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Article

Andrzej Rottermund

(b Puławy, June 1756; d Florence, Feb 8, 1841).

Polish architect and writer, also active in Italy. He probably studied in Rome in the late 1770s and returned to Italy in 1785–6 under the aegis of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, a collector and amateur architect with whom he collaborated throughout his life. In 1786 Aigner and Potocki refronted the church of St Anna, Warsaw, using a giant composite order on high pedestals. The political turmoil of the 1790s disrupted Aigner’s career, but during his second phase of creativity (1797–1816) he won fame through his work on the great estate of the Czartoryski family at Puławy, on the Vistula west of Lublin, the most important centre of cultural life in Poland during the Enlightenment. Aigner had already erected the Marynka Palace there in 1790, a variation on the Petit Trianon at Versailles, France, and from 1798 he began to add ornamental buildings to go with the new Picturesque layout of the Puławy gardens: a Chinese pavilion, a Gothick house and a peripheral Temple of the Sibyl with a shallow dome. In ...

Article

Pavel Zatloukal

(b Lobositz [now Lovosice], May 27, 1793; d Kremsier [now Kroměříž], Nov 7, 1851).

Bohemian architect, active in Moravia. He studied at the Royal Professional Polytechnical Institute in Prague under Georg Fischer (1768–1828), in whose office he subsequently worked. During the 1820s he worked on two Bohemian estates of the Chotek family, becoming involved in the final stages of building their country house at Kačina (1802–22), by Christian Friedrich Schuricht (1753–1832) and building some of the many follies in the park at Veltrusy. From 1832 until his death Arche worked in the office of works of the archdiocese of Olmütz (now Olomouc) at Kremsier, in Moravia, becoming director (1833) and later counsellor (1838). Arche worked in two styles, the Neo-classical, for which he derived his ideas from contemporary engravings and particularly the Leipzig Ideenmagazin, and the Gothic Revival, which he used in some of his remodellings. Soon after his arrival at Kremsier, he remodelled (...

Article

Mario Bencivenni

(b Florence, June 6, 1792; d Florence, July 12, 1867).

Italian architect . He studied under Giuseppe Cacialli at the school of architecture of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, which was directed by Gasparo Maria Paoletti, the leader of the Neo-classical architectural movement in Tuscany. In 1812 Baccani was awarded first prize for architecture in the Accademia’s prestigious triennial competition with a design for a prison, a project that already demonstrated the principal characteristic of Baccani’s work, his alternation between a Neo-classical vocabulary and a medieval, Romantic one. Indeed, his earliest executed works in Florence were the Gothic Revival tower (1817–21) in the garden of the Marchesi Torrigiani in the Via dei Serragli, and the Neo-classical Palazzo Borghese (1821) in the Via Ghibellina. In 1824 he succeeded Cacialli as architect to Florence Cathedral, and in 1826, when the cathedral square was extended to the south, he designed the adaptation and new façade of the Canonica di S Maria del Fiore. He also directed the remodelling of numerous houses in Florence, including the Palazzo Brignole-Durazzo (...

Article

Christina Cameron

(b Quebec, c. Sept 29, 1826; d Quebec, c. May 10, 1906).

Canadian architect, civil engineer and writer, great-grandson of Jean Baillairgé and second cousin of Thomas Baillairgé. Precocious and restless as a child, he abandoned formal studies at the Séminaire de Québec at 16. Following an apprenticeship with Thomas Baillairgé and his own independent studies, Charles Baillairgé trained in three separate professions—architecture, land surveying and civil engineering—by the age of 22. Unlike the previous generations of his family, he broke clearly from the hybrid craftsman–architect role to become the designer who conceived but did not execute his own work, a development that had parallels in other North American cities in the mid-19th century. Intensely curious about developments in Europe, he also quickly distanced himself from the traditional Neo-classicism of his family to experiment with the latest styles and construction techniques, working in both Gothic Revival and Greek Revival styles. He persuaded the architecturally conservative Roman Catholic clergy to accept Gothic Revival for the majestic parish church of Ste Marie de la Beauce (...

