architectural historian

Brown, Glenn (13 September 1854–22 April 1932), architect, was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, the son of Bedford Brown II, a physician, and Mary E. Simpson. Between 1871 and 1873 Brown attended Washington and Lee University, receiving a traditional education in the classics, and at age nineteen returned to Alexandria to become his father’s apprentice in preparation for a career in medicine. Brown soon thereafter discovered an aptitude for design, however, and attended the architecture school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston from 1875 to 1876. While in Boston, he found employment with the contracting firm of Norcross Brothers, builders of much of master architect ...

Eidlitz, Leopold (29 March 1823–22 March 1908), architect and architectural theorist, the son of Adolf Eidlitz (occupation unknown) and Julia (maiden name unknown), was born in Prague, Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia), and studied at the Vienna Polytechnic. He came to the United States in 1843 and found ready acceptance in ...

Fowler, Orson Squire (11 October 1809–18 August 1887), phrenologist and publisher, was born in Cohocton, Steuben County, New York, the son of Horace Fowler, a farmer, and Martha Howe. He was graduated from Amherst College in 1834 and in 1835 married Eliza Brevoort Chevalier, a widow, by whom he had two children. Though educated for the ministry, he devoted himself to phrenology, the “science” of the mind that was formulated by Franz Joseph Gall and introduced to the United States by Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. Phrenology postulated that, because the brain was the organ of the mind and shaped the skull, there was an observable concomitance between the mind (talents, disposition, character) and the shape of the head. In an analysis, a phrenologist examined the latter to determine the former. Immediately after graduation Fowler started his professional career as itinerant practical phrenologist in New England. Using charts and a phrenological bust, he lectured on phrenology and analyzed heads, sizing “organs” or “faculties” such as amativeness, combativeness, firmness, and ideality to determine character. It was believed that each faculty manifested itself through its own cerebral organ, the size of which indicated its functional power. The size of the organ, it was believed, could be increased or decreased by exercise....

Frothingham, Arthur Lincoln (21 June 1859–28 July 1923), archaeologist and historian of art and architecture, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Arthur Lincoln Frothingham, an author and amateur art collector, and Jessie Peabody. The Frothinghams enjoyed a certain degree of prosperity, moving to Italy when Arthur was five years old in order to protect his delicate health. Living first in Florence, the family later moved to Rome, where Frothingham spoke and wrote Italian as his first language. He attended the Academy of the Christian Brothers from 1868 to 1873 and the Catholic seminary of St. Apollinare and the Royal University from 1875 to 1881. In 1883 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig in Germany. Having become a fellow in Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University in 1882, Frothingham remained there as lecturer until 1887, when he accepted a position at Princeton University. He was appointed full professor at Princeton, first of archaeology and the history of art (1896–1898), and then, of ancient history and archaeology (1898–1905). He remained at Princeton until retiring in 1906. In January 1897 he married Helen Bulkley Post; the couple had no children....

Gilman, Arthur Delavan (05 November 1821–11 July 1882), architect and critic, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the son of Arthur Gilman, a prosperous merchant, and his third wife Elizabeth Marquand, widow of Samuel Allyne Otis. After attending Dummer Academy, he entered Trinity (then Washington) College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1838 but withdrew in 1840 due to difficulty with his eyes. After recovering, he briefly studied law, developing the trenchant debating and writing style that shortly emerged in three brilliant articles for the ...

Hamlin, Alfred Dwight Foster (18 September 1855–21 March 1926), architectural educator, was born near Constantinople, Turkey, the son of Cyrus Hamlin, a Protestant missionary, educator, and founder of Robert College, and Harriet Martha Lovell. After a preparatory education in his father’s American school in Turkey, Hamlin embarked for the United States to attend Amherst College in 1871. A brilliant student in the classical Congregationalist education offered there, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, won several academic prizes, and graduated with honors in 1875....

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell (03 June 1903–19 February 1987), architectural historian, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Henry Russell Hitchcock, a physician, and Alice Davis. Hitchcock added the hyphen to his name at some point before 1929. Raised in Plymouth, Massachusetts, he traced his ancestry back to the Mayflower. He entered Harvard in 1921 and received an A.B. in 1924. The art history program at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard trained its students to scrutinize art objects; this formalistic approach usually was reserved for painting and sculpture, but Hitchcock applied it to architecture. He was awarded a master’s degree at Harvard in 1927 and began a doctorate in architectural history of the Romanesque period, but he did not earn a Ph.D....

Kimball, Fiske (08 December 1888–14 August 1955), architectural historian, architect, and museum director, was born Sidney Fiske Kimball in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Edwin Fiske Kimball, an educator, and Ellen Leora Ripley. Kimball received a B.A. and a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard University in 1909 and 1912, respectively. According to Kimball, the education he and his colleagues received at Harvard caused them to pursue “teaching, writing and editing rather than practice.” Kimball began his career as an architectural educator at the University of Illinois at Urbana, where he was hired as an instructor for the 1912–1913 academic year. During the year Kimball met and married Marie Goebel, the daughter of a professor of German philology at the university. The couple had no children. The university’s nepotism rule prohibited Kimball’s reappointment, so he began the following fall semester as an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Michigan. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Kimball designed resort cottages in Michigan (1913–1915) and a residential tract in Ann Arbor (1914–1917). During this period the Kimballs began their research on the architectural works of ...

