HAMMATT BILLINGS.

PORTRAITOFHAMMATTEULIJNGSBY(GE~RGEW. ?) HILL.W~ODENGRAVING (AFTER A DAGUERREOTYPE), Baltous’ Pictorial, APRIL 19, I 856 Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. OLD-TIME NEW ENGLAND d Quarterly 3Vagazine Devoted to th &z&t %uildings, Household Furnishings, Domestic &ts, 3lIanners and Customs, and &Minor chtipuities of the 3&ew England Teople

BULLETIN OF THE SOCIETYFOR THE PRESERVATIONOF NEW ENGLAND ANTIQUITIES

Volume LXII, No. 3 January-March I 9 72 Serial No. 227

Hammatt Billings, Artist and Architect

By RICHARD STODDARD DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA AND THEATER, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA . . ESIGNS for a pyrotechnical dis- apprentrcedhrmself to the architect Asher play on the Common, a Benjamin. Some years later he entered D case for a famous organ, a Pil- the office of Ammi B. Young, who was grim monument, a clubhouse, two engaged in building the Boston Custom churches, a theater, and a college build- House (1837-1847). It was said that ing-these were some of the commissions Hammatt Billings drafted many of undertaken by the versatile artist and Young’s plans for the interior of the new architect Charles Howland Hammatt bui1ding.l About this time he also studied Billings. wood engraving with Abel Bowen.* Born in Boston in 1818, Hammatt In 1842 Billings listed himself as an Billings (as he called himself after ~842) architect and designer in the Bostolz Di- was the eldest son of Ebenezer Billings, rectory. It seems that he worked mainly Jr., and Mary D. (Janes) Billings. His at design until 1846, when he established ancestors had been among the earliest an architectural office in partnership with settlers of Milton, , the his brother Joseph E. Billings (c. 1821- Billings family having kept the well- I 880). Their first important commission known Blue Hill Tavern in that town was the theater and exhibition hall called since the late seventeenth century. For a the Boston Museum (Fig. I), which few years during Hammatt’s childhood, opened on November 2, 1846. Located his father returned to Milton to run the on Tremont Street, near Court Street tavern, but by 1828 he settled down to a (on the site of the present Kimball Build- commercial clerkship in Boston, where ing), the Museum was a precociousand Hammatt attended the Mayhew School quite successfuladaptation of the round- and the English High School. As a child arched “Lombard” or “Venetian” style. he demonstrated a remarkable talent for Many observersjudged it to be an admir- drawing, and at the age of seventeen he able design, but it failed to please every- Old-Time New England one. A lively and-for this date-rather On August 26 the Courier permitted unusual debate about the architectural “One of the Profession” to reply to his merit of the building took place in the colleague’s letter. Denying that the Lom- pages of the Boston Courier and the Bos- bards were ignorant barbarians, he ton Post. In a letter to the editor of the praised the Museum for its “massiveness,

FIG. I. THE BOSTON MUSEUM, TREMONT STREET. DESIGNED BY HAMMATT BILLINGS AND BUILT IN I 846. PHOTO SHOWS ITASITAPPEAREDIN 1903 Courtesyof the Societyfor the Preservationof New England Antiquities.

