Richardson, Henry Hobson( 1838 – 1886 )
Small sketch from west, preliminary sketch, All Saints Episcopal Cathedral (Albany, NY),
1882 – 1883 , Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, HH Richardson Papers, ASA F3,
10 13 cm, Graphite on tracing paperThe 1850 s produced many high Victorian gothic buildings, and Henry Hobson Richardson’s early
work reflects this influence. By the early 1870 s, Richardson came into his own style, distinguished by
heavy masonry and arched entrances, such as two projects in Massachusetts, the Hampden County
Courthouse in Springfield and the Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy. Richardson utilized a
creative and individual approach to Romanesque that some describe as eclectic (O’Gorman, 1987 ). It
was this approach that caused his work to be named the ‘Richardsonian Romanesque.’
Richardson was born at Priestly Plantation in St. James Parish, Louisiana, in 1838. He began his
higher education at Harvard in 1856 and gained admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1860.
Following the end of the Civil War, he returned to New York where he received his first independent
commission, the Church of the Unity in Springfield, Massachusetts. Upon winning the competition for
the design of the Trinity Church, he completed such projects as the Haydon Building, the Cheney
Building in Hartford, and those representing his more mature works, the Ames Memorial Library
Building at North Easton, Austin Hall at Harvard, and the Allegheny County Courthouse in
Pittsburgh. After a long illness, Richardson died in 1886 at the age of forty-seven.
This sketch from Richardson’s hand (Figure 4. 1 ) expresses his first thoughts for the All Saints
Church in Albany, 1882 , and acts as a partifor the project. Because of his beaux-arts education,
Richardson used a process of design learned from the Ecole in Paris, the esquisse(O’Gorman, 1987 ).
Working on many projects at one time, Richardson would provide small sketches to be given to
draftsmen for development. The senior draftsmen knew Richardson’s intentions as they drew the
designs (Ochsner, 1982 ). In this way, the sketch represented his concept for the project and commu-
nicated it to those in his office.
The project for which this sketch was the impetus was an invited competition designated to be in
the gothic style (O’Gorman, 1987 ). Interestingly, Richardson’s early sketch and the final drawing dif-
fer quite significantly. The sketch, in elevation, has similarities to his heavy railroad buildings with
their massive stone and rounded arches. It displays a distinctive shape comprised of a main peaked roof
flanked by two smaller versions. The shape resembles a pyramid, so much so that it may be possible to
inscribe a simple equilateral triangle over this building. The technique of the sketch is minimal, using
an economy of lines and lacking in detail. The arches in their simplicity consist of a series of ‘m’s’ and
the lines are mostly singular in weight. The three Roman arches are not perfectly round, but convey
enough information so they did not need to be corrected. Very small and brief, the sketch acts an idea
diagram and only considers the elevational parti. Although it shows a ground line, the image is lacking
in context, another indicator that the sketch is a beginning impression.
In contrast, the competition drawing is an elevation much more reminiscent of the gothic style,
although not entirely gothic. The peaked roofs were pared down to resemble spires and the façade
has vertical windows and a rose window. The symmetry is obvious and striking with the three
major arched entrances reminiscent of Notre Dame in Paris. This dichotomy between the sketch
and the competition entry reveals how Richardson expressed his belief in the heavy materiality of
the Romanesque as opposed to the lighter, vertical, gothic image expected for the competition. It is
interesting how he allowed an early concept to become modified through design development to
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