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47-570: The Converse Memorial Library – also known as Converse Memorial Building – is a historically significant building designed by noted American architect Henry Hobson Richardson . From 1885 to 1996, it housed the Malden Public Library, which now occupies a modern building adjacent to it. The former library is located at 36 Salem Street, Malden, Massachusetts . The building was a gift of Elisha S. and Mary D. Converse in memory of their murdered son, Frank Eugene Converse, who

94-503: A Harvard zoologist who began traveling to Japan in 1877, originally for biological specimens. Falling in love with Japan, upon his return that same year Morse began giving illustrated " magic lantern " public lectures on Japanese ceramics, temples, vernacular architecture, and culture. Richardson incorporated Japanese concepts "in both sihouette and spatial concept", including the karahafu ("excellent gable", but generally poorly translated as "Chinese gable" despite its Japanese origin),

141-414: A cathedral to a chicken coop." "The things I want most to design are a grain elevator and the interior of a great river-steamboat." However, architectural historian James F. O'Gorman sees Richardson's achievement particularly in four building types: public libraries, commuter train station buildings, commercial buildings, and single-family houses. A series of small public libraries donated by patrons for

188-821: A narrow band about 32 miles long that follows the path of the Erie Canal between Rochester and Lockport in Western New York . Early settlers in Western New York found good building stone in the gorges of the Genesee River in Rochester, Oak Orchard Creek in Medina and Eighteen Mile Creek in Lockport. This stone was used to construct structures during the 1820s and early 1830s. Later

235-672: A railroad station in Orchard Park, New York (near Buffalo) was built in 1911 as a replica of Richardson's Auburndale station in Auburndale, Massachusetts. The original Auburndale station was torn down in the 1960s during construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike. The original Richardson stations on the Boston and Albany Highland branch have either been demolished or converted to new uses (such as restaurants). Two of

282-711: A single Richardson structure. This is a partial list of works by Richardson: Medina sandstone Medina sandstone is a geographic subset of the Medina Group stratigraphic formation in New York State and beyond. The name refers specifically to sandstone first quarried in Medina, New York , and later quarried in other locations in Orleans County and adjacent quarries in Monroe County to

329-589: A state appropriation. Today, the Richardson Olmsted Campus is being transformed into a cultural amenity for the city. Arriving in 2018, the Richardson Olmsted Campus will also have the Lipsey Architecture Center of Buffalo. The remaining buildings have been stabilized pending future opportunities. Richardson pointedly claimed ability to create any type of structure a client wanted, insisting he could design anything "from

376-505: A studio attached. Richardson died in 1886 at age 47 of Bright's disease . On his last day, he signed an informal will directing the three assistants still remaining to carry on the business, which was soon formalized as Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge . One example includes Richardson's design for the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Building. Richardson had won the selection process in 1885 and nearly finalized

423-430: Is a brown or brown-red, but gray-white and variegated red and white also are common shades. In texture the mass is usually fine-grained. The strata lie dipping at a small angle southward, and the stone is remarkably even bedded. At nearly all localities two systems of joints, at right angles to one another, divide the rock into blocks, which help the quarryman in his work. The stone is near the surface and easily quarried in

470-716: Is his best and most influential urban house. The Mary Fisk Stoughton House (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1882–1883), the Henry Potter House (St. Louis, 1886–1887, demolished 1958), and the Robert Treat Paine Estate (aka Stonehurst) (Waltham, Massachusetts, 1886) play that role for suburban and country settings. The Glessner House in particular influenced Frank Lloyd Wright as he began developing what would become his Prairie School houses. With his house for Reverend Percy Browne (Marion, Massachusetts, 1881–82) Richardson revived "the old colonial form (of

517-469: Is in the style of the Second Empire with a Mansard roof . This important commission led to many other commissions. The style that Richardson developed over time, however, was not the more classical style of the École, but a more medieval-inspired style, influenced by William Morris , John Ruskin and Viollet le Duc . Richardson developed a unique and highly personal idiom, adapting in particular

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564-590: Is one of few architects to be immortalized by having a style named after him. "Richardsonian Romanesque", unlike Victorian revival styles like Neo-Gothic , was a highly personal synthesis of the Beaux-Arts predilection for clear and legible plans, with the heavy massing that was favored by the pro-medievalists. It featured picturesque roofline profiles, rustication and polychromy, semi-circular arches supported on clusters of squat columns, and round arches over clusters of windows on massive walls. Following his death,