Courier, August 22, 1846, a writer who repose and dignity.” The massiveness signed himself “Architect” attacked the would be destroyed, he believed, by design for lacking an appropriately grand changing the fenestration. A similar ex- and spacious entrance, for monotonous change in the pages of the Post drew the fenestration, and for its Lombard inspira- architect Arthur Gilman briefly into the tion (the Lombard reign in Italy being fray. On August 15, 1846, Gilman pub- “ignorant and barbarous”). lished a letter in which he called Ham- Hammatt Billings, Artist and Architect 59 matt Billings “my friend . . . one of the staircase in 1848 while the proprietors most learned, and at the same time most sought new funds to complete the inte- modest artists in the country” and re- rior. There was some resistance to the ferred to the Museum as a “beautiful domed and colonnaded vestibule included structure.” In the long run Gilman’s in Cabot’s plans. The original estimate of support was justified: the Boston Mu- the cost of the building had already been seum became a much-beloved Boston exceeded by $40,000, and Cabot’s plan landmark and continued to operate as a would be expensive. Some felt that more theater until its demolition in I 903.~ light was needed in the vestibule. The In the following years Hammatt Bil- events that brought Hammatt Billings lings became better known as an illustra- into the matter are obscure, but it is clear tor and designer than as an architect, but that he was consulted. As Ralph Waldo he never abandoned the practice of archi- Emerson remembered it: “The Cabots tecture. Until about I 85 I, and again af- built the Athenaurn; Billings went into ter 1865, he practiced in partnership with it and said, this hall and staircase want his brother Joseph, who specialized in greatness, and drew his plans. The Com- civil and naval engineering. In addition mittee and the Cabots assented at once, to the Museum, they undertook commis- and Billings was added to the Cabots as sions for the Temple Club (c. 1850) and one of the architects.“’ the Church of the Saviour ( I 846-1852). Billings’s first design for the vestibule The Church of the Saviour, or Second (Fig. 2) was sketched at the top of a note Unitarian Church, Bedford Street, was to Thomas G. Cary, chairman of the apparently Billings’s first essay in the building committee, in April, 1850.’ Gothic style. Perhaps it reflected the in- During the following summer, he for- fluence of his friend Arthur Gilman, an mally submitted this design, with its early champion of the Gothic in this coun- segmental-vaulted and compartmented try. Built of “rough Newark stone” at a ceiling, as well as two alternative designs. cost of $70,000, the church was begun in George Snell, Paul Schultz, and E. C. 1846 and dedicated November IO, Cabot also submitted designs. On Octo- 1852.~ Its pretty tower and shaded ber 14, 1850, Billings’s first plan was churchyard provided for many years a adopted by the proprietors, and in No- pleasant relief from the commercial hum- vember Cabot agreed to supervise con- drum of Bedford Street. In I 883 Charles struction of the vestibule according to the Cummings recalled the church as a new scheme, with some modifications of “graceful and effective composition his own. Charles Sumner, a member of whose destruction a few years since, to the building committee, reportedly per- make room for a warehouse, was a real suaded Billings and Cabot to model one misfortune.“5 of the staircases on Bernini’s “Scala In 1850 the proprietors of the Boston Regia” in the papal palace at the Vatican. Athenaum were engaged in finishing the The “Sumner staircase,” as it came to be interior of their new building at 10% called, was taken down in 1889.’ What- Beacon Street, designed by Edward C. ever remained of Billings’s work was Cabot (assisted perhaps by his brother probably removed when the Athenaeum James Elliot Cabot). The vestibule had was reconstructed in 1913-1915 ; more been temporarily fitted up with an iron research is needed on this point. FIG. 2. HAMMATT BILLINGS, DESIGNS FOR THE VESTIBULE OF THE BOSTON ATHENJEUM, 1850 Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum. Photo by George M. Cushing.

FIG. 3. HAMMATT BILLINGS, l=LAN AND ELEVATION OF COLLEGE HALL, WELLESLEY COLLEGE, I8 7 I Courtesy of the Wellesley College Library. Photo by Chalue. Hammatt Billings, Artist and Architect 61

