Horace Trumbauer: a Life in Architecture

THE PennsylvanialMagazine OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY Horace Trumbauer: A Life in Architecture IXT ITHIN MONTHS after g legal age, Horace Trumbauer pened his architectural office in Philadelphia. Before he died V in his native city nearly ha a century later, he had brought forth well over a thousand works. Remembered best for his mansions, he in fact devised buildings and alterations of virtually every size and purpose. Most stand in Philadelphia or its suburbs, although structures north to Maine and south to Florida, west to Colorado and east to England make him far from a local architect. While he had many gifted employees, their purpose was to carry out his intentions. Today he ranks as Phiadelphia's representative among the top tier of American architects of the Gilded Age. His life was dosely interwoven with the opulent era of architecture through which he lived. Born soon after the Civil War, the boy grew up in a nation freshly emerged as a world power, whose architects cast aside regional customs in favor of historic styles firmly within the European mainstream. Europe's own use of such styles had grown overly mannered so that the United States now led in architecture no less than in industry. First fruits of this period were still arising when Horace quit school at age fourteen to apprentice at an architectural firm. Going on his own in 1890, the twenty-one-year-old won instant approval from prosperous clients. Chief THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY Vol. CXXV,No. 4 (October 2001) FREDERICK PLAIT October celebrities of the era were its tycoons, and almost at once he began erecting immense residences for them. Yet this same era believed that public buildings--from libraries to railroad stations-must likewise be embellished, leading him to create many palaces for the people. World War I dampened the great epoch of mansions, whereupon he made an easy transition to the skyscrapers and other commercial structures of the 1920s, but once the Great Depression put a permanent end to his type of architecture, he soon vanished along with it. Like most architects of his time, Horace Trumbauer bore no allegiance to one particular style, although his predilection for eighteenth-century France is unmistakable. More often he found himselfworking in the English styles preferred by his patrons. Here too he favored eighteenth-century classicism, yet Gothic and Elizabethan were also in demand. Georgian from the American colonies was often revived for smaller houses. On occasion he made forays into Italian and Spanish or ancient Greek and Roman. As with his contemporaries, Trumbauer felt no compunction about copying anything from a bracket to a facade. With benefit of hindsight he regularly improved on his prototypes. Essentially he did what everybody else was doing except that he did it better. His plans are always efficient and dear, his structures extraordinarily solid, and he made the largest edifice appear compact, the smallest imposing. For a man who thought brilliantly in three dimensions, he lived in one alone: architecture. He had hobbies like gardening or collecting antiques but these proved variants on how he made his living. His position could have gained him access to the most elite of social and intellectual circles but he shied away from intimacy. Innately adept at his profession, he rather bumbled through the rest of his existence. Granting no interviews and writing letters that are strictly business, he might seem a difficult subject for biographers, yet his character reveals itself in the buildings that were his life (fig. 1). Outside his work, his only true concern was his family, although even in their company he quickly grew anxious to get back to his office. During his final years he made some effort to search out his genealogy! In figuring that ' Fred L. Nae (1902-1985), office assistant from 1924 to 1938, recalled when interviewed in 1974 that he had once been dispatched toTrumbauersville to borrow from Milton and Levi Trumbauer their family Bible so that the architect could dear up some points. Presumably this information made its way HORACE TRUMBAUER Fig. 1. Horace Trumbauer ca. 1900. Photo, Encydopedia of Pennsylvania Biography (New York, 1923), 14:282 (facing). his paternal ancestors emigrated from Germany in 1682, he must have relied on a year he knew, that in which Philadelphia was laid out. More likely they arrived nearly half a century later from the Black Forest region where their name had been "Trum" or "Trump," his line descending from an eldest son into posthbumous articles in Encyclopedia of American Biography (New York, 1940), 11:90-93 with portait lacing p. 90 and National Cytlopeca of American Biography(New York, 1940), 28:440-41 with portrait facing p. 440. Such background would earlier have been unavailable for the more perfinctory account in Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Biography (New York, 1923), 14:282, with facing portrait (reproduced here as fig. 1). FREDERICK PLATO