611-729: The Ames Free Library established in 1883 by a bequeath in Ames's will. He was well-recognized by his peers; of ten buildings named by American architects as the best in 1885, fully half were his: besides Trinity Church, there were Albany City Hall , Sever Hall at Harvard University, the New York State Capitol in Albany (as a collaboration), and Oakes Ames Memorial Hall in North Easton, Massachusetts. Despite

658-470: The Ames Monument , which was constructed from 1880 to 1882, and is located at the highest point of the original Transcontinental Railway (the financing of which was spearheaded by Oliver Ames Jr. and his brother Oakes Ames ), east of Laramie , Wyoming . The Ames brothers and family provided generous patronage for Richardson's works, and after Oliver's death, Richardson was commissioned to design

705-714: The Romanesque of southern France. His early works, however, were not very remarkable. "There are few hints in the mediocre work of Richardson's early years of what was to come in his maturity, when, beginning with his competition-winning design ... for the Brattle Square Church in Boston, he adopted the Romanesque." In 1869, he designed the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane (now known as

752-696: The U.S. Civil War . Richardson returned to the U.S. in 1865, settling in New York that October. He found work with a builder, Charles, whom he had met in Paris. The two worked well together but Richardson was not being challenged. He had little to do and yearned for more. With no work Richardson fell into a state of poverty looking for more work. One of his first commissions was the William Dorsheimer House on Delaware Ave in Buffalo, NY, which

799-418: The gambrel roof) to shape the facade of an artistically ambitious house. Perhaps he used the gambrel to signify the humility appropriate to the profession of his client, but in doing so he sanctioned its use for wealthier patrons and by other architects. Within three years the crumpled gambrel profile was showing up everywhere" and became one of the notable features of Shingle Style architecture . Richardson

846-498: The "Richardsonian Romanesque" movement. The Thomas Crane Public Library is regarded as the best of Richardson's libraries. In his earlier libraries, Richardson's approach was to conceive the parts and then assemble them, while in the later ones such as Crane he thought in terms of the whole. Richardson also engaged in a process of simplification and elimination with each successive library, until in Crane "Richardson's concentration on

893-443: The Boston firm of A. H. Davenport and Company . In 1896 two additions were made to the building, designed by Richardson's successor firm, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge . One gable-roofed wing extends the building to the rear, along Park Street, following the same general lines of the existing structure. The other addition was a flat-roofed rectangular stack area also attached to the rear. An octagonal gallery space further extended

940-496: The Erie Canal was constructed along the band of Medina sandstone through Orleans County. The first commercial quarry was opened by John Ryan in Medina in 1837, then the quarries expanded eastward to Albion starting in 1858 and Holley in 1881. At the peak of the Medina sandstone quarry industry in the 1890s, there were as many as 48 quarries employing up to 2000 laborers. Immigrant labor played an important role in operating

987-806: The Marshall Field Wholesale Store "is probably the most famous of Richardson's buildings, one that Richardson himself saw as among his most significant." Architectural critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock states that in the Field Store, Richardson "was, perhaps, never more creative architecturally." Drawing from his own earlier work and both Romanesque and Renaissance precedents, Richardson designed this "massive but integrated" seven-story stone warehouse. Minimizing ornamentation in an era that employed much of it, he stressed what he termed "the beauty of material and symmetry rather than mere superficial ornamentation" with "the effects depending on

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1034-481: The Richardson Olmsted Complex) in Buffalo, the largest commission of his career and the first appearance of Richardsonian Romanesque style. A massive Medina sandstone complex, it is a National Historic Landmark and, as of 2009, was being restored. Trinity Church in Boston, designed by Richardson and built 1872–1877, solidified his national reputation and led to major commissions for

1081-497: The Richardsonian style was perpetuated by a variety of proteges and other architects, many for civic buildings like city halls, county buildings, court houses, train stations and libraries, as well as churches and residences. These include: Although many structures exist in the Romanesque style and some borrow so heavily that they are often mistaken for Richardson designs, several buildings have been built specifically to mimic

1128-511: The campus of the University of Vermont . These buildings seem resolutely anti-modern, with the atmosphere of an Episcopalian vicarage, dimly lit for solemnity rather than reading on site. They are preserves of culture that did not especially embrace the contemporary flood of newcomers to New England. Yet they offer clearly defined spaces, easy and natural circulation, and they are visually memorable. Richardson's libraries found many imitators in