Hammatt Billings also designed the The church was closedin the fall of I 970 Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic As- after a fire had damaged the interior, and sociation Building ( I 860)) Bedford and it has since fallen into disrepair. The New Chauncy streets, adjoining the Church Hope Baptist Church (Rev. Madison of the Saviour. Described as “Italian Re- Bryson, pastor) has recently purchased naissance” in style, this design may be the building from the Methodist Board of interpreted in relation to the tremendous Missions. Happily, the new congregation commercial growth of the city in the plans no extensive alterations. The decade of the 1850s. It seems that Bil- church is one of the finest public buildings lings caught the confidence and expan- in the South End-certainly the only one sivenessof those bustling years. Leaving conceived on a hat-and it should be pre- behind the simplicity and directnessof the served with as few changes as possible. Boston Museum and the Temple Club, Hammatt Billings’s largest architec- he created a florid, eclectic style charac- tural commission was the first building terized by pavilions, pilastered windows, at Wellesley College, in whose qoo-odd statuary in niches, and heavy neobaroque rooms the entire faculty and student ornament. He again employed the florid body lived and worked for many years. style in his Cathedral Building (c. I 874)) Called College Hall, it was located on a Franklin and Devonshire streets, built to rise overlooking Lake Waban, where replace an earlier building of the same Tower Hall is situated today. The name destroyed in the fire of 1872. Both founder of the college, Henry F. Durant, structures have long since been demol- had originally intended the site for his ished.’ country house. Durant took a keen in- The Tremont Methodist Episcopal terest in the building of College Hall; in- Church, which still stands at the corner deed, it seems that the final design was of Tremont and West Concord streets as much his own as it was Billings’s.ll in the South End, was dedicated on Janu- Construction was begun in I 87 I. No ary I, 1862. One of Billings’s best de- contracts were let, the entire project be- signs, this picturesque Gothic church was ing executed by day labor, with the built under the architect’s supervision by founder on hand daily, rain or shine, to Shepherd S. Woodcock and G. F. supervise the workmen. Billings’s plan Meacham.l” On November 17, 1874, a and elevation have been preserved at the few days after Billings’s death, the Bos- Wellesley College Library (Fig. 3) : a ton Morning Journal related a curious straightforward French Second Empire anecdote about the conception of the de- design with a central pavilion, somewhat sign : reminiscent of James Renwick’s Vassar College ( 1865). The many queries and Among the many achievements of the late notes on the design demonstrate Durant’s Hammatt Billings, the Methodist church on Tremont street will long remain a monument close supervision. to his taste. When he was asked to draw a de- Billings died November 14, I 874, sign for the exterior of that church, he walked nearly a year before College Hall was to the spot to seethe shape of the lot. Standing completed. Clearly, Durant discussed on the corner, he drew upon a piece of paper, some changes with the architect while he resting on his hat, the outline of the structure, was still alive, but after his death the to which he subsequently added a few slight embellishments. It was the work of a few founder apparently altered the design minutes. freely. The result was a curious melange 62 Old-Time New England

