New York Landmarks Conservancy
Common Bond September 1995
Beaux-Arts Classicism
in New York State
From the 1890s until the First World War, American architects trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris created grand classical structures — including many houses of worship — that brought high drama, monumental scale, and gleaming marble to the nation.
In the late 19th century,
the opulence and sophisticated urbanity of Paris and its famous École des Beaux-Arts
attracted young Americans who became leaders of the architectural profession.
Their work is reflected throughout New York State, where numerous churches and
synagogues were built according to standards of the Beaux-Arts design philosphy.
The first architect to attend the École was Richard Morris Hunt, followed by
Henry Hobson Richardson, Charles F. McKim, and scores of others. Studies in
architectural theory, engineering, materials, and urban planning were complemented
by challenging exercises in sketching and production of presentation drawings
by students in studios supervised by practicing architects. As David Garrard
Lowe explains in his introduction to Beaux Arts New York, Classicism was the
supreme ideal at the École – not only the buildings of ancient Greece and Rome,
but also the architecture of the Italian and French Renaissance. The École produced
highly competent architects who incorporated rational planning and state-of-the-art
construction with the potent symbolism of classical imagery. American architects
brought back the skills and ambition to design monumental civic and institutional
buildings for growing cities.
Many of New York's most prominent landmarks exemplify Beaux-Arts Classicism:
the Statue of Liberty, the central pavilion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(Richard Morris Hunt, 1895), the New York Public Library (Carrère and Hastings,
1895-1902), Grand Central Terminal (Warren and Wetmore, 1903-1913), and the
U.S. Custom House at Bowling Green (Cass Gilbert, 1907), to name a few. In John
J.-G. Blumenson's guidebook Identifying American Architecture, characteristics
of these grandiose compositions include:
* projecting façades or pavilions
* colossal columns often grouped in pairs
* pronounced cornices
* enriched moldings
* free-standing statuary projecting above the cornice
* tall parapets, balustrades, or attic stories windows enframed by free-standing columns, balustraded sills, and pedimented entablatures on top.
Clear, symmetrical, and orderly plans based on movement through spatial sequences are important Beaux-Arts precepts. Dramatic spaces were paramount, with clear organization of the building program and responsiveness to the site. The planning discipline was applied to ecclesiastical complexes, which in the late 19th and early 20th century encompassed multiple liturgical, educational, and social-service functions.
Favored materials in Beaux-Arts Classicism were light-colored stone and brick, especially marble, limestone, and granite. The widespread use of these light materials changed the color of a city that had been dark with brick and brownstone at mid-century. Glazed architectural terra-cotta offered new possibilities for embellishment. Structural steel made possible huge spaces like the waiting room of Pennsylvania Station (McKim, Mead & White, 1902-11, demolished 1963), modeled on the Roman Baths of Caracalla. Steel frames clad in masonry were also the structural system of choice for urban houses of worship. Ceilings of structural Guastavino tile were effective for domes and groin vaults such as those found in the Immigration Hall on Ellis Island.
Perhaps the most surprising full realization of the Beaux Arts spirit in New York's places of worship is the First Church of Christ, Scientist, at Central Park West and 96th Street (Carrère and Hastings, 1899-1903). The city's oldest Christian Science congregation erected this striking church, which combines English Baroque massing and Mannerist details with French Renaissance. The façade has an entrance tower with a four-sided lantern and truncated polygonal spire. The roof shelters various rooms above the auditorium, which seats 2,000. Arching steel girders behind a richly ornamented plaster ceiling frame the auditorium and its balconies.
In Lackawanna, just outside
of Buffalo, Our Lady of Victory Basilica (Emile Uhlrich, 1922-26) is an ornate
Italian Baroque-inspired structure clad in white marble with twin towers 165
feet high and a soaring dome. Although a late example of the high Beaux-Arts
style, its lacks nothing in ambition, stylistic expression, and richness of
materials.
The American Renaissance
Simultaneous with Beaux-Arts Classicism was the closely related architectural
style called the Second Renaissance Revival (circa 1890-1930), which focused
on the more orderly qualities of the Italian Renaissance, rather than the often
flamboyant pictorialism associated with the high Beaux-Arts style. McKim, Mead
& White were the leaders in the use of this style, as well as of the movement
called the American Renaissance.
Inspired by both the Italian Renaissance and the Beaux-Arts model of architectural, painting, and sculpture conceived together in unified artistic conceptions, American architects, artists, and sculptors succeeded in creating a new American Renaissance. Among numerous artists who took part in this were stained-glass innovators John La Farge and Louis Comfort Tiffany; and sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French and Karl Bitter. Tiffany Studios and Herter Brothers decorated interiors lavishly. Every detail -- ornamental plaster, metalwork, lighting, mosaics, carved wooden pulpits and seating, and marble altars and rails -- was planned by the architect and associated artists.
One such collaboration that remains intact was the remodeling of the chancel of the Church of the Ascension at Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street in 1885-88. A sober, shallow chancel in Richard Upjohn's Gothic Revival brownstone church was transformed into an early masterpiece of the American Renaissance. Stanford White supervised a scheme inspired by the Italian Renaissance, featuring a large mural of the Ascension by John La Farge.
Beaux-Arts Classicism was a significant trend in synagogue architecture in the first decades of the 20th century. The first and foremost example is Congregation Shearith Israel (Brunner & Tryon, 1896-97). "Brunner justified its use by citing discoveries in Palestine of ancient synagogues -- all classical buildings," notes Samuel Gruber in American Synagogue Architecture (Common Bond Volume11/Number 1).
Many established Jewish congregations subsequently adopted Classicism because of these associations. Congregation Beth Elohim, at Eighth Avenue and Garfield Place in Brooklyn (Eisendrath and Horwitz, 1909), conveys the assertiveness of Beaux-Arts Classicism in its imposing portico placed diagonally across the corner.
Conclusion
The training received by American architects at the École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris in the late 19th century had a profound effect on American religious architecture.
It resulted in a formalized architectural profession that employed its mastery
of the classical language of architecture with urban planning, the allied arts,
and state-of-the-art building technology. Although monumental public buildings
represent the fullest realizations of Beaux-Arts Classicism, for houses of worship
architects delved deeply into Classical antiquity, the Italian and French Renaissance,
and later Baroque and Mannerist expressions of the Classical language for models.