John Russell Pope: Architect of Empire
(Introduction)
By Steven McLeod Bedford
Education and Early Practice
From the time of his graduation from Columbia University in 1894, John
Russell Pope began to establish himself as an important figure in the
American architectural scene. In 1895, he was the simultaneous winner
of the McKim Travelling Fellowship and of the first prize awarded by
the American School of Architecture in Rome (later the American Academy
in Rome). After eighteen months in Rome, he left to enter the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was extremely successful. Pope returned
to New York in 1900, and after several years in the office of Bruce
Price, began his own practice. He then began a thirty-four year career
during which he lent expression to the grandiloquent aspirations of
private and public patrons. His domestic and monumental architecture
established him as a leader in the development of a highly refined and
restrained classicism that came to distinguish American architecture
from that of its European counterparts.
John Russell Pope was formally educated in the manner
typical of many university-trained American architects of his time.
There are few surprises in the general make-up of his education. However,
it appears that the repertoire of neoclassical forms Pope learned during
his training served as a foundation and source of inspiration, and remained
the primary component of his design vocabulary until his death. Pope
seemed to adhere to the precept that a certain set of classical forms
and plans existed whose inherent beauty was immutable.
Pope was born in 1873 into an era during which culture
was used as a "disciplining education for the turbulent urban populace."
New York in the 1870s and 1880s was a place of nascent cultural cosmopolitanism.
The American Museum of Natural History had been founded in 1869. The
Astor and Lenox Libraries opened to the public in the 1870s, while the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, with its extensive collection of plaster
casts of classical sculpture, fragments of architectural ornament, and
models, opened in 1872 and moved into its Fifth Avenue building in 1880.
The facts concerning Pope's earliest artistic training
are elusive. His father, John Pope (1820-1881), was a competent and
successful portrait painter who had studied under Thomas Couture in
Paris and had also traveled in Italy. His sitters included abolitionist
preacher Henry Ward Beecher, Secretary of War Edward McMasters Stanton,
and actor Edwin Booth. A frequent exhibitor at the National Academy
of Design, he was made an Associate of the Academy in 1859. His studio
appears to have been at home, where young John Russell could have watched
and learned directly from him. Mary Avery Pope (born Loomis), the elder
John Pope's second wife, was a piano teacher and a landscape painter
who also exhibited regularly at the Academy before her son's birth.
In such an actively artistic household, it would be difficult for a
young man to avoid being exposed to the principles of drawing and composition.
John Russell Pope certainly must have visited the exhibitions at the
National Academy of Design, for the family house and studio at 49 East
Twenty-first Street was only a few blocks away from the Academy building
on Twenty-third Street at Fourth Avenue. It is difficult to imagine
that he did not go to the Metropolitan Museum or the Museum of Natural
History regularly.
Education
Young Pope's early formal education appears to have
been unremarkable. He attended P.S. 35 on New York City's East Side.
Education in New York's grammar schools at the time consisted primarily
of lectures and rote recitation, the basics of a curriculum that had
barely changed since the 1850s. There was little in the regular educational
program that might have stimulated Pope's interest in architecture,
but he was probably enrolled in a supplementary course in drawing that
was offered to the better students. Such a class would have reinforced
the importance of what Pope had learned at home and perhaps furthered
his grounding in the principles of drawing. He completed this phase
of his education in 1888, at the age of fifteen.
At the time he entered college, Pope had no intention
of becoming an architect, and his early academic record proves this.
After his father's death in 1880, Pope apparently came under the influence
of his uncle, Dr. Alfred Loomis, an extremely successful physician,
and the young man naturally expressed an interest in becoming a doctor.
In the fall of 1888, he entered the sub-freshman class at the City College
of New York (CCNY) with the intention of studying medicine. In his first
year, however, following a required curriculum, he attained his highest
grade in drawing. In his freshman year, again he received his highest
marks in drawing. In his sophomore year, consistent with his announced
intention of pursuing a career in medicine, Pope chose to follow the
scientific, rather than the "classical," curriculum. But again,
true to form, he attained the first rank in his drawing course, but
he still had not officially professed any interest in architecture.
At CCNY, it was assumed that drawing was an essential
component in the curriculum of any well-educated person. Before widespread
use of the camera, this skill was crucial for visual communication.
Under the tutelage of Salomon Woolf, Pope followed a series of courses
of increasing difficulty in the same manner as an architecture student.
In his sub-freshman year, he drew in outline from flat and round objects,
studied surface shading with crayon, learned elementary perspective,
and drew human, geometrical, architectural, and other forms. As a freshman,
the course focused on graphic solutions to problems in descriptive geometry,
carpentry, machinery, and architecture. He also received further instruction
in tinting, shades and shadows, and perspective.
In his sophomore year, his class became more difficult
and more typically academic in its approach to instruction in drawing,
and Pope began sketching from plaster casts. The examples available
at CCNY included the frieze of the Parthenon, the Venus de Milo, the
Apollo Belvedere, and works by Michelangelo, Thorvaldson, and Cellini.
In addition, Pope drew from photographs of ancient structures and sites
as well as modern European buildings. These models provided Pope with
a strong basis for building further drawing skills and forced him to
become conversant with classical forms and composition early in his
training.
Columbia College
It was Pope's intention to leave CCNY after his sophomore
year in order to enter the medical program at The Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore, but after observing a surgical operation, he had a change
of heart. Instead, he remained in New York, entering the architecture
program at the School of Mines, Columbia College, as a sophomore in
1891.
The curriculum of the architecture program was under
the constant scrutiny of its director, William Robert Ware. Ware's pedagogical
approach adhered to the prevailing principles of instruction in design:
the basis of the entire curriculum was one of classic academicism--the
instillation in the minds of students the concept that certain forms
were innately, inherently, and immutably beautiful. Ware's definition
of the classically beautiful was quite catholic, however, and he exposed
his students not only to classical forms but also to medieval and American
colonial forms. In addition, he attempted to keep his faculty and favored
students abreast of current architectural trends by sending them to
experience such events as the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago
and arranging for the acquisition of a complete set of working drawings
of the various exposition buildings.
As a second-year student under Frank Dempster Sherman,
Pope learned the elements of architecture in a course whose syllabus
read like the table of contents of Ware's American Vignola. Beginning
with the study