Carrère and Hastings
| Carrère and Hastings | |
|---|---|
| legal form | partnership |
| founding | 1885 |
| resolution | 1929 |
| Seat | New York City , United States |
| management | John Merven Carrère, Thomas Hastings |
| Branch | architecture office |
The company Carrère and Hastings was the joint architecture office of the architects John Merven Carrère (born November 9, 1858, † March 1, 1911) and Thomas Hastings (born March 11, 1860, † October 23, 1929) based in New York City in New York State of the United States . The company was one of the most famous Beaux Arts architecture firms in the United States. When Carrère was killed in a car accident in 1911, Hastings ran the company alone under the same name until his death in 1929.
Both partners had at the national École supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris studied and the company McKim, Mead & White worked before they started their own company in the same building. The first visible success of the partnership was the Ponce de León Hotel in St. Augustine , Florida, which they built on behalf of Henry Flagler . On this basis they ran a successful company during the 1880s and 1890s, which first achieved national prominence in 1897 when it won the tender to build the New York Public Library . The architecture firm designed commercial buildings, large apartment buildings and many important public buildings in New York and Washington, DC, as well as in Toronto , London , Paris , Rome and Havana .
Carrère
John Merven Carrère was in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro , the son of John Merven Carrère and Anna Louisa Maxwell born. His father was from Baltimore , while his mother had Scottish and Brazilian roots. As a boy, Carrère was sent to Switzerland for training, where he stayed until 1880. He then studied for two years at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Leon Ginian . He then returned to New York, where his parents had moved, and worked there as a draftsman for the architects McKim, Mead, and White . He had already met Thomas Hastings in Paris , with whom he worked together until they founded their own company in 1885. During this time, Carrère was already designing various buildings in New York and Chicago on his own . In 1886 he married Marion Dell , with whom he moved to Staten Island and had three daughters, one of whom died in childhood. In 1901 they moved to East 65th Street in Manhattan and built a second home in Harrison .
Carrère was known for his great enthusiasm and indispensable honesty. His organizational skills, as well as his artistic judgment and drive, helped him build the new Carrère and Hastings company successfully. He was primarily involved in large civil and commercial projects for the company, including the House and Senate buildings on Capitol Hill , the Manhattan Bridge and its access roads, and the New York Public Library . He was interested in civic affairs in New York and, together with Elihu Root, was instrumental in founding the City Board of Arts in New York City . He later expanded his public engagement to the national level, where in the 1890s, together with other leading figures from the American Institute of Architects, he persuaded the Treasury to implement the Tarsney Act , which had been passed by Congress in 1893 and which allowed the government to To award architectural contracts through public competitions. When the Treasury Department's chief architect, Jeremiah O'Rourke, resigned, Carrère was offered the post. He considered it very publicly and finally decided to reject it, as in his opinion "the system, not the person, should be changed".
Carrère was also involved in developing urban planning in the United States. He wrote brochures and taught civic groups as well as at universities. He worked with Daniel Burnham and Arnold W. Brunner on The Mall project in Cleveland , Ohio in 1903 and with Brunner on the Grand Rapids , Michigan project in 1909 . In 1910, he worked with Brunner and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. on a plan for a Baltimore community center . Carrère and Hastings later devised a plan for the city of Hartford , Connecticut, which they were able to complete shortly before his tragic car accident in 1911, in which a tram collided with the vehicle while a taxi was in motion. He suffered a severe concussion and did not regain consciousness.
Hastings
Thomas S. Hastings was born in New York City on March 11, 1860 . His father, also named Thomas S. Hastings (1827-1911), was a noted Presbyterian pastor , professor of homiletics, and dean of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York . His grandfather Thomas Samuel Hastings (1784–1872) was one of the leading church musicians of the 19th century in the United States. He composed sacred songs such as Rock of Ages and published a composer's first essay on music in 1822.
Hastings was educated in private schools in New York and began his architectural training with the Herter Brothers , who were a leader in furniture and interior design at the time. He attended the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris from 1880 to 1883 and worked there in Jules André's studio, where he met his future partner. Both later maintained close ties to Europe - Hastings received the Order of the Legion of Honor and the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects .
Upon his return to New York, Hastings worked at McKim, Mead, and White , the then leading company of the American Renaissance . There he renewed his friendship with Carrère, who was also employed in the company, and stayed for two years. A recommendation from his father to Henry Morrison Flagler resulted in an order for the Ponce de León Hotel and later for the Alcazar Hotels in St. Augustine , Florida. Hastings also had good relationships with other wealthy patrons known to his father , through whose support the careers of the two young architects quickly advanced. Through his brother Frank, he not only got to know other potential clients, but also his future wife. In 1900, at the age of 40, he married Helen Benedict, the daughter of the influential New York banker Elias Cornelius Benedict . The marriage took place in the Presbyterian Church in Greenwich , Connecticut, attended by many wealthy New Yorkers. Charles Follen McKim served as best man , Stanford White designed the church decorations, and his son was a page.
Most of his company's designs are awarded to Hastings. He is also often referred to as the head of the company, partly because he outlived his partner Carrère by 18 years. He gave many teaching lectures and wrote a variety of influential articles that were later collected by David Gray in his short biography on the architect.
He and his wife loved horse riding and built a country house in Old Westbury on Long Island . After Carrère's death in 1911, Hastings kept the company name and continued his role in the company, but shared responsibility for large projects with some confidants such as Richmond Shreve , Theodore Blake and others. The engineer Owen Brainard was a junior partner in the company of Carrère during his lifetime and continued to advise it after his death. This collaboration led to the creation of Shreve, Lamb and Blake (later Shreve, Lamb and Harmon ), famous for building skyscrapers.
Hastings died of complications in an appendectomy on October 23, 1929. Some of his writings were given to the American Academy of Arts and Letters , of which he had been a member and treasurer for many years. He left his wife as a widow, but no legal heirs.
Cooperations
The first major contract the Carrère and Hastings company received came from Henry Morrison Flagler , a Rev. Hastings parishioner who had already invested a lot of money in Florida . For him the company built the Ponce de León Hotel (1885 to 1888) in St. Augustine , Florida, which is now part of Flagler College . This was followed by orders for the Alcazar Hotel (1887 to 1888), which is now home to the Lightner Museum , the Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church (1887) and for a private house for Flagler. In 1901 they designed a second house for him in Palm Beach , which now serves as the Flagler Museum and was completed in 1902.
Carrère and Hastings were among New York's best-connected architects, benefiting from their connections with the city's rich and powerful. Her clients included lawyer Elihu Root , railroad magnate Edward Harriman , punter Thomas Fortune Ryan, and several members of the Blair family from New Jersey . The company's early work was eclectic , but at the same time it was tightly organized. The company owners learned this working style during their training in Paris. Following the World Columbian Exposition in 1893 with its influential classical motifs, the company's style began to incorporate modern French and elements of the neo-Renaissance . Despite their attention to detail, they always paid attention to the functionality of the elements and furnishings used. The company was regularly one of the first users of new technologies, from profile steel to electrification, and also developed constructions for passive air conditioning in buildings. The greatest interest, however, was in adapting the classic design language of European architecture to US needs in order to create a new, modern American architecture on the basis of centuries-old traditions.
One of the largest creative areas of the company was the shape- related urban planning , which is due in particular to the greater interest of Carrère in the City Beautiful movement within Beaux Arts architecture . So he made early plans for Baltimore , Hartford , Cleveland and Atlantic City . Together with Hastings , he was responsible for the company's major public contracts: The New York Public Library (1897–1912), the Cannon House Office Building and Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC (1908–1909), the planning of the Pan- American Exposition in Buffalo (1901), the McKinley Memorial (also in Buffalo), the Richmond Borough Hall on Staten Island (1904-1906) and the Paterson City Hall in New Jersey (1896).