of Gothic, Italianate, and French Aca- tor, Ballou especially appreciated Bil- demic elements. (Cover.) College Hall lings’s talent for turning out quick work served its varied purposes well for many on many subjects: years, but it came to be considered a fire- As a designer on wood he is without a rival in trap, and when it was destroyed by fire this country, and only one English artist, [Sir March I 7, 1914, the students who lived John] Gilbert, can compare with him. We do there had been so well drilled that they not mean by this that there are not artists who cultivate specialties who might not surpass Mr. all escaped without injury.” Billings in their particular lines, such as heads, Information on Hammatt Billings’s marine drawings, or architecture, but we know architectural activity is still incomplete. of no one who draws so many things so well. Most likely he designed many more . . . Perhaps his forte is in the drawing and grouping of the human figure. All his figures buildings than those already mentioned. have a naturalness and correctness on whatever Bainbridge Bunting has reasonably con- scale they are drawn. . . . Nothing can exceed jectured that Billings furnished plans for the mingled precision and freedom of his residences in the Back Bay,13 but evidence drawings on the wood. The effect is always good, and there is just enough of detail to con- is lacking. In noticing Billings’s death, the vey his idea perfectly to an engraver of taste Boston Daily Advertiser, November 16, and feeling. The facility with which Mr. Bil- 1874, remarked that he was not well lings executes these beautiful works is truly re- known as an architect because “his work markable. He will dash off a design in two or three hours, which would cost an ordinary was largely done for others in his profes- draughtsman as many days labor. He rarely, if sion.” ever, makes a sketch of his works on paper, but About 1847 Billings began his long sits down to the prepared block and makes his and prolific activity as an illustrator of drawing as rapidly and correctly as if he were tracing a design instead of originating it. He books and magazines. Among the dozens conceives his design so clearly and distinctly in of books he illustrated were Whittier’s his mind that he actually sees it in the wood Poems (Boston: Mussey, 1850), Haw- before him. . . . His faculties have been so care- thorne’s A Wonder-Book for Girls and fully trained that without the aid of lines and compasses, he can reduce a drawing to any scale Boys (Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, by the aid of the eye alone. 1852), Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Toms’ Cabin (Boston: Jewett, 1853), Tenny- Billings’s facility (if he were practicing son’s Poems (Boston: Tilton, I 866), now he might be called “slick”) was per- and Dickens’s A Childs’ Dream of a Star haps too great for the good of his reputa- (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 187 I). tion. Today his illustrations have been When Gleason’s Pictorial was established forgotten while more careful and finished in Boston in I 85 I, Billings found a ready work such as Winslow Homer’s is col- market for his illustrations. He put his lected and reproduced. Yet Billings’s hand to all kinds of scenes for the Pic- versatile work for the Pictorial has a deli- to&al-topical, architectural, fanciful- cacy and ease all its own. In his day he and earned the respect of M. M. Ballou, enjoyed a reputation justifying Ballou’s the editor and later proprietor of the praise. At his death the Boston D&y magazine. In the issue of April 19, 1856, Globe, November 16, 1874, commented Ballous’ Pictorial printed an article ful- that his illustrations of popular works had somely praising the artist, with an accom- made his name a “household word where panying portrait engraved by one Hill art is appreciated.” (probably George W. Hill) after a da- Hammatt Billings was also well guerreotype. (Frontispiece.) As an edi- known as a designer of monuments, both Hammatt Billings,Artist and Architect civic and cemetery, and it is for his Na- articles written and illustrated by him- tional Monument to the Forefathers in self.‘? The inflation of the years after the Plymouth (Fig. 4) that he is best remem- war forced him to propose halving the bered. Early in 1855 the Pilgrim Society size of the monument, making it 81 feet of Plymouth advertised a competition for high (a 36-foot figure of Faith on a 45- the design of a Forefathers monument, foot pedestal, with subsidiary figures). and in due course the trustees selected a The Pilgrim Society graciously agreed design by “two Hungarian gentleman of to this proposal in 1874, soon before Bil- New York, Messrs. Zucker and As- lings died. both.“14 The Society intended to proceed Joseph E. Billings carried on the work to erect the monument at its own ex- after his brother’s death. In I 875 he pense. However, in April or May, 1855, commissioned the well-known sculptor Hammatt Billings proposed a plan by William Rimmer to make a 9-foot plaster which he would raise the money himself, model of the figure of Faith. The sculp- indemnifying the Society against loss, tor’s model, based on the Venus de Milo, if the trustees would accept his own de- was clad in draperies too thin and clinging sign. This was a colossal composition for Joseph Billings’s taste. He turned 153 feet high--comprising a figure of Rimmer’s work over to a little-known Faith 70 feet high on an 83-foot-high sculptor named Perry (probably John D. pedestal, projecting from the base of Perry), who thickened the drapery and which were four buttresses supporting JO- altered the head.