Charles Lewis Bowman

Charles Lewis Bowman (born December 9, 1890 in New York City , † 1971) was an American architect .

Life

Bowman was born in New York City and raised in Mount Vernon . His mother was a descendant of the family of Col. Fielding Lewis and Betty Washington, who was the only sister of the first US President, George Washington .

He graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca , New York, with a degree in architecture in 1912 . From 1911 to 1913 he worked during the summer vacation as a draftsman for the renowned architecture firm McKim, Mead, and White in New York City. After graduating, he worked for the company for a short time, but left shortly after to take a job at Mount Vernon.

In 1918 he founded his own architecture office. In his projects he focused on the northeastern United States.

In the late 1920s, his assistant Robert Scannell left the office, taking a number of clients with him. The Great Depression forced Bowman to sell his house and live in his studio with his family. The changing tastes after the Second World War made his further career difficult as country houses in the historicist Tudor style were no longer in demand.

Bowman's career lasted until he implemented his last project in 1962.

architecture

His style varies between different types of historicism . The architectural styles range from Georgian , Cotswold , Tudor and Elizabethan to the Normandy architectural style and the Mediterranean architectural style. He combined the English roots of his architecture with Jacobean design elements, steep slate roofs, rich in stone or brickwork, cladding, leaded glass windows and bundled chimneys.

His projects were dubbed Stockbroker Tudor by the critics of his time because of their appearance . Today, the buildings are in great demand due to the selected locations on mostly extensive plots, the large but appropriate floor space, the high-quality building materials and the design. Bowman rarely designed homes larger than 450 square feet.

plant

His first work as a freelance architect is in Mount Vernon, but also in his own homes in Eastchester , New York, Scarsdale , and the surrounding communities on Long Island , around Reading in Pennsylvania, Englewood in New Jersey, Short Hills in New Jersey, Greenwich in Connecticut or The Plains in Virginia.

He designed Old Mill Farm for his client George Lewis Ohrstrom . The country estate commissioned by the equestrian and financier George Lewis Ohrstrom on a plot of land of 56 hectares comprised an Elizabethan style mansion and several outbuildings. The Greenwich Board of Trade awarded him a medal in 1931 for his outstanding design of the Old Mill Farm in Greenwich , Connecticut. Old Mill Farm took part in an exhibition by the New York Architects' Association in 1932 and was featured in various architectural publications, including the Architectural Record . Old Mill Farm was by the actor and director in 1994 Mel Gibson bought, which the 30-hectare estate for 9.25 million US dollars bought.

After Ohrstrom's divorce, remarriage, and moving from Ohrstrom to The Plains, Virginia, Bowman designed part of the Whitewood manor .

For Robert and Dorothy ("Dickie") Roebling, he designed a three-story stone mansion in the Norman architectural style, which was built with a living space of around 930 square meters on a property of 7 acres and is located outside Princeton , New Jersey. The building is known as Landfall . Construction began shortly after Bob and Dickie married in 1925 and completed in 1928.

A large concentration of his work is located within Bronxville , New York, mostly in an upscale neighborhood known as Lawrence Park . Of his total of 53 works there all still existed in 2007, with the exception of one.

literature

• The Great Estates; Greenwich, Connecticut, 1880-1930 [Phoenix Publishing, 1986]

Individual evidence

1. ^ The New York Times : "CL Bowman Receives $ 500 to Continue Studies in Architecture" , May 19, 1912 (PDF)
2. ↑ Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. Carol Megathlin: A short history of the Roebling Family ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 6, 2008. 
3. ^ Village of Bronxville. Prominent Village Architects: Charles Lewis Bowman ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 6, 2008.