1175-556: The church is one of the leading examples of the arts and crafts aesthetic in the United States. It was at Trinity that Richardson first worked with Augustus Saint Gaudens , with whom he would work many times in the ensuing years. Across the square is the Boston Public Library , built later (1895) by Richardson's former draftsman, Charles Follen McKim . Together these and the surrounding buildings comprise one of

1222-444: The east and Niagara County to the west. Medina sandstone was widely used to pave the streets of early U.S. cities because it was sufficiently hard to stand long and severe service, and in wearing, it maintained a flat, even surface where granite would wear round and acquire a smooth slippery polish. The Medina stone was also a highly desirable building stone that could be obtained in colors from light gray to pink, red and brown. It

1269-584: The eyelid dormer, and the wide hip roof with extended eaves, all shown by Morse. Among the few stations still extant, these influences are perhaps best illustrated in his Old Colony station (Easton, Massachusetts, 1881–1884). Here he uses the Syrian arch that became a hallmark of Richardson designs for both the porte-cochère and the windows of the main structure. Reminiscent of a courtyard and temple that Morse illustrated from Nikkō in Tochigi prefecture , Japan,

1316-669: The hip roof on wide, bracketed eaves nearly hides the rough stonework below in shadow. Richardson even included a carved dragon at each end of the beam spanning the arches of windows. The walls "become horizontal planes hovering above one another with bands of windows in between." Richardson was an early although not the first U.S. architect to look to Japan, but his train stations "form the earliest sustained application of Japanese inspiration in American architecture, an undeniable precursor to Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie house designs". As with his libraries, Richardson evolved and simplified as

1363-695: The improvement of New England towns makes a small coherent corpus that defines Richardson's style: Winn Memorial Library ( Woburn ), Ames Free Library ( Easton ), the Converse Memorial Library ( Malden ), and the Thomas Crane Public Library ( Quincy ), (1880–1882) "generally regarded by architectural historians as the masterpiece of Richardson's libraries", the Hubbard Memorial Library ( Ludlow , Massachusetts), and Billings Memorial Library on

1410-539: The late 1800s, incorporating a system of enlightened treatment for people with mental illness developed by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride. Over the years, as mental health treatment changed and resources were diverted, the buildings and grounds began a slow deterioration. In 2006, the Richardson Center Corporation was formed with a mandate to save the buildings and bring the Campus back to life through

1457-512: The outstanding American urban complexes, built as the centerpiece of the newly developed Back Bay . The largest building complex of HH Richardson's career, Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, New York , United States was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The first building to display his characteristic style the complex of buildings was designed in concert with the famed landscape team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in

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1504-488: The quarries and workers came in large numbers from England , Ireland , France , Germany , Poland and Italy . This sandstone was employed widely for “street work” such as cobblestones and curbs and the higher quality stone was used for ashlar blocks for foundations, walls and other structural components of homes, churches, and other buildings. In 1908 the total value of sandstone quarried in Orleans County

1551-439: The rear in 1916, designed by Newhall & Blevins . The Converse Memorial Building was the last of Richardson's library designs, and is generally considered among his finest works. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987. The interior of the library's historic wing provided the setting for a scene in the movie Ted 2 , starring Mark Wahlberg and Amanda Seyfried . Henry Hobson Richardson Richardson

1598-671: The relation of solid to void, of wall to window, becomes the basis for a harmonious abstraction with scarcely a reference to any past style." Richardson also designed nine railroad station buildings for the Boston & Albany Railroad as well as three stations for other lines. More subtle than his churches, municipal buildings and libraries, they were an original response to this relatively new building type. Beginning with his first at Auburndale (1881, demolished 1960s), Richardson drew inspiration for these station buildings from Japanese architecture that he learned about from Edward S. Morse ,

1645-499: The relations of 'voids and solids'... on the proportion of the parts." Not requiring the new steel frame technology because of its comparatively low height, Richardson used multi-storied windows topped by arches to tie the stories together, and the regular patterns of the windows to tie the entire building into "a simple and unified solid occupying an entire block." Richardson designed many important single-family residences, but his famous John J. Glessner House (Chicago, 1885–87)

1692-468: The rest of his life. Although incorporating historical elements from a variety of sources, including early Syrian Christian, Byzantine , and both French and Spanish Romanesque , it was more "Richardsonian" than Romanesque. Trinity was also a collaboration with the construction and engineering firm of the Norcross Brothers , with whom the architect would work on some 30 projects. He designed