‘* Funds for the sub- foot figures of Law, Morality, Educa- sidiary figures of Law, Morality, Educa- tion, and Freedom. The trustees, shrewd tion, and Freedom, and for the sculp- businessmen, were suitably impressed. tured panels on the faces of the buttresses, Tossing out Zucker and Asboth’s design, were hard to find, and the monument they signed a contract with Billings, was not completed until 1889. Some granting him permission to raise sub- years ago, it was considered a Victorian scriptions in the Society’s name, while he folly, but it has come to be regarded with agreed to complete the Monument to the affection by many Plymouth residents Forefathers within twelve years. Billings and visitors. also agreed to design and erect a canopy Another of Hammatt Billings’s monu- over Plymouth Rock within four years.15 mental projects, a memorial for the Civil The cornerstone of the canopy was War dead of Boston, was frustrated by finally laid in 1859, but it was not fin- politics. On May 4, 1866, the Boston ished until 1866. The Civil War inter- City Council advertised a competition for vened, raising costs and delaying work a Soldier’s Monument to be erected on on the monument. Billings organized a Flagstaff Hill in Boston Common. By nationwide fund-raising campaign, offer- June 18 fifteen designs had been sub- ing a ao-inch-high bronze model of the mitted. The councilors, finding none of monument to $ IOO subscribers, a 3o-inch them satisfactory, invited Hammatt Bil- bronze and silver model to $500 sub- lings and others to compete, and in No- scribers, and a “splendid” 36-inch model vember they unanimously selected Bil- to $1,000 subscribers.l’ In connection lings’s design. A photograph of his pro- with the fund raising he published The posal has been preserved at the Boston Illustrated Pilgrim ALmannc (later The Public Library. (Fig. 5.) He estimated Illustrated Pilgrim Memorial), including the cost at $IOO,OOO. The Council has- FIG. 4. THE NATIONAL MONUMENT FIG. 6. HAMMATT BILLINGS, UNEXE- FIG. 5. HAMMATT BILLINGS, UNRE- TO THE FOREFATHERS, PLYMOUTH, CUTED DESIGN FOR A MINUTE-MAN ALIZED DESIGN FOR A MONUMENT MASSACHUSETTS, 1875-1889. MONUMENT, C. 1860, INTENDED FOR TO THE CIVIL WAR DEAD, 1866, IN- DESIGNED BY HAMMATT BILLINGS ERECTION IN LEXINGTON, MASSA- TENDED FOR ERECTION ON FLAC- Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation CHUSETTS. FROM Americnn Architect STAFF HILL, BOSTON COMMON of New England Antiquities. and Building News, JULY 9, 1881 From a photograph in the Print Department, Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation . of New England Antiquities. Hammatt Billings, Artist and Architect 65 tened to have the foundation laid before lamented its fate in an article for the a new government came in in January, American Architect 63 Building News: I 867. When the new councilors solicited “It has more reach, nerve, bigness and proposals for the construction of the sweep in it than any statue or design for a monument itself, they found that the statue we have ever Seen by an Ameri- work could not be accomplished for less can.” than $ I 60,000. Billings modified the de- Hammatt Billings’s career as a de- sign to reduce the cost to $125,000, but signer included such miscellaneous com- even this amount failed to receive the ap- missions as a proposal for laying out the proval of the necessary two-thirds of the Public Garden in Boston, executed for Council members. The site was resodded GZen~on’~ Pictorial in I 85 3 ; the emblem- and the scheme forgotten until 187 I, atic fireworks for the Fourth of July when a new competition was an- celebration on Boston Common in 1853; nounced.lg Martin Milmore entered the relief sculpture and statuary for the ex- winning design, and it is his Soldiers’ and terior of a commercial building designed Sailors’ Monument that stands on Flag- by G. J. F. Bryant; the baroque walnut staff Hill today. case for the Great Organ in the Boston Billings’s project for a Minute-Man Music Hall (installed in 1863) ; the Monument to be erected by the Lexing- granite obelisk in Concord Square com- ton Monument Association was equally memorating the Civil War dead ill-fated. This association was incorpo- ( I 867) ; the attractive pedestal for Ball’s rated in 1850 for the purpose of erecting statue of Washington in the Public Gar- a Revolutionary War memorial in Lex- den (1869); and a number of private ington--something grander and more monuments in Mount Auburn Cemetery fashionable than the granite obelisk put and elsewhere.*” The Great Organ was up in 1799. As designed by Hammatt sold in 1884, stored, then sold again in Billings, it presented the soldier in cocked 1897 to E. F. Searles of Methuen, Mas- hat, waistcoat, long coat, and knee sachusetts, who built a hall for it at his breeches, a musket held upright at his house and rededicated it with a concert on left side, his right hand pointing dramati- December 9, 1909.~~ Still in its original cally into the distance. (Fig. 6.) Billings case, the organ continues in use today. also designed a huge engraved certificate In addition to his work as an architect, for presentation to donors. illustrator, and designer, Billings painted The Civil War and subsequent infia- in oils and watercolors and executed pen- tion, which almost did in the Monument and-ink drawings that were widely ap- to the Forefathers, definitely quashed the plauded. It was reported that he painted association’s plans, and Billings’s Minute- the following oils: “Sir Galahad,” “Ital- Man was never executed. In 1875, the ian Mother and Child,” “New England Town of Concord erected Daniel C. Scene in Winter,” “View on the French’s handsome bronze Minute-Man Thames,” and “Happy Hunting- at the Old North Bridge. French’s fig- Ground.” Among his drawings were “St. ure, his plow at his side, presents the Agnes’s Eve,” “The Sleeping Palace,” citizen-soldier concept more explicitly “The Lady of Shalott,” “The Angel of than Billings’s Minute-Man. But Bil- Death,” “Confidence,” “God’s Acre,” lings’s design won praise from Truman “The Supplication,” “The Ministering H. Bartlett (Rimmer’s biographer), who Angel, ” “Titania in Love,” and “Sym-