Article

Ye. A. Beletskaya

(Ivanovich)

(b Dol’skoye, Kaluzhskaya Province, March 12, 1737; d St Petersburg, Aug 13, 1799).

Russian architect. From his earliest childhood he lived in Moscow, where his father was a minor cleric in one of the Kremlin churches. He studied painting in Moscow under the important architect Dmitry Ukhtomsky, who accepted him into his school of architecture in 1751 and had him enrolled for classes in fine arts and languages at Moscow University in 1754. As one of the most gifted students he was transferred in 1758 to the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. As its curriculum was not then complete, he studied for two years with Savva Ivanovich Chevakinsky (1713–74/80) during the latter’s construction of the naval church of St Nicholas, and with the Academy’s president, Aleksandr Filippovich Kokorinov (1726–72).

In 1760 Bazhenov was sent on a travelling scholarship to study under Charles de Wailly in Paris, where he became acquainted with a wide circle involved in the theoretical disciplines and the study of architecture. He created his own version of a plan for the Hôtel des Invalides and a model of the Louvre, grasping the distinctive character of the nascent French Neo-classicism. As a foreigner he was not entitled to the Prix de Rome upon graduation from the Académie Royale d’Architecture in ...

Article

Darryl Patrick

(fl 1820–50).

American architect. There is evidence that Bond was trained by Solomon Willard. Certain of Bond’s designs suggest the Greek Revival approach that Willard brought from Washington, DC. Bond’s style moved between Gothic Revival and a Neo-classical heaviness. In the Salem City Hall of 1836–37 the two-storey Greek Revival façade shows his carefully proportioned details. An example of Gothic Revival is St John’s Episcopal Church and Rectory (1841), Devens Street, Boston, which has a rather heavy granite façade dominated by a square tower with a battlemented roof-line; there are large quatrefoil windows in the walls below. In the same year Bond was called to Oberlin College in Ohio to design First Church, which had to be a Greek Revival design. He worked on Lewis Wharf (1836–40; later remodelled), Boston, where certain walls reflect his attraction to boldly massed granite surfaces. Bond’s best-known buildings during his life were at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. These included Gore Hall (...

Article

(b Valpiana, Oct 1, 1842; d Milan, May 25, 1907).

Italian architect and engineer. He studied in Pavia and then at the Politecnico in Turin, where he qualified as an engineer (1867). He also studied architecture under Camillo Boito at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan. Among his early designs were the classical octagonal marble fountain (1870), known as ‘La Bollente’, in the spa town of Acqui Terme, and buildings including the four entrance gateways at the Esposizione Italiana (1881), Milan, his first major project. His two most important works are completely dissimilar in style. The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale (1888–93; damaged 1943; restored) on the Corso Venezia, Milan, is in a powerful Romanesque and Gothic style with a hint of Moorish architecture and, though much influenced by the ideas of Camillo Boito, it also has close international parallels in style with other natural history museums, such as that in London (...

Article

(b Madrid, April 13, 1826; d Madrid, Jan 2, 1899).

Spanish architect and politician. He graduated in 1855 from the new Escuela de Arquitectura, Madrid, which though separate from the Academia de Bellas Artes continued the latter’s pursuit of Italianate classical ideals. His principal teacher was Narciso Pascual y Colomer, whose style is reflected in Cubas’s early works. Cubas travelled in Italy and Greece on a Spanish government scholarship and on a second tour visited various European countries, including a longer stay in Munich.

His first architectural period coincides with the latter years of the reign of Isabella II (reg 1833–68), during which he built a number of palatial Renaissance Revival houses in the Salamanca district of Madrid. Examples include those of the Duque de Sesto and the Duque de López-Dóriga. Typically they are terraced houses of three storeys and a semi-basement. A gallery of arches with Renaissance Revival decoration, usually on the first storey, forms the high point of the façade....

Article

Patrick A. Snadon

(b New York, July 24, 1803; d Orange, NJ, Jan 14, 1892).

