that "my latent spark of fondness for everything gothic was kindled into a flame [on a trip to Hartford] by an admirable representation of a gothic villa, designed with great taste, by Mr. Austin, the architect, for Messrs. Kellogg, of Hartford. I hastened to see the building itself, which is delightfully situated near Washington College." It should be noted that our visitor first viewed drawings of the house, that is, visited Austin''s office, then looked at the building itself. This was presumably the house on Washington Street where the brothers lived until about 1850. (See Figs. 3, 4.) It appears in vintage photographs as what the architect Robert Venturi would call "a decorated shed," a box with applied "Gothick" ornament: towers with various profiles, a loggia of pointed arches on spindly clustered columns, an oriel, a row of quatrefoil windows along the attic, and a chimney impressed with pointed arches. It was much simpler than, but bore kinship to, A. J. Davis''s Glen Ellen, the Robert Gilmore 1832 villa at Towson, Maryland. That villa appears in Davis''s Rural Residences of 1838, a copy of which Austin owned (although when he acquired it is not known). He may have seen the original drawings in Davis''s New York office if he did indeed present Town''s letter of introduction. The Kellogg house, which, as we shall see, acquired as its neighbor Austin''s Platt house of 1847, vanished long ago.
Austin went on to design many buildings for Hartford: houses, an almshouse, St. John''s Episcopal Church, the Wadsworth Atheneum (in association with Town and Davis), and others that we will consider in later chapters. In a notice in the New Haven Columbian Register for 20 November 1841, he announced that he had reopened his office in Mitchell''s Building in that city. The Hartford sojourn was over, his career well underway, and that career was now to become intimately associated with the developing urban environment of New Haven.
At the time of Austin''s birth, New Haven was beginning its period of great economic, population, and territorial growth as it expanded outward from the "Nine Squares" of its colonial plan. The port of New Haven became the generating force affecting all of southern Connecticut. With inventive giants like Eli Whitney, Oliver Winchester, and others not so well remembered, the city became an industrial center producing, through the years when Austin became one of the shapers of the city, firearms, carriages, hardware, pianos, watches, corsets, bicycles, and cigars made of leaf grown in the nearby Connecticut River Valley. A city whose population was four thousand at the architect''s birth and thirteen thousand when he opened his office grew tenfold to forty thousand by the time of the Civil War and had more than doubled that figure by the time of his death. As we shall see, his City Hall of 186o was a visible statement of that dynamic early-nineteenth-century history. Many of the leading industrialists, as well as educators from Yale College and other professional men, became Austin''s clients. Without their achievements Austin would have had no clientele; without him (and to be sure his peer, Sidney Mason Stone), these civic leaders would have had no one to give expression to their stature in the community or shape to their civic organizations. And from New Haven this development and Austin''s practice radiated out into the nearby counties and towns, and beyond.
The biographical notice of Austin''s career written in 1887, while he was still alive, tells us that he designed buildings "in every State of the Union." There were, of course, fewer states (thirty-eight) then than now, but such a claim seems preposterous. It is true, however, that by midcentury he had worked beyond the borders of Connecticut. At least two houses in Maine are his; in the collection of drawings from his office at Yale there are inscriptions naming presumed clients in Pennsylvania and Michigan; his office was responsible for at least two projects in New Jersey; three projects can be located in Massachusetts (and another copied from a published design), and there are surely others. One of those New Jersey projects gained wide attention at the outset of Austin''s practice.
In the beginning, Austin must have profited from his association with the New Haven builder-speculator Nelson Hotchkiss. Information is sketchy, but we do know that in 1839 Hotchkiss, who signed the contract as architect, in partnership with Charles Thompson, was selected to build the Greek Revival First Presbyterian Church in Trenton, New Jersey. Horatio Nelson Hotchkiss (1815-?), builder, manufacturer, and real estate developer, often worked with Austin, whose office in 185o designed for him a house on Chapel Street in New Haven. (See Fig. 35.) Charles Thompson was a joiner who, with his brothers, worked also for Town and Davis. At almost the same moment he was erecting Trenton''s Presbyterian church, Hotchkiss was constructing a series of six villas called "Park Row" in the same place, also in association with Thompson, and was crediting himself as architect in association with Henry Austin. Austin''s collaboration with Thompson may have dated back to his reported days as a builder himself. How any of these men got to New Jersey remains an unanswered question. Whether Austin had a hand in the design of the Presbyterian church also remains a question, but he surly participated in the design of the villas on Park Row. This early association with Hotchkiss might explain why Austin found success during the years of economic stagnation. The slippery distinction between builder and architect we see here in the person of Hotchkiss was one that was to be more precisely defined as the architectural profession became clearly established by Austin and his contemporaries.
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Excerpted from Henry Austinby JAMES F. O''GORMAN Copyright © 2008 by James F. O''Gorman. Excerpted by permission.
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