Henry Richardson Shepley | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 1, 1887 |
| Died | November 24, 1962 (aged 75) |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Awards | Gold Medal, Architectural League of New York (1933); Fellow, American Institute of Architects (1936); National Academician, National Academy of Design (1943); Chevalier, Legion of Honor (1953); Gold Medal, American Academy of Arts and Letters (1958); Officer, Order of Orange-Nassau (1961) |
| Practice | Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott; Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott |
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Henry Richardson Shepley (May 1, 1887 – November 24, 1962) was an American architect in practice in Boston from 1924 until his death in 1962. He spent his entire career with the firm now known as Shepley Bulfinch, founded by his grandfather, Henry Hobson Richardson, in 1878.
Life and career
editHenry Richardson "Harry" Shepley was born May 1, 1887, in Brookline, Massachusetts, to George Foster Shepley, an architect, and Julia Hayden Shepley, née Richardson. His grandfather was architect Henry Hobson Richardson and his father was the senior partner of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, successors to his practice. He was educated at the Groton School and Harvard University, graduating from the latter in 1910. He then worked briefly for his late father's firm, now led by his uncle, Charles Allerton Coolidge. In August he traveled to Paris and was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in July 1911. He was awarded a diploma in February 1914. He then returned to Boston and rejoined the firm, renamed Coolidge & Shattuck the next year. While employed as a draftsman he was designer of the Harvard Phoenix – S K Club (1916).[1][2][3]
During World War I Shepley served in the construction division of the United States Army Air Service. In this capacity he was in charge of the construction all air service facilities in the Paris District, including Orly Field. After the armistice he was employed as architect to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, and was discharged in May of 1919. Over the next four years Shepley emerged as Coolidge & Shattuck's senior designer. When Shattuck died in 1923 Shepley proposed to form a partnership with Coolidge. Coolidge agreed, and in 1924 Shepley and two older employees became partners in the reorganized Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott.[1][2][3]
Under Coolidge, the firm approached design eclectically, borrowing as required from historical sources. This approach became more coherent as Shepley consolidated his control over the design process. The first major project where this was apparent was the Weill Cornell Medical Center (1932) in New York City, begun in 1927. Here, Shepley borrowed the severe fortified Gothic architecture of the Palais des Papes in Avignon to create a monumental and modern skyscraper hospital. In 1933 Shepley was awarded the Gold Medal of the Architectural League of New York for this work, which Lewis Mumford later called the "last smile of skyscraper romanticism."[4][3] While the hospital was being built, Shepley began experimenting with modern architecture. The first of these projects was the Biological Laboratories (1931) at Harvard University, a tentative piece of Moderne architecture in Harvard brick.[5] This was followed by the more confident new campus of Northeastern University (1938 et al.), won in competition in 1934.[6] These and other projects utilized modern detail but relied on Beaux-Arts principles of plan and composition.[3] These experiments contributed to Shepley forming a friendship with German architect Walter Gropius after he settled in the Boston area in 1937. Shepley, who was friendly with wealthy philanthropist Helen Storrow, convinced her to provide the land for, and fund the construction of, Gropius' house in Lincoln. Later, Shepley was a sponsor of Gropius' application for US citizenship. The firm's first full-fledged modernist building was the Lamont Library (1949) of Harvard University. This was designed principally by James Ford Clapp Jr. under Shepley's supervision and drew inspiration from the historic Georgian architecture of Harvard Yard as well as from Alvar Aalto's Viipuri Library (1935). While planning was underway, Aalto was commissioned to design the library's Woodberry Poetry Room in the Scandinavian style.[3][7]
When Coolidge died in 1936 Shepley succeeded him as senior partner, which he remained until his death. In 1952 the firm became Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott, with the addition of Joseph Priestley Richardson, another grandson of Richardson, to the partnership. About this time Shepley formally made Herman J. Voss, a long time designer for the firm, his senior deputy, a status which he had informally held for over twenty-five years. The firm's senior design team also included Jean Paul Carlhian and Harry N. Wijk, who worked under Voss' supervision. Carlhian would take over Shepley's dominant design role after his death. Shepley continued the firm's focus on institutional architecture, and designed buildings for many major institutions, including Boston Children's Hospital, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Northeastern University, Rhode Island Hospital, Smith College, Vanderbilt University, Vassar College and Wellesley College, among others.[2][3]
Honors and legacy