The company was also known for its contributions to the Cottage and Garden Movement of the early 1900s, where they introduced both stylistic and compositional ideas that influenced American architecture for the decades that followed. Their garden designs were advertised extensively in publications, and a large number of the company's employees worked on the interior design of large residential buildings. Carrère and Hastings were one of the first companies to offer this service. The company's largest and most famous country house designs include the Blairsden in Peapack-Gladstone , New Jersey (1898), the Bellefontaine in Lenox , Massachusetts, the Arden House in Harriman , New York (1905–1909) and the Nemours in Wilmington , Delaware (1910).
The skyscrapers , which are also important for the company , were not added until the late 1910s and early 1920s, when the company worked with other architects in New York on the Cunard Building (1917–21) and the Standard Oil Building (1920–1928). Hastings was a critic of tall urban buildings, warning that buildings more than six stories (the height of the Hôtel particulier ) were alienating by removing the human scale and thereby destroying the urban street landscape.
The change in architectural styles and the rising international style resulted in architectural historians ignoring the work of Carrère and Hastings for more than 50 years after the company closed. Today the company is considered one of the most important American architectural firms during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Selected works
| object | place | construction time | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ponce de León Hotel | St. Augustine , Florida | 1885-1887 | Today part of Flagler College |
| Hotel Alcazar | St. Augustine, Florida | 1887 | Today the Lightner Museum |
| The Commonwealth Club | Richmond , Virginia | 1891 | |
| Edison Building | New York City , New York | 1891 | No longer exists |
| Patriot's Park | Tarrytown , New York | 1892 | |
| City Hall | Paterson , New Jersey | 1894 | |
| Jefferson Hotel | Richmond, Virginia | 1895 | |
|
Cairnwood Mansion , Bryn Athyn College |
Bryn Athyn , Pennsylvania | 1895 | |
| New York Public Library | New York City, New York | 1897-1911 | |
| Burrwood | Long Island , New York | 1898-1899 | One of the properties on the Gold Coast (defunct) |
| Cosmos Club | Washington, DC | 1898-1901 | |
| Vernon Court | Newport , Rhode Island | 1898 | |
| Flagler Museum | Palm Beach , Florida | 1900-1901 | |
| Woolsey Hall | Yale University | 1901 | |
| Metropolitan Opera House | New York City | 1903 | Interior design (building no longer exists) |
| Russell Senate Office Building | Washington, DC | 1903-1908 | |
| Goldwin Smith Hall and Rockefeller Hall | Campus of Cornell University | 1904 | |
| Squash court for William Collins Whitney | Aiken , South Carolina | ||
| Trader's Bank Building | Toronto , Ontario | 1905 | |
| Arden House | Harriman , New York | 1905-1909 | |
| McKinley Monument | Buffalo , New York | 1907 | |
| Cannon House Office Building | Washington, DC | 1908 | |
| Century Theater | New York City | 1909 | Demolished in 1931 |
| Payne Mansion | Esopus, New York | 1909-1911 | |
| Lunt-Fontanne Theater | New York City | 1910 | |
| Administration building of the Carnegie Institution of Washington | Washington, DC | 1910 | |
| Portland City Hall | Portland , Maine | 1912 | |
| House for Henry Clay Frick | New York City | 1913-14 | today contains the Frick Collection |
| Home for William Starr Miller | New York City | 1914 | contains the Neue Galerie today |
| Grand Army Plaza | New York City | 1916 | |
| Arlington Memorial Amphitheater | Washington, DC | 1920 | |
| Cunard Building | New York City | 1921 | as consulting architects in cooperation with Morris & O'Connor |
| Standard Oil Building | New York City | 1926 |
literature
- Laurie Ossman et al .: Carrère & Hastings: the masterworks . Distributed to the US Trade by Random House, New York: Rizzoli 2011, ISBN 978-0-8478-3564-5 .
- David Nolan: Fifty feet in paradise: the booming of Florida . Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego 1984, ISBN 978-0-15-130748-7 .
Individual evidence
- ^ David Gray: Thomas Hastings, architect; collected writings, together with a memoir . Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1933, OCLC 375188 .
- ^ Mark A. Hewitt et al .: Carrère & Hastings architects . Acanthus Press, New York 2006, ISBN 0-926494-42-2 .
