A GEOGRAPHERS’ VIEW OF THE NEW ORLEANS AREA STRENGTH AND GRACE A Louisiana native brought Romanesque architecture to America The Howard Memorial Library, pictured here in 1900, is New Orleans’ only true H.H. Richardson-designed building. Library of Congress. NOLA.COM Richard Campanella
[email protected] uch of New Orleans culture derives from outside infl uences imported by newcomers, THE TIMES PICAYUNE THE whose traditions and tastes gradually syncre- tized locally intoM something distinct. The city has returned the favor, exporting 2016 , 8 its own indigenous innovations, such as Creole cooking, jazz and bounce music. JULY Then there are cases of New Orleanians portation” is the Romanesque architecture , who went off to create great things else- of Henry Hobson Richardson, a man so where, and whose works subsequently found associated with this distinctive style that their way back home as part of a broader colleagues started naming it in his honor A portrait of H.H. Richardson hangs in the FRIDAY national diff usion. within a few years of his death, a rarity in National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. One such example of that cultural “reim- the industry. Photo by Richard Campanella H6 H.H. Richardson was born in 1838 on Priestly Plantation in St. James Parish, now the St. Joseph Plantation House in Vacherie. He grew up in a Julia Row townhouse in New Orleans and briefly attended the University of Louisiana, a predecessor of Tulane. He then set off for Harvard University and spent the Civil War years studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before returning to establish an archi- tectural practice in New York City.