Continued on page 76.

FIG. 7. PORTRAIT OF EDU~ARD ELISHA PHELPS I'AIN'I‘ED BY HAMMAW BILLJNGS. OIL ON CANVAS, 3O”X 35” Coortrsy of the IIopki~~s Ccntcr. Art (;alIcrics, T)nrtnwuth Collcgc. 78 Old-Time New England

I 874, commented: “He was one of the located. The names of his pupils have not best known of his profession in the coun- yet come to light. When all the facts are try, having been engaged in nearly every in, Hammatt Billings may well emerge city in the United States.“) His activities as a major figure in the history of art and in England are still obscure, and many architecture in Victorian Boston. of his paintings and drawings cannot be

NOTES

l Obituaries in the Boston Daily Globe, Boston Museum,” New England Magazine, Boston Daily Advertiser, Boston Post, and Bos- n.s., XXVIII (1903), 378-396. ton Morning Journal, November t 6-i 7, ,874; 4 The Boston ALmanac for the Year 1854 Harold Ward Dana. “Ebenezer Billings of (Boston: Jewett; Cleveland: Jewett, Proctor & Milton, Mass., and Some of His Descendants,” Worthington [1854]), p. 59, including an il- New England Historic & ’ Genealogical Regis- lustration. In the Print Department of the ter, XC1 (July, 1937), 235-236; Albert K. Boston Public Library is a handsome photo- Teele, The History of Milton, Mass., 1640 to graph of the church jn 1860, by Southworth 1887 [Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, and Hawes. Suffolk Countv deeds. Lib. ceo. 2 <‘ ” I 8 8 71, p. I 7 I j George C. Grace and David H. fols. 196-197, dated April I, 1846, is an m- Wallace, The New-York Historical Societys’ teresting building contract between the au- Dictionary of Artists in America, 1.~64-1860 thorities of the church and Billings. (New Haven: Yale University Press, r957), p. 49. These accounts differ in identifying the 5 “Architecture in Boston ” in The Memo- place and year of Billings’s birth-some say rial History of Boston, ed. Jistin Winsor (Bos- Milton in I 8 I 8, others Boston in I 8 r 9. Grace ton: James R. Osgood & Co., 1881-1883)) IV, and Wallace’s date 1816 seems quite wrong, 484. since Billings’s parents were married on Sep- g Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. tember I 4, I 8 I 7 (Columbian Centinel, Septem- E. W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes (Boston and ber 17, I 8 I 7). Since Hammatt was their first New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., r909- child, since the Boston Directory lists his father 19x4), X, 250. as a hardware dealer in Union Street in s 8 I 8 r A.N.S. from Hammatt Billings to Thomas and r 8 19, and since his gravestone in Milton G. Cary, April 15, 1850, at the Boston Athe- Cemetery says he died on November I 4, I 8 74, naum. I am very grateful to Mr. David M. K. aged 56, it seems likely that he was born in McKibbin of the Athenaurn for bringing this Boston in I 8 I 8. In a six-page paper, “Hammatt item to my attention, as well as Emerson’s com- Billings, Artist and Architect,” read before the ment and other Billings material. Bostonian Society in 1920, Charles F. Read reached the same conclusion. Read’s paper, * Josiah Quincy, The History of the Boston preserved in manuscript at the Society, is un- AthenRum (Cambridge, Mass.: Metcalf and documented, but it furnished me with.several Co., 1851), pp. 192-237; William I. Fletcher, useful leads. I am grateful to Mrs. H. Rones “Some Recollections of the Boston Athenaeum, Cabot for bringing-this manuscript to my at- r86r-1866,” Library Jouwzal, XXXIX (Au- tention. gust, 19 14), 579. A photograph of the stair- Billings’s association with Benjamin and case is reproduced in The Athenaeum Centenary Young was noted in the Morning Journal ([Boston] : The Boston Athenaeum, I 907)) op- obituary, November 16, 1874. Some proof of posite p. I 86. his assistance in planning the Custom House g The Mechanic Association Building is il- mav be found in an engraved broadside, New lustrated in Edward Stanwood’s Boston Ilks- Custom House, Boston,- A. B. Young, Archt. trated (Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. [c. (Boston Public Librarv). with an elevation r878]), p. 75, and also in King’r Handbook “Drawn by C. H. Billings” and a notice of of Boston, 9th ed. (1889), p. 