Bertram Goodhue

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Image:GoodhueByLawrie.jpg Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (April 28, 1869 - April 23, 1924) was a renowned American architect celebrated for his work in neo-gothic design. He also designed notable type fonts, including the Cheltenham font and the Merrymount font for the Merrymount Press.

Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was born in Pomfret, Connecticut to Charles Wells Goodhue and his second wife, Helen (Eldredge) Grosvenor Goodhue. Due to financial constraints he was educated at home by his mother until, at age 11, he was sent to Russell's Collegiate and Military Institute. Finances prevented him from attending university, but he received an honorary degree from Trinity College in 1911. In lieu of formal training he moved to New York in 1884 to apprentice at the architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall and Russell (one of its principals, James Renwick, was the architect of Grace Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral, both in New York City). Goodhue's apprenticeship ended in 1891 when he won a design competition for St. Matthew’s in Dallas.

After completing his apprenticeship, Goodhue moved to Boston, where he was befriended by a group of young, artistic intellectuals involved in the founding of the Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston in 1897. This circle included Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard University and Ernest Fenellosa of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It was also through this group that Goodhue met Ralph Adams Cram, who would be his business partner for almost 25 years. Cram and Goodhue were members of several societies, including the Pewter Mugs and the Visionists. In 1892-93 they published a quarterly art magazine called The Knight Errant. The multitalented Goodhue was also a student of book design and typography, and created the Cheltenham typeface.

In 1891, Cram and Goodhue formed the architectural firm of Cram, Wentworth, and Goodhue, renamed Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson in 1898. The firm was a leader in neo-gothic architecture, with significant commissions from ecclesiastical, academic, and institutional clients. When Goodhue left to begin his own practice in 1914, Cram had already earned his dream Gothic commission at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Goodhue had successfully experimented with Bzyantine style at the conspicuous St. Bartholomew's Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City (built on the new platform just above the Grand Central Terminal railyards). Goodhue had an eye for ornament and wasn't above introducing contemporary images into the carved reredos. In 1915, Goodhue re-interpreted a masterful Spanish Gothic style for the signature buildings on the toylike avenue, El Prado, in Balboa Park for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, for which he was the lead designer.

Image:GoodhueRockefellerChapel.jpg Eventually, Goodhue’s architectural creations became lighter and more Romanesque, finally arriving at more modern interpretations of the gothic design. His work evidences his personal style, and his innovations paved the way for others to transition to modern architectural idioms. He is sometimes credited with the transition to art deco, as in his design for the Nebraska State Capitol building. Although best known for neo-gothic work, he is classified as an American Modernist.

Over the course of his career, Goodhue relied on frequent collaborations with several significant artists and artisans. These included sculptor Lee Lawrie and mosaicist and muralist Hildreth Meiere. Their work is central to the aesthetic power and social messages implicit in Goodhue's best work, creating evocative examples of American architecture parlante that suggest a future that never was. Lawrie worked with Cram and Goodhue for the Chapel at West Point, Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Bartholomew's, and the reredos at Church of St. Thomas, and then after Goodhue's independence in 1914, on the Nebraska State Capitol, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C., and Christ Church Cranbrook, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, the latter after Goodhue's death. Lawrie, Meiere, and "thematic consultant" Hartley Burr Alexander resassembled, in a way, for Rockefeller Center under architect Raymond Hood, who had also worked in Goodhue's office.

Goodhue was neurasthenic (plagued with fatigue and worry) and prone to extreme mood swings. His biographer Richard Oliver reports that he worried about money his whole life, even after achieving success. Goodhue died in New York City and, at his request, was buried at the building he considered his finest, the Church of the Intercession. There, Lee Lawrie created for him a Gothic styled tomb, featuring Goodhue recumbent, crowned by a halo of carvings of some of his buildings. After Goodhue's death, many of his designs and projects were completed by a successor firm, Mayers Murray & Phillip. A significant archive of Goodhue's correspondence, architectural drawings, and professional papers is held by the Avery Architecural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. Image:Goodhue tomb frieze by lee lawrie.jpg



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Buildings

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Web Resources

Online history of Hotel Washington in Panama

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References

  • Oliver, Richard. Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983 for the Architectural History Foundation. xii + 297 pp.; 146 illustrations, bibliography, index. ISBN 82008927
  • Whitaker, Charles Harris, ed. With text by Hartley Burr Alexander, Ralph Adams Cram, George Ellery Hale, Lee Lawrie, and C. Howard Walker. Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue: Architect and Master of Many Arts. New York: Press of the American Institute of Architects, Inc., 1925. ISBN 76022484de:Bertram Goodhue

fr:Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue

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