RICHARDSON, Henry Hobson, Amer ican architect : b. Parish of Saint James, La., 29 Sept. 1838; d. Boston, 27 April 1886. He was graduated at Harvard in 1859 and in the following year went to Paris and entered the Ecolc des Beaux Arts. Throughout his student life in Paris he worked under the instruction of L. J. Andre, and when his private fortune was swept away by the Civil War he secured through Andre's friendship an appointment in a government office in Paris. In 1865 he re turned to the United States and located his business in New York. His first commission, received in October 1866, was for building the Church of the Unity in Springfield, Mass. The design of this church is the only instance of his following Gothic models; and this, which may in general terms be typical of the English Rural Gothic, yet presents certain independent features that show the practical bent of his mind. Shortly afterward he built the Boston and Al bany Railroad office in the same city and Grace Church in West Medford. In October 1867 he formed a partnership with Charles Gambrill which lasted until October 1878. The works of this period, which include several of his more important ones, and especially Trinity Church in Boston, were projected under the firm name, though with few exceptions were the conceptions of Richardson. In 1870 the commission was received to build the Brattle Street Church in Boston and the design he produced, Romanesque in general character, may be regarded, however, as rather transi tional to that style that he worked in so consist ently in the latter part of his life, and which received its first confirmation in the North Church of Springfield, built by him in 1872. The Brattle Street Church, now known as the First Baptist Church, has a fine tower orna mented below the upper arcade by a bold sculp tured frieze. The church itself is ineffective in
respect to the relations of its general masses with this superb tower, and, its acoustic proper ties being imperfect, the work is judged a partial failure.
Trinity Church in Boston was begun in 1872 and finished in 1877. This church shows the perfection of his individual style evolved from his 'study of the Romanesque churches of southern France. It is cruciform in plan, but its distance from apse-wall to façade is only about 39 feet in excess of the distance be tween the two walls of the transepts. This in novation in church architecture has had a powerful effect upon subsequent designs. After Trinity • he produced only two other, and these comparatively unimportant churches, though he entered the competition for the Cathedral Church at Albany. His subsequent work was in the designing of municipal or commercial structures, and of these the one by which he wished to be judged was the Allegheny County buildings — courthouse and jail, of Pittsburgh, Pa. These structures, however, he did not live to see completed. Other buildings designed by him are Sever Hall, and the Law School of Harvard University; the city hall at Albany; parts of the New York State capitol at Albany, in which he was associated with Leopold Eidlitz and Frederick Law Olmsted, his individual work being the senate chamber, the governor's room, the Court of Appeals chamber and the western staircase; the chamber of commerce at Cincinnati and the Field building at Chicago. Other buildings such as stores, railway stations, public libraries and private dwellings were de. signed by him. Consult Van Rensselaer, (Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works) (1888).