October who inherited the fimily farm or "Bauer." Within one generation they would found the Bucks County village still called Trumbauersville. For the requisite participant in the American Revolution, he discovered a great-grandunde, Philip Trombour, a lieutenant in the New Milford comparq from Bucks County? His maternal forebears he put not unreasonably in Alsace-Loriaine, giving himself borderline roots in the France whose classical styles he adopted as his own. Fleeing the farm for Philadelphia, Josiah Blyer Trumbauer found employment in the dry-goods trade. On May 6, 1852, the derk4 aged twenty-seven, married Mary Malvina Fable, whose twenty-two years had been lived in the dty.3 The couple gave birth to two sons followed by two daughters. Promotion to salesman enabled a move to what then was almost the countryside. Now deep inside the northeast thumb of the city, Frankford had become pat of Philadelphia in the consolidation of 1854. Commuter traim on the Pennsylvania Railroad stopped ther, but the father more likely rode home on the horsecars that in 1860 had added Sunday to their schedules over the objection of local clergy.4 After a gap 2 During a 1983 interview, genealogist Charles L. Price, Jr, whose wife was of this stock, suggested these corrections to the architect's suppositions. Thomas Lynch Montgomery, ed., Penns *ismia Archives, set. 5 (Harrisburg, 1906), 5:400, led Horace Trmmbauer to the soldier known by one of several variants on a surname found throughout the region, where seled many Germans. Perennially the press has renamed the architect Thoinbauer, Thrumbauer, Trambaur, or Truimbar, not to mention changing his first name to Harold. Practicing simultaneously in Philadelphia was architect Werner Trumbower (1877-1931), much of whose nine must have ben spent in redirecting telephone calls. Contending for the most famous person sharing the name is Frankie Trumbauer (1901-1 956), the jazz musician, whose roots were midwestern. Conducted "by the Rev. Dr. Berg," his wedding to Mary Malvina Fable (Jan. 15, 1830-April 17, 1901) had been announced in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, May 10, 1852, 2. A brief obituary for Josiah Blyler Tnuimbauer (Feb. 18, 1825-July 5, 1908) is in the possession of Virginia Engels, granddaughter of the architect's youngest sister Because itssource remains unidentified (a Jenkintown newspaper?), the fullarticle is reprinted here: Josiah Blyler Trmbaucr died on Sunday last at his residence, 315 (soon renumbered 325] Hillside avenue, Jenkintown, after a protracted illness of several years' duration, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. His funeral was attended at 4 o'clock on Tuesday, 7th inst. The services and interment were private. Deceased was the father of Horace and Charles Q. Trumnauer, the former being the well-known Philadelphia architect, and three daughters, the Misses Clara and Elizabeth Trumbauer, ofJenkintown, and Mrs. J. B. Laneclere, Jr., of Norristown. Mr. Trumbauer was for years a member of the thy goods house of Hood, Bonbright & Co., of Philadelphia, and later a member of the firm of Young, Smith, Field & Co.He retired from business severa years ago. ' Frankford during Horace's boyhood is described in James Price, "Recollections of Frankford, 1855-1873," PapersRead Before the HistoricalSociety ofFrsnkford, 1 (1908), no. 7,13-37. Found on p. 30, the horsecars foreshadow the architect's two essential patrons. HORACE TRUMBAUER longer than the span that had produced the previous four children, the parents introduced two more into this new setting. At the family home on Powder Mill Road (now Wingohocking Street) Horace was born on Wednesday, December 30, 1868. His younger sister arrived two years later minus one day. Perhaps the idea that he came before his sister led his family to imagine his birthday was the 28th, his lifelong belief until at last he checked a family Bible. Sharing the same parents were almost two distinct families. Evidently the first four children scarcely ventured into the outside world. Alfred Fable, the eldest, left no record of employment, but his health may have been poor for he died at age thirty-nine. Second son Charles Querville was a dwarf or at least of stature diminutive enough to curtail his career, although in city directories he occasionally shows up in some position and living away from home. Clara Virginia and Elizabeth were maiden sisters, those essential characters in Victorian sagas. Coming after so long an interval, Horace (who was given no middle name) must have seemed a fresh start, entitled to all the abilities that attend the oldest child. Certifiably active beyond the family circle, he would eventually marry and move away. Likewise his younger sister Marie Louise at age twenty-four made a good marriage to rising attorney Jeremiah B. Larzelere, Jr., with whom she would give her parents their only grandchildren." Maybe his family's tendency to keep to themselves can also be found in his later shunning of publicity or a social fife.

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