Volume 37 Number 2 the Magazine of the Victorian Society in America
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Nineteenth Ce ntury The Magazine of the Victorian Society in America Volume 37 Number 2 Nineteenth Century hhh THE MAGAZINE OF THE VICTORIAN SOCIETY IN AMERICA VOLuMe 37 • NuMBer 2 FALL 2017 Editor Contents Warren Ashworth Consulting Editor At a Crossroads William Ayres ARCHITECT CHARLES RUTAN AND HIS PHOTO ALbUM 2 Book Review Editor Maureen Meister Karen Zukowski Managing Editor / Graphic Designer The Marquand Music Room Wendy Midgett RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION 8 Printed by Official Offset Corp. Alexis Goodin and Kathleen M. Morris Amityville, New York Committee on Publications A Musicale for the Maestro Chair Warren Ashworth ANTONíN DVORAK, JEANNETTE THURbER William Ayres AND THE NATIONAL CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC OF AMERICA 18 Anne-Taylor Cahill Majda Kallab Whitaker Christopher Forbes Sally Buchanan Kinsey Michael J. Lewis Coaching Through the Gilded Age 30 Barbara J. Mitnick Jaclyn Spainhour Merri Ferrell Karen Zukowski For information on The Victorian Society in America, contact the national office: 1636 Sansom Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 636-9872 Fax (215) 636-9873 [email protected] Departments www.victoriansociety.org 40 Preservation Diary THE CAPITOL DOME RESTORATION Ralph Muldrow 42 The Bibliophilist 46 Editorial 49 Contributors Roberta A. Mayer Jaclyn Spainhour 47 Milestones Karen Zukowski TO PAINT A QUEEN Anne-Taylor Cahill Cover: Society on a Park Drag, as seen in the photograph album of August Belmont II. Private collection. Drafting room, office of Henry Hobson Richardson, brookline, Massachusetts, c.1880. Courtesy Public Library of brookline, Massachusetts. At a Crossroads ARCHITECT CHARLES RUTAN AND HIS PHOTO ALbUM Maureen Meister The photographs are what people prize. When the time comes others who had been involved with the building. Two more for the family of an architect to confront the records of a career, photos are the same size as the Malden library photos. One the members typically discard most of the papers, but the captures a scene in the drafting room that was attached to photographs give pause. “Let’s keep those.” That’s what Richardson’s brookline home, while another shows the happened after the death of Charles Hercules Rutan, a devoted architect’s famous study. One more print, just a little less wide, employee of the country’s most prominent late nineteenth- presents a still life of artifacts from the office: balusters, century architect, Henry Hobson Richardson. Rutan’s ironwork, a vase, and a candelabrum. Four photographs of 1 photograph album was set aside, passed down to his grandson, Richardson’s study belong to a different group. Measuring 7 2⁄ by 1 and eventually landed in the public library in brookline, 9 2⁄ inches, they include a print of an image published in 1888 in Massachusetts. At some point, the pages were pulled apart. After Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer’s Henry Hobson Richardson they reached the library, they were never cataloged, and the and His Works .2 The album’s remaining photographs are scenes donor’s name was not recorded. The loose sheets were safely from brookline, three measuring 6 by 8 inches and three others 1 preserved, however, housed in a gray acid-free box labeled “H. measuring 6 by 8 4⁄ inches, suggesting that they were printed H. Richardson Photographs.” They were seen by a few eyes, after two separate outings with the camera. Except for the four including my own, and I filed away photocopies of a couple of images of Richardson’s study, staged and professionally taken, the images. I was both fascinated and mystified by them. To the pictures are informal. They include friends and favorite whom did they originally belong? Several years later, no one places, which led me to believe that the person who assembled could find the pages. On a whim this past winter, I contacted the the photos also was the photographer. library staff, wondering whether the photographs had turned up. Hand-written labels appear on eight of the album pages, They had not. but a few days later, a librarian got in touch with obviously attributable to two different people. Notes in blue ink me to report that she had located the box and its contents. 1 were made first, in a shaky penmanship indicating that the Now I was excited and began to investigate who created the writer was probably elderly. On one of the Malden library album. My research led me to libraries and archives as well as photos, the subject is identified as “bob Andrews.” Another is sources online, and eventually I realized that the album was “billy Kent.” The writer, I deduced, was once on intimate terms assembled by Rutan. Arriving at this conclusion was gratifying, with these young men, Robert Day Andrews and William but it also raised new questions. I wondered how the set of Winthrop Kent, both of whom trained with Richardson. 