325. A later edi- copyright dated I 840. tion of Boston IZlustrated (Boston and New * William Henry Whitmore, “Abel Bowen,” York: Houghton Mifflin Co. [c. 1886]), p. 97, Bostonian Society Publications, I (I 886-r 888), includes an illustration of the second Cathedral 35. Building. * Howard M. Ticknor, “The Passing of the lo Boston Post, July 37, 1860; printed rec- Hammatt Billings, Artist and Architect ord of the dedication ceremony (Boston Uni- which he was paid $2,000, is illustrated in a versity Theological Library). The church is photograph following p. 50. On Perry, who illustrated in King’s Handbook, 9th ed. got $300 for his work, see Thieme-Becker, (1889), p. 186. XXVI] 444. T. H. Bartlett, “Civic Monuments I1 Florence Morse Kingsley, TAe Life of in New England.-IV,” American Architect E3 Henry Fowle Durant (New York and London: B&ding News, X (July 9, I 88 r ), I 6, criticizes Century Co., 1924), pp. 196-1973 paperbound the execution of the monument. souvenir, College Hall (Boston: N. Allen Lind- r9 , Reports of Proceed- sey & Co., Printers [c. I 9 I 51)) at the Wellesley ings, 1870 [Boston, 1871!], pp. 287-288. College Library. so Gleason’s Pictorial, IV (February z 6, r2 Boston Evening Transcript, March I 7, r853), 137, 143 (Public Garden proposal; re- ‘914. A kitchen wing, added after Billings’s cently reproduced in Back Bay Boston: The death, survived the fire and is now used to house Cite as a Work of Art [Boston: Museum of college employees. In his paper read before the Fink Arts, 19691); and v’ (July 9, 1853), 32 Bostonian Society, Charles Read stated that (fireworks) ; Boston Almanac for 1859, p. 5s Billings designed “several smaller buildings (Bryant building) ; New England H&.&c -53 and the lodges at the entrances” to the campus. Genealogical Register, XXI (July, 1867), 282 The two charming lodges are still in use. (Concord monument) ; William H. Downes, la Houser of Bostons’ Back Bay (Cam- “Monuments and Statues in Boston,” New En- bridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, gland Magazine, n.s., XI (November, 1894), 1967)> P. 157. 362 (pedestal). I4 Manuscript Minutes of the Pilgrim So- *I William King Cove& “The Old Boston ciety (P.S. Rec. Sec. Records, Vol. I), at Pil- Music Hall Organ,” OLD-TIME NEW EN- grim Hall, Plymouth, under date May 28, GLAND, XVIII (April, 1928), 182-189, in- 1855. cluding two photographs of the organ. r5 The Boston Almanac for the Year 1856, 22 Elizabeth H. Denio (camp.), Catalogue pp. 54-55, including an illustration; Minutes of the Works of Art Belonging to Wellerley of the Pilgrim Society; Old Plymouth: A College (Boston: Printed by Frank Wood, Guide to Its Localities and Objects of Interest 1883), pp. 18-19. (Plvmouth. Mass.: Old Colonv Memorial *3 Ibid., pp. r8-r9, 43-44, 72, noting that Press, 1878), pp. 66-81. Billings’s’canopy over Billings also executed a series of watercolors il- the Rock was removed in ,920. lustrating the life of Joseph and that he left un- re New England Historic &f Genealogical finished a series on the life of Moses. Register, XI (July, 1857), 283. 24 Hopkins Center Art Galleries, catalogue r’ These articles, it may be noted, were not nos. P.874.2 (Phelps) and P.X.37 (Smith). Billings’s only publications. He also wrote s5 Obituary, Boston Morning Journal, No- “Sketches of Mount Auburn ” for The Boston vember 16, 1874. Almanac for the Year 1857, pp. 49-60, with illustrations probably designed by himself. His 26 Registration no. a8144 50/50, with dates remarks on the “bizarre fancies” found at the from May to September, r 865. cemetery suggest that he was not sympathetic sr The Art Idea, ed. Benjamin Rowland, Jr. to the Egyptian Revival style and similar (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University fashions. The Morning Journal obituary, No- Press, 1960), pp. 196-197, 243. First pub- vember r 6, I 874, mentions “his many articles lished in 1864. -published and unpublished.” ss It may be noted, however, that the wood Is Truman H. Bartlett, The Art Life of engraver E. N. Tarbell was one of Billings’s William Rimmer (Boston: James R. Osgood boarders in 1860 (Grace and Wallace, Dic- and Co., 1882)) p. 87. Rimmer’s model, for tionary of Artists, p. 49).