Kocher, A. Lawrence (24 July 1885–06 June 1969), architect, editor, and scholar of American colonial architecture, was born Alfred Lawrence Kocher in San Jose, California, the son of Rudolph Kocher, a Swiss-born jeweler and watchmaker, and Anna (maiden name unknown). He received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1909 and his M.A. from Pennsylvania State University in 1916. He studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1909 to 1912. In 1910 he married Amy Agnes Morder. She died of cancer prior to 1932, the year of his marriage to Margaret Taylor. He had two children....

Magonigle, Harold Van Buren (17 October 1867–29 August 1935), architect and critic, was born in Bergen Heights, New Jersey, the son of John Henry Magonigle, the business manager for actor Edwin Booth, and Katherine Celestine Devlin. Magonigle attended public school until the age of thirteen, when, because of financial troubles, his father apprenticed him as a student draftsman to the firm of Vaux & Radford. For almost twenty years he worked as a draftsman in various architectural offices, including Charles C. Haight (1882–1887), Rotch & Tilden (1893), and McKim, Mead & White (1887–1892 and 1896–1897). Magonigle won the Rotch Travelling Scholarship in 1894, which afforded him two years of study in Europe. In 1897 he entered into partnership with the architect Evarts Tracy; from 1899 to 1901 he was the head designer and draftsman for Schickel & Ditmars; and from 1901 to 1904 he practiced with the architect Henry W. Wilkinson. He opened his own office in New York in 1904. He married the painter and designer Edith Marion Day in 1900; they had no children....

Moore, Charles Herbert (10 April 1840–15 February 1930), painter, scholar, and educator, was born in New York City, the son of Charles Moore, a lace merchant, and Jane Maria Berendtson (anglicized as Benson). He attended New York public schools and began taking drawing lessons from the landscape painter Benjamin Coe by age thirteen. While still a teenager Moore began exhibiting his paintings at the National Academy of Design, supporting himself by selling landscapes to New York art dealers and teaching drawing and painting from Coe’s studios at New York University. During the early 1860s Moore’s sketching tours of the Hudson River valley increased in frequency and duration. His efforts during these trips are represented by four landscapes given to Vassar College by ...

Mumford, Lewis (09 October 1895–26 January 1990), urban historian and cultural critic, was born in Flushing, New York, the illegitimate son of Lewis Charles Mack, a Jewish businessman from New Jersey, and Elvina Conradina Baron Mumford, a German Protestant. Mumford never knew his father, learning his identity only in 1942. He grew up in a lower middle-class environment in Manhattan and in 1912 graduated from Stuyvesant High School, where he was chiefly interested in science and technology. New York’s museums and libraries contributed much to his education. Beginning in 1912 Mumford studied at City College, Columbia University, New York University, and the New School for Social Research. He earned enough credits for a degree but never graduated. Between 1914 and 1918 Mumford suffered from what he then regarded as incipient tuberculosis but which he later believed to have been a thyroid problem. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1918 to 1919. Having begun his career as a freelance writer, Mumford joined the staff of ...

Scully, Vincent Joseph, Jr. (21 Aug. 1920–30 Nov. 2017), architectural historian, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the only child of Vincent J. Scully, a car salesman, and Mary McCormick Scully, an amateur soprano. After attending public schools and graduating from Hillhouse High School, he entered Yale University in ...

Sturgis, Russell (16 October 1836–11 February 1909), architect and critic, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Russell Sturgis, Sr., a sea captain, and Margaret Dawes Appleton. Sturgis was raised and educated in New York City. After graduating from the Free Academy (later the College of the City of New York) in 1856, he was apprenticed to ...

Tallmadge, Thomas Eddy (24 April 1876–01 January 1940), architect, teacher, and author, was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Lewis Cass Tallmadge and Lida M. Eddy. Tallmadge received his architectural education from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a B.S. in 1898. His first job in architecture, in 1898, was as a draftsman in the Chicago office of ...

Tuthill, Louisa Caroline Huggins (06 July 1799–01 June 1879), author, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the daughter of Ebenezer Huggins, a prosperous merchant, and Mary Dickerman. Louisa was educated at seminaries for girls in New Haven and Litchfield, Connecticut. In 1817 she married Cornelius Tuthill, a minister from Hopewell, New York. They had four children. After continued ill health forced Cornelius to give up the ministry in 1818, he began editing the semiweekly literary periodical ...

Van Brunt, Henry (05 September 1832–08 April 1903), architect and author, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Commodore Gershom Jacques Van Brunt and Elizabeth Price Bradlee. A voracious reader and constant sketcher during his youth, he graduated from Harvard in 1854. He entered into apprenticeship under Boston architect George Snell soon after leaving Harvard, and he stayed there probably until 1857. Van Brunt remarked in his later years that this early training was not conducted under the most encouraging circumstances, and this fact probably contributed to his lifelong interest in the advancement of architectural education in the United States....

Warren, Herbert Langford (29 March 1857–27 June 1917), architect, architectural historian, and founder of the Harvard School of Architecture, was born in Manchester, England, the son of Samuel Mills Warren, an American of colonial ancestry, and Sarah Anne Broadfield of Bridgenorth, Shropshire, England. Both of Warren’s parents were missionaries. He had his early schooling in Manchester and then studied in Germany from 1869 to 1871. He returned to Manchester and attended Owen’s College from 1871 to 1875, at which time he entered the office of Manchester architect William Dawes as a draftsman. Warren came to the United States in 1876 and from 1877 to 1879 studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received no degree from either Owen’s or MIT. He then entered the office of ...