1739-593: The route of the Erie Canal between Brockport and Lockport . Today nearly all these old quarries are flooded and a few are owned by camping resorts, rod and gun clubs or conservation clubs and used for recreational activities. Even though building stone was a relatively small percent of quarry output, the Medina sandstone legacy can be best seen today in the magnificent buildings built from this stone. Most of these buildings are well over 100 years old and just as beautiful today as when they were built. Several Orleans County sandstone buildings can be viewed online through

1786-566: The series continued, and his famous Chestnut Hill station (Newton, Massachusetts, 1883–1884, demolished circa 1960) featured clean lines with less Japanese influence. After his death, more than 20 other stations were designed in Richardson's style for the Boston and Albany line by the firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, all draftsmen of Richardson at the time of his death. Many Boston and Albany stations were landscaped by Richardson's frequent collaborator, Frederick Law Olmsted . Additionally,

1833-642: The stations designed by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge (both in Newton, Massachusetts) are still used by Boston's MBTA (green line) public transit service: and Newton Highlands station and Newton Centre station . The noted Marshall Field Wholesale Store (Chicago, 1885–1887, demolished 1930) is Richardson's "culminating statement of urban commercial form", and its remarkable design influenced Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many other architects. According to Jeffrey Karl Ochsner , who has compiled all of Richardson's architectural works, despite its demolition in 1930,

1880-756: The success of Trinity, Richardson built only two more churches, focusing instead on the monumental buildings he preferred, plus libraries, railroad stations, commercial buildings, and houses. Of his buildings, the two he liked best, the Allegheny County Courthouse (Pittsburgh, 1884–1888) and the Marshall Field Wholesale Store (Chicago, 1885–1887, demolished 1930), were completed posthumously by his assistants. Richardson spent much of his later years in his house at 25 Cottage St. in Brookline, Massachusetts , which had

1927-472: The work, but after his death his successors completed the project. He was buried in Walnut Hills Cemetery , Brookline, Massachusetts . Despite an enormous income for an architect of his day, his "reckless disregard for financial order" meant that he died deeply in debt, leaving little to his widow and six children. Richardson's most acclaimed early work is Trinity Church. The interior of

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1974-555: Was $ 408,287 of which “street work” stone accounted for about 85% of the total and the remaining 15% was building stone. In 1902 many of the individually operated quarries totaling nearly 2,000 acres were consolidated in the Medina Quarry Company. This company significantly increased the capital investment and output was increased through purchases of steam powered quarry equipment, etc. Dogged by charges of monopolistic operation this company ceased operation in 1905. It

2021-626: Was born at the Priestley Plantation in St. James Parish, Louisiana , and spent part of his childhood in New Orleans, where his family lived on Julia Row in a red brick house designed by the architect Alexander T. Wood . He was the great-grandson of inventor and philosopher Joseph Priestley , who is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen . Richardson went on to study at Harvard College and Tulane University . Initially, he

2068-480: Was interested in civil engineering, but shifted to architecture, which led him to go to Paris in 1860 to attend the famed École des Beaux Arts in the atelier of Louis-Jules André . He was only the second U.S. citizen to attend the École's architectural division— Richard Morris Hunt was the first —and the school was to play an increasingly important role in training Americans in the following decades. He did not finish his training there, as family backing failed due to

2115-515: Was reorganized as the Orleans County Quarry Company, but the demand for sandstone was severely curtailed by World War I , the 1918 pandemic and growing application of concrete building blocks and asphalt paving of roads. A few quarries continued into the 1950s and some were temporarily reopened as late as the 1980s to provide stone for building renovations . Many of the old Medina sandstone quarries can be seen along

2162-507: Was the victim of the first bank robbery/murder in North America . It was constructed 1883-1885 in an overall L-shape, with a facade of brown Longmeadow sandstone , a tower rising from the L's inner corner, and a heavily arched entry porch set within the L's short arm. The main library room is 50 x 36 feet and finished in elaborately carved white oak with a high, vaulted ceiling. Its furniture was designed by Richardson and manufactured by

2209-568: Was used in the construction of hundreds of homes, churches, public buildings, monuments and other structures from the 1830s to the mid-1900s. Medina sandstone is an early Silurian-era (445-425 million years ago) stone deposited between the Ordovician-era Queenston Shale (below) and the mid Silurian-era Clinton Group (above). The stone is made up of quartzose sand in fine grains, cemented more or less strongly by siliceous and ferruginous matter. The prevailing color

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