American architect. From the 1830s to the 1850s he was one of the most influential architects in the USA. His work ranges from major government and institutional buildings to ornamental garden structures; his main contribution to American architecture was his introduction of the European Picturesque in his designs for Italianate and Gothic Revival country houses and cottages. With his partner, Ithiel Town, he also refined and popularized the American Greek Revival. He revolutionized American architectural drawing through rendering buildings in romantic landscapes rather than in the analytical, Neo-classical style that preceded him. In 1836 he helped form the American Institution of Architects and advanced professionalism in American architecture through his scrupulous office practices, being, for example, the first American architect to use printed, standardized specifications.

At the age of 16, Davis left school in New York to work as a type compositor in Alexandria, VA. During this time, probably influenced by reading contemporary Gothic novels, he made drawings of prison and castle interiors akin to Piranesi’s engravings of imaginary prisons. In ...

Article

Paul Larmour

(b Newry, Co. Down, 1792; d Newry, 1848).

Irish architect. He is first recorded in 1813 as executant architect of the Church of Ireland St Mary’s, Newry, Co. Down. During the 1820s and 1830s he built up a formidable reputation as a designer of churches, country houses and public buildings, and he became one of the most important local architects working in Ulster. For a brief period he had a partnership with Thomas Jackson (1807–90) of Belfast, but this ended in 1834 when the latter commenced his own practice there. Duff’s Neo-classical Fisherwick Place Presbyterian Church (1827; destr. 1899), Belfast, was the first in Ulster where the Presbyterians decided to have a full portico, thereby setting a fashion that lasted until mid-century. His Greek Revival museum (1831; with Jackson) for the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society at College Square North was the first scholarly compilation of Athenian sources seen in Belfast. Other public buildings, including Newry Court House (...

Article

Catherine H. Cruft

(b Ancrum, Roxburghshire [now Borders], Aug 1760; d Edinburgh, June 16, 1823).

Scottish architect. He was a successful Edinburgh architect with no formal education. He trained as a joiner and may have worked as a contractor for the building of Castle Mona (1801–6), Isle of Man, designed by George Steuart (c. 1730–1806) for the 4th Duke of Atholl, who later became Elliot’s patron. From 1794 to 1799 he exhibited architectural drawings at the Royal Academy. In 1800 he set up in joint practice with his brother James Elliot (1770–1810), running offices in London and Edinburgh. Elliot cannot be considered an architectural innovator. His usual style for country houses was castellated and derived directly from Roger Morris’s conception at Inveraray Castle (from 1745), Argyll, for the 3rd Duke of Argyll and from the Adam castle style. Loudoun Castle (1804–11; gutted 1941), Strathclyde, for the Marquess of Hastings, is an exercise in post-Adam castellated design, while Taymouth Castle (...

Article

(b Dunblane, Perthshire [now in Central], June 11, 1776; d Edinburgh, March 21, 1855).

Scottish architect. Gillespie added his wife’s surname of Graham to his own on his father-in-law’s death in 1825. In 1800 he was appointed to supervise work on the islands of Skye and North Uist, including schools, churches, piers, inns and a proposed new town at Kyleakin, for Alexander, 2nd Baron MacDonald. His first major commission was for the County Buildings, Cupar, Fife (1810; altered 1835–40). The austere Neo-classicism of this design was repeated at Gray’s Hospital, Elgin, Morayshire (now Highland) (1815), where a Tuscan portico and compound dome terminate the western axis of the town. Blythswood House, Renfrewshire (1818; destr. c. 1929), a Greek Revival mansion on the banks of the River Clyde, had an Ionic tetrastyle portico over a semi-basement. Gillespie Graham’s largest commission was an extension of the Edinburgh New Town, built in the 1820s on land owned by the 10th Earl of Moray. The main elements of the plan, which combined ideas from Bath and John Nash in London, were a crescent (Randolph Crescent), then an ellipse (Ainslie Place) and finally, in Moray Place, a circus 187 metres in diameter, where the classical proportions are enhanced by Doric columns instead of the pilasters used elsewhere. Gillespie Graham laid out the town of ...

