Fenway Studios
| Fenway Studios | |||
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
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National Historic Landmark
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| location | Boston , Massachusetts , United States | ||
| Coordinates | 42 ° 20 '50.5 " N , 71 ° 5' 28.4" W | ||
| Built | 1905 | ||
| architect | J. Harleston Parker, Douglas H. Thomas, Wells Brothers Company of New York | ||
| Architectural style | Arts and Crafts | ||
| NRHP number | 78000473 | ||
| Data | |||
| The NRHP added | September 13, 1978 | ||
| Declared as an NHL | August 5, 1998 | ||
The Fenway Studios are artists' studios in the Boston area Fenway-Kenmore in the state of Massachusetts of the United States . They were built in 1905 to replace the burned down Harcourt Studios and in 1998 were listed as a National Historic Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places .
architecture
The design of the building designed by the Boston architects Parker & Thomas won an architecture competition to build an artist's studio at the end of 1904. It was built between April and November 1905 and has influences from various architectural styles.
Outdoor areas
Although the original design was a neoclassical facade, it was built in the style of the Arts and Crafts Movement . At the front, the four-storey building is 21.3 m high and has a bilaterally symmetrical division into eleven structural yokes , which in turn consist of two main sections and have a centrally placed, protruding entrance area. The building has an E-shaped floor plan and is 79.3 m long and around 10 m or 8.5 m (at the transitions) wide. At the front there is so much space between the sidewalk and the building that the basement windows are 1.8 m high and 1.5 m wide.
The brick house stands on a foundation that is also made of brick, which in turn rests on piles driven into the ground of the Back Bay Fens . The flat roof has 2 m high parapets , each of which surrounds the ends of the building on three sides. These exceptionally high limits were owed to the purpose of the building and allowed the models and artists to work undisturbed in daylight in good weather. In the central roof area, the parapet rises to almost 4 m above the roof level, while the parapets of the connections between these areas are only half a meter high.
With the exception of the windows, the facade is in its original condition, as the original owners refused to invest in the building. It was not until 1981 that systematic restoration and repair work began with the handover to the current owner, a cooperative association. The north, west and east sides are with handmade Rustika - clinkers clad having different patterns as well as projecting and recessed stucco designs have. The dark, differently colored mortar connects the white of the stucco elements with the gray, black and red shades of the bricks. Decorative elements are located in the area of the entrance, in the upper area of the ends of the building and on each gusset of the total of 44 windows, each 3.6 m high and 1.5 m wide.
Indoor areas
The interior design of the building corresponds to the intended use for artist studios. From the entrance area with its dark terracotta tiles , from which the elevator is also accessible, a staircase leads to a higher level with an open balustrade . The corridor, which connects the individual building wings as a gallery , runs along the south side of the house.
While the rest of the ceilings in the house are plastered white, in the corridor area they are clad with solid wooden boards to which painted canvases are attached. The entrances to the studios are on the corridor level, so that the actual workrooms can only be reached by descending stairs. A mezzanine has been added to some studios since 1981 , where bedrooms or offices have been set up. In 1986, the two coal-fired boilers that were still in operation and used to generate heat were replaced by a modern oil heating system.
history
The Fenway Studios, built in 1905, were specially designed to meet the needs of artists and are still used accordingly today. At the beginning of the 20th century, artists often had to work in rooms or buildings that were originally built for other purposes and in some cases did not have sufficient ventilation, heating or piping for artistic activities. The Fenway Studios also fulfilled the four most important requirements of the artists: incidence of light from the north, adequate layout of the rooms, a good location within the city and staggered rental prices.
The building was designed by the architects Parker & Thomas in close cooperation with experienced painters , and existing studios in Paris served as models. In terms of room height, room size and incidence of light, the design was exclusively subordinate to the needs of the artists, with structural and stylistic innovations in industrial design also being used. The otherwise purely functional building is decorated with decorative elements from the Arts and Crafts Movement . However, since neoclassicism was much more popular in Boston , the Fenway Studios are now a rare example of the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement on Boston architecture.
The location of the studios on the edge of Back Bay and near the Fenway was also very convenient for the artists; The Back Bay Fens had only recently been designed by Frederick Law Olmsted as part of the Emerald Necklace and had become an important meeting place for cultural activities. The railroad tracks on neighboring Ipswich Street made further development, which might have impaired the lighting in the studios, very unlikely. The Symphony Hall , the Horticultural Hall and the New England Conservatory of Music were also located in the immediate vicinity . In particular, lecturers from the nearby School of the Museum of Fine Arts maintained studios in the Fenway Studios, and former students also rented a room there after graduating.
To date, more than 350 artists have rented Fenway Studios, including Joseph DeCamp , Edmund Tarbell , William McGregor Paxton , Charles Sydney Hopkinson , Gertrude Fiske , Ernest Lee Major , Margaret Fitzhugh Browne , George Loftus Noyes , Lilla Cabot Perry , RH Ives Gammell . Many of the works created there now hang in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston , in the art collections of the White House and the Massachusetts State House, and increasingly also in private collections. In the recent past György Kepes has also worked there, who founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the forerunner of today's MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology , and commissioned work for personalities such as Robert Frost , Dylan Thomas and Henry Kissinger carried out. Even Mary A. Reardon , inter alia, the ceiling mosaics in Washington Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception designed, was a tenant in the Fenway Studios. Katharine Lane Weems is one of the most famous sculptors who worked there .
In 1977 the heirs of the original owners of the studios came under increasing financial pressure and were forced to sell the building. To prevent conversion into a residential building and to preserve their studios, the tenants at the time founded the Artists for the Preservation of the Fenway Studios association , hired a consultant, made funds available for renovation work and acquired an option to purchase the entire building complex. In 1978 Fenway Studios was added to the National Register of Historic Places .
See also
- List of National Historic Landmarks in Boston
- List of entries on the National Register of Historic Places in southern Boston
Literature (selection)
A detailed list of references is provided by Malo et al., P. 23 ff.
- Nancy Hale: The life in the studio . Little, Brown, Boston 1969, OCLC 12651 (English).
- John Hilliard: Studios of Boston, No. 1: The Fenway Studios . In: Boston Art Club (ed.): Arts and Artists . tape 1 , no. 4 , September 1936, p. 2 (English).
- Mike Lipske: Fenway Studios, Boston . In: Artists' Housing: Creating Live / Work Space That Lasts . Publishing Center for Cultural Resources, New York 1988, ISBN 978-0-89062-231-5 , pp. 38-41 (English).
- Teri Malo, George Hagerty, Jan M. Sprawka, Laura Allis, Sidney Hurwitz, Nancy Allyn Jarzombek, Thomas Mairs, Robert Grady, Carolyn Pitts: National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. (PDF) National Park Service , February 23, 1998, accessed on September 2, 2016 (English, accessible via the "NR" button).