Henry Van Brunt

Henry Van Brunt

Henry Van Brunt (born September 5, 1832 in Boston , Massachusetts , † April 8, 1903 in Milton ) was an American architect and author of books and articles on architectural topics.

Life

Originally from Boston, Van Brunt attended the Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard College in 1854 . He was George Snell's apprentice from 1854 to 1857 and then worked in New York for Richard Morris Hunt . During the Civil War , he served in the United States Navy , which he left on February 15, 1864 and returned to private life.

In the 1860s, Van Brunt founded the architecture firm Ware & Van Brunt together with William Robert Ware , whom he had met at Harvard . Together they designed a number of buildings in and around Boston, including Harvard University's Memorial Hall . In 1869 he married Alice S. Osborn and had six children with her. In 1874 he published a version of the book Discourses on architecture by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc , which he translated into English, and subsequently wrote his own books.

In 1881 he gave up the partnership with William Ware and founded the new company Van Brunt & Howe with his former employee Frank M. Howe . About six years later, he moved his office from Boston to Kansas City , Missouri , to be closer to the jobs his company handled - including stations for the Union Pacific Railroad in Ogden , Denver and Omaha, as well as administration buildings in Kansas City itself . Stylistically, his buildings are largely assigned to the Neo-Romanesque or the Richardsonian Romanesque style named after Henry Hobson Richardson .

In 1884 he was elected officer of the American Institute of Architects , and in 1899 he was president of the organization for one year.

In 1902 Van Brunt returned to Massachusetts and died a year later in Milton . He was buried in Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge .

Works by Ware & Van Brunt (selection)

year	Building	place	image	Remarks
1867	Ether Monument	Boston		Memorial in the Boston Public Garden in association with John Quincy Adams Ward
1867	First Church in Boston	Boston
1868	St. John's Memorial Chapel of the Episcopal Divinity School	Cambridge
1869	Adams Academy	Quincy
1870	Memorial Hall	Cambridge
1870	Weld Hall	Cambridge
1872	Charles Freeland's burial site in Mount Auburn Cemetery	Cambridge / Watertown
1875	Walter Hunnewell House	Wellesley
1881	Yorktown Memorial	Yorktown		In collaboration with John Quincy Adams Ward
1881	St. Stephen's Memorial Episcopal Church	Lynn

Works by Van Brunt & Howe (selection)

year	Building	place	image	Remarks
1881-1883	University of Michigan Library	Ann Arbor		1920 by Albert Kahn redesigned
1883	His home in Cambridge	Cambridge
1883	William Washington Gordon Monument	Savannah		Brief description with picture
1884	First National Bank building	Portland
1885	Cheyenne Union Depot	Cheyenne		Today the location of the Wyoming Transportation Museum
1887	Hoyt Library	Saginaw
1888	Cambridge Public Library	Cambridge
1890-1896	Portland Union Station	Portland
1893	Electricity Building and Wyoming Building of the World's Columbian Exposition	Chicago
1894	Spooner Hall of the University of Kansas	Lawrence
1895	Denver Union Station	Denver
1896-1898	American University's Hurst Hall	Washington
1904	Palace of Varied Industries at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition	St. Louis

Works (selection)

• Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc: Discourses on architecture . James R. Osgood, Boston 1875, OCLC 697617645 .
• Henry Van Brunt: On the present condition and prospects of architecture . In: Atlantic Monthly . tape 57 , no. 341 . Boston March 1886, OCLC 913339165 , p. 374-384 .
• Henry Van Brunt: Henry Hobson Richardson, Architect . In: Atlantic Monthly . tape 58 , no. 349 . Boston November 1886, OCLC 852165836 , p. 685-693 .
• Henry Van Brunt: Architecture in the West . In: Atlantic Monthly . tape 64 , no. 386 . Boston December 1889.
• Henry Van Brunt: Greek lines and other architectural essays . Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, New York 1893, OCLC 971536 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Henry Van Brunt in the WorldCat bibliographic database

Individual evidence

1. ^ Nora Murphy: MIT Libraries Archives. (PDF) William Robert Ware, 1832-1915. Massachusetts Institute of Technology , September 25, 2008, p. 4 , accessed March 9, 2016 .  
2. ^ Death list of a day . In: New York Times . New York April 9, 1903.
3. ^ Marquis Who Was Who in America 1607-1984.
4. ^ Society of Architectural Historians. Brief Biographies of American Architects Who Died Between 1897 and 1947.
5. ^ Institute of American Architects . In: New York Times . New York October 24, 1884, p.  5 .