Article

Catherine H. Cruft

(b Glasgow, May 11, 1768; d Glasgow, Dec 5, 1843).

Scottish architect. The son of William Hamilton, a mason, he was admitted to the Incorporation of Masons in Glasgow in 1800. Little is known of his early architectural training, although he may have been acquainted with Robert Adam (i) and James Adam (i) since he made many copies of their drawings at a time when they were virtually unknown. Hamilton developed a large practice, mainly confined to Glasgow and the west of Scotland. He showed a particular feeling for theatricality in his work, which is seen in his sometimes idiosyncratic employment of styles and the inclusion of carving and statues on his buildings. His earliest recorded building of note is the Neo-classical Hutcheson’s Hall (1802–5), Ingram Street, Glasgow, which incorporates two 17th-century statues from the former Hutcheson’s Hospital. Other commissions included his monument to Lord Nelson (1806), Glasgow Green, which was the first to be erected in Britain in memory of Nelson; it consists of an obelisk (44 m) on a plain plinth. Early residential work included a new front (...

Article

(b Vienna, Feb 7, 1732; d Vienna, Dec 14, 1816).

Austrian architect and teacher. After training as a painter of architecture, he studied architecture itself at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. He seems to have established contact with the Viennese court early in his career, since his first commission was to redesign the court theatre (from 1766) at the imperial Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna. In the same year he was ennobled. With the assistance of Prince Wenzel Anton Kaunitz-Rietberg (patron of the Akademie and artistic adviser to Maria-Theresa, Queen of Hungary and Empress of Austria) Hohenberg was appointed in 1770 to teach architecture at the Akademie. He worked in this capacity until his final years, influencing successive generations of students. In 1772 he redesigned the gardens at Schönbrunn (see Vienna, §V, 7, (ii)). His imaginative plan, based on the Antique, was only partially realized in subsequent years, in particular with the Gloriette (1773–5), a triumphal arch flanked by colonnaded screens that closes the view on the height above the parterre, and the Roman Ruin (...

Article

Malcolm Thurlby

(b Bengeo, Herts, July 27, 1803; d Toronto, Feb 3, 1890).

Canadian architect of English birth. Born with the name John Corby, he was articled to the architect William Ford (fl 1820s) in London in 1824. In 1832 he moved to Canada, settling in Toronto, then still known as York, and changing his name to Howard. He was one of the first formally trained architects in the city and he became one of the busiest in Upper Canada in the 1830s and 1840s; he also held the post of Drawing Master at Upper Canada College (1839–56). Of the many buildings he completed in Toronto before his virtual retirement in 1855, only his cottage orné, Colborne Lodge (1836; now a museum), survives. However, he established Neo-classical architecture as the model for commercial and public buildings in Toronto in the 1830s and 1840s with such works as the city’s Third Jail (1838; destr.); the Bank of British North America (...

Article

Andrzej Rottermund

(b Olszanka, nr Pułtusk, Dec 24, 1798; d Lityn, Podole, May 3, 1879).

Polish architect and writer. He studied under Antoni Corazzi at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Warsaw (1820–24). In 1824–7 he travelled to Italy, France, England and Germany. In Italy he was awarded membership of the Accademia del Disegno, Florence, for his restoration project for the Temple of Concord (ded. ad 10), Rome. From 1828 he worked as a building adviser in Warsaw to the governmental Commission for Enlightenment. He was also a member of the General Council of Construction to the governmental Commission of Internal Affairs. Idźkowski’s major architectural works were the Neo-classical reconstruction (1838–42; destr. 1944) of the Saxon Palace, Warsaw, which was based partly on a plan by Wacław Ritschel (1794–1872); the Gothic Revival reconstruction (1839–42; destr. 1944) of St John’s Cathedral, Warsaw, inspired by English Gothic cathedrals; the Gothic Revival railway station (1846...

Article

George Tibbits

(William)

(b London, 1796; d Sydney, March 9, 1879).