3 based photos was like other collections of the period. I also wondered on the content of the photos and the nicknames penned in blue what the album pages might reveal about Rutan’s life and career. ink, I suspected that the album originally belonged to a young To be sure, any set of nineteenth-century photographs owned by architect who worked for Richardson. Captions in pencil were a noted architect is compelling, but this group struck me as written later. The hand is firm and confident, but the author was especially interesting. Not a study collection of great monuments uncertain about the material, as indicated by “Malden Library?” and not a collection of photographs intended to document an in one example. This writer clearly was far removed from the architect’s buildings, this set of pictures was personal in nature. album’s creator. Shot, printed, and glued into the album during the mid-1880s, A review of the major publications on Richardson proved to the photographs, I learned, were preserved during a period when be fruitful. Most important was James F. O’Gorman’s 1974 book Rutan faced a crossroads in his career. Would he stay with H. H. Richardson and His Office: A Centennial of His Move to Richardson? Would he sign on with New York architect Charles Boston . Paging through it, I was drawn to an illustration of the McKim? Would he be happy in a partnership with boston Richardson office drafting room—an image that’s identical to a architects George Shepley and Charles Coolidge? photograph in the set from the album. Furthermore, the source for the illustration was someone named Charles Rutan Searching for Clues Strickland. 4 I soon learned that Strickland was Charles Rutan’s When I encountered the newly located photographs, I found that grandson, and he appreciated the growing scholarly and popular a close examination of the pages and images was informative. interest in Richardson and his former employees. It seems likely My understanding of what I saw benefited from my familiarity that after O’Gorman’s book was issued, Strickland or an with the Richardson literature, his staff, and the town of individual close to him donated the album pages to the brookline. Seventeen pages from the album survive, measuring brookline library. 3 9 by 10 4⁄ inches, with a single print mounted on each sheet of My research next focused on Rutan. Hunting online, I found paper. The photos can be grouped by subject and size. Four were information and images relating to several houses that he taken at the Converse Memorial Library in Malden, designed. One of the houses was a duplex in brookline that’s the Massachusetts, designed by Richardson and dating from 1883- subject of one of the album photos. 5 Here was an instance where 1 1885. These prints are all the same dimensions, 6 by 8 8⁄ inches, the architect was documenting his work. With these discoveries, and each image includes one or more men—staff and perhaps it became clear to me that the mysterious pages preserved by the 3 brookline library came from an album that first belonged to The firm’s first challenge was to finish the projects that were Rutan. under way when Richardson died. Among these were the As for dating the pictures, I was able to do that fairly readily. Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail, 1883-1888, in Pittsburgh In the photos taken at the Malden library, the staff appears to and the Marshall Field Wholesale Store, 1885-1887, in Chicago. 16 have gathered there shortly before or after the building was both Shepley and Coolidge brought in clients and both were dedicated. Festivities marking the opening took place on designers, whereas Rutan handled the engineering and October 1, 1885. The photograph of the duplex that Rutan construction. 17 The firm would design the original campus designed probably also dates from this period. A drawing of the buildings for Stanford University in Palo Alto, begun in 1888, house was published in the American Architect and Building and a new campus for the Harvard Medical School, boston, News on May 2, 1885. The photos that document Richardson’s 1906. They designed buildings for the Chicago Public Library study, taken for the Van Rensselaer book, were made after (now the Chicago Cultural Center), 1892, and the Art Institute of Richardson died in 1886. 6 It should be noted that because the Chicago, 1893, as well as the west porch for Trinity Church, album pages have been pulled apart, the sequence of the images boston, 1894-1897. 18 Rutan must have found brookline can’t be determined. When seen together, however, the set agreeable, for he spent the rest of his life there. 19 He died on reflects a narrow and important period in Rutan’s life—the mid- December 17, 1914.