H.H. Richardson in Buffalo - LINKS
H. H. Richardson's
John Jacob Glessner
House
and
Buffalo State Hospital Administration Building
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Glessner House |
Buffalo State Hospital Administration Building |
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Glessner:
Stone:
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Hospital:
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Glessner:
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Hospital: |
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Glessner: |
Hospital: |
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Glessner: Tower |
Hospital: |
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Glessner: Ornamented Engaged capital in front of building: lion? |
Hospital: Ornamented Engaged capital in front of building: plant motif |
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Glessner: Dormer |
Hospital: Dormer |
Since both the State Hospital and the Gratwick house were both designed in Romanesque style, it would interesting to compare them. This is difficult since the Gratwick house is lost forever. However, a greater appreciation of Richardson's Romanesque style may be gained by comparing the State Hospital administration building to another Romanesque style building: the Glessner House in Chicago.
The Glessner House
1800 S. Prairie Avenue, Chicago (now a museum)
John Jacob Glessner, a vice president for International Harvester, a farm
machinery
company centered in Chicago, moved to Chicago from Ohio in 1870. He and
his family
chose to live on fashionable Prairie Avenue, on the corner of Prairie and
18t. They
had lived in Chicago for 15 years,
many of those at a home on Washington Street. He commissioned Richardson,
who was
the leading architect of the time in Chicago.
The finished granite mansion — completed in 1887, a year after the
architect's
untimely death. — reminds many of a medieval fortress. Stone grates on the
ground-floor
windows, and slim openings on the side of the house recall medieval
archers’ slits.
This may not be accidental: the Glessners had experienced a break-in in a
previous
home. Glessner House was designed with a security system/burglar alarm,
which may
attest to the fear of intrusion.
What my attest to the small windows, grating on the ground floor and other
exterior
features is that Richardson designed the house as a winter residence,
which it was,
to have large windows in rooms exposed to southern winter light. For the
most part,
those rooms are family rooms and also rooms used for entertaining.
Another reason for the imposing exterior facades may be the privacy of the
Glessners,
who were not seeking an ostentatious home, but one that they were
comfortable with
and in and one which protected their privacy.
The house is not totally uninviting. The tree of life is found in the stone tympanum over the front door and lions grin in ornament between the egg-and-dart motif and the dentil course.
Buffalo State Hospital
400 Forest Avenue, Buffalo, New York
U.S. National Historic
Landmark
The Buffalo State Hospital was the first state asylum in Western New York. It is the first major example of Richardson's personal revival of Romanesque, the style with which his name is popularly identified.
The entire complex was comprised of ten connected buildings, with an additional administration building in the center. Patients were moved into the half finished complex in 1880, but the complete project was not finished until 1895, nine years after Richardson's death.
The administration building has monumental, medieval, double, identical towers (each 185 feet tall), each with four corner turrets and dramatically steep copper roofs mysteriously punctuated with dormered windows, all of which gave the administration building a rather sinister appearance — a complaint also heard about the Glessner house.
Architectural Style
Sources:
Color photos and their arrangement © 2002 Chuck LaChiusa