editLate in his career the firm was chosen to design the Netherlands American Cemetery, which was dedicated in 1960. In recognition of his design Shepley was made an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau by Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands.[8] This was the last major honor of many, others including: the Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1958), an honorary Doctor of Arts from Harvard University (1957), Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (1953) and the Gold Medal of the Architectural League of New York (1933).[2][3]
Shepley believed that knowledge of history, tradition and place were essential to the creation of good architecture, especially modern architecture. This places Shepley into the group of modernist architects who at mid-century were questioning the universal International Style and proposing instead a regional modernism which could be tailored to the conditions and traditions of a place, later articulated by Kenneth Frampton as critical regionalism. However, a regional modernism did not develop in New England during Shepley's lifetime: Harwell Hamilton Harris wrote that "[a] region may accept ideas ... [i]n New England ... European Modernism met a rigid and restrictive regionalism that at first resisted and then surrendered. New England accepted European Modernism whole because its own regionalism had been reduced to a collection of restrictions." On the occasion of the award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal, critic and historian Lewis Mumford described Shepley as "the robust conservator who has kept alive for modern architecture those human qualities that are threatened by our expansion and technological facility ... In the whole range of his work, the innovator and the conservator, too long set apart in opposite camps, often bitterly hostile, are not merely temporarily reconciled; they have become wedded for life."[9][10]
Personal life and public service
editIn 1919, four months after his discharge, Shepley was married to Anna Lowell Draper, née Gardiner, daughter of Robert Hallowell Gardiner III. They had five children, including four sons and one daughter. Their youngest son, Hugh, followed his father into the firm and became a partner in 1963.[1][2]
Shepley's public service began in 1936, when he was appointed to complete Coolidge's term on the United States Commission of Fine Arts. He served until 1940, acting as vice chair from 1938.[11][12] In 1938 he joined the board of trustees of the Carnegie Institution. In 1954 he was invited to join the new architectural advisory committee of the Foreign Buildings Office of the State Department, now the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations. This committee advised on both the selection of architects for and the design of new buildings for the use of the Foreign Service. One of the committee's first official acts was to recommend Edward Durell Stone, who had spent his formative professional years in Shepley's office, as architect for the new embassy in New Delhi. Shepley was appointed to a two year term, though he served three.[13] In 1957 he was appointed to a committee advising on the extension of the United States Capitol and to another which was responsible for the planning of Lincoln Center in New York City.[2]
Shepley was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a National Academician of the National Academy of Design. He was a member of the Country Club, the Harvard Club of Boston, the Somerset Club and the Tavern Club as well as of the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C.[2]
Shepley died November 24, 1962, at home in Boston at the age of 75.[2]
References
edit- 1 2 3 "Henry Richardson Shepley" in Secretary's Fourth Report, Harvard College Class of 1910 (Cambridge: Crimson Printing Company, printers, 1921): 379-380.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Henry Shepley dies; noted hub architect," Boston Globe, November 25, 1962.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Julia Heskel, Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott: Past to Present (Boston: Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott Inc., 1999)
- ↑ John Douglas Forbes, "Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott, architects; an introduction" in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 17, no. 3 (Fall 1958): 19-31.
- ↑ Bainbridge Bunting, Harvard: An Architectural History, ed. Margaret Henderson Floyd (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1985): 171.
- ↑ Peter Serenyi, "Gray Brick, Red Brick: Building a University" in Tradition and Innovation: Reflections on Northeastern University's First Century, ed. Linda Smith Rhoads (Boston: Northeastern University Publications, 1998): 23–40.
- ↑ Kari Jormakka, "Poetry in motion: Aalto's Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard" in Aalto in America, ed. Stanford Anderson, Gail Fenske and David Fixler (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012): 251-262.
- ↑ Edgar J. Driscoll Jr., "Henry Richardson Shepley designed Margraten cemetery: Queen of Netherlands honors hub architect," Boston Globe, April 2, 1961.
- ↑ "Architecture and tradition" in Architectural Record 124, no. 1 (July 1958): 9.
- ↑ Kenneth Frampton, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: six points for an architecture of resistance" in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (New York: New Press, 1998): 17-34.
- ↑ "Henry Richardson Shepley" in Harvard College Class of 1910, Thirtieth Anniversary Report (Cambridge: Cosmos Press, printers, 1940): 227-228.
- ↑ Henry R. Shepley, United States Commission of Fine Arts. Accessed September 21, 2022.
- ↑ Jane C. Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America's Embassies (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998): 123-126, 142-162 and 187-195.