Australian architect of English birth. His early experience was in London as a military surveyor and draughtsman in government service and then in private practice. He arrived in Sydney in March 1840 as an assistant surveyor in the office of the Surveyor-General of New South Wales, Thomas L. Mitchell. Under Mitchell he was appointed town surveyor in Sydney, becoming Colonial Architect of New South Wales in 1835. He is particularly admired for his designs for government buildings in the Greek Revival idiom, of which one is extant, though extended, the Darlinghurst Court House (1837). Another surviving government building is the Maitland Gaol (1847–50), New South Wales. As Colonial Architect he is credited as the chief designer of government buildings, although evidence suggests that capable subordinate clerks of works such as James Rattenbury (fl 1839–45) and Henry Ginn (fl 1846–51) also had that duty for projects remote from Sydney. Other surviving designs attributed to Lewis are the Berrima Court House and the Hartley Court House, both in rural New South Wales. He also supervised the construction of the Tudor Gothic Government House in Sydney (begun ...

Article

Alberto Villar Movellán

(b Barcelona, 1815; d Barcelona, 1895).

Spanish architect, urban planner and writer. He studied at the Escuela de Arquitectura, Barcelona, as a pupil of its founder, the Neo-classical architect Antonio Cellés y Azcona (1775–1835). Later he studied in Madrid, obtaining his degree in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1841. Despite his Neo-classical training, he distinguished himself as an exponent of Gothic Revival designs, influenced by elements of Romanticism. His best-known work in this style is his design (1864) for the principal façade of Barcelona Cathedral, which was commissioned by the Girona family. After 1882 the design was altered to accommodate that of Augusto Font y Carreras, resulting in a more generalized medieval style. Mestres Esplugas’ other decisive work was the Gran Teatro del Liceo (from 1861), Barcelona, which was reconstructed by him from the original building (1844–8; by Miguel Garriga y Roca), which had burnt down. Here he succeeded in building one of the leading opera houses in Spain, with a construction that combines classical splendour with an eclectic use of Baroque decoration. He was the municipal architect of Barcelona, where he won the competition for the Plaza Real, but this was not executed because it contained a proposal to use iron columns. He was also responsible for the restoration of various medieval buildings and wrote numerous articles on monuments and architectural criticism. Among the latter his essay entitled ‘¿Tenemos en España algun tipo de arquitectura que podamos calificar de arquitectura nacional?’ (...

Article

Jutta Schuchard

(b Bamberg, Jan 10, 1791; d Munich, April 22, 1839).

German architect. He trained (1811–15) at the Akademie in Munich under the Neo-classicist Karl von Fischer. His unsuccessful entry in the competition (1814–16) for the Walhalla in Bavaria was for a centralized building in quasi-Gothic style, although a Greek Doric peripteral temple had been requested. After visiting Italy (1816–18) he was appointed building director (1819–30) of the Glyptothek, Munich, under Leo von Klenze, and by 1835 he was a member of the government board of architecture. He was a member of the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Altertumskunde von den drei Schilden (founded 1831), a society concerned with the investigation of medieval art, of which Sulpiz Boisserée was another member. Contact with the latter and knowledge of his work on Cologne Cathedral seems to have done much to foster Ohlmüller’s interest in the Gothic Revival style. This was evident particularly in his unsuccessful Gothic Revival design (...

Article

Roberta J. M. Olson

(b Bologna, 15 May ?1775–7; d Turin, March 6, 1860).

Italian painter, architect, designer and collector. At the age of 12 he began to frequent the house in Bologna of his patron Conte Carlo Filippo Aldrovandi Marescotti (1763–1823), whose collections and library provided his early artistic education and engendered his taste for collecting. From 1795 he worked on several decorative schemes with the theatre designer and decorator Antonio Basoli (1774–1848), and it was perhaps in theatre designs that Palagi was first exposed to an eclectic range of motifs from exotic cultures. He was influenced by the linear, mannered style of Felice Giani, with whom he frequented the important evening drawing sessions at the house of the engraver Francesco Rosaspina (1762–1841). Beginning in 1802, he participated in the informal Accademia della Pace, Bologna, as well as studying at the Accademia Clementina, and was elected to the Accademia Nazionale di Belle Arti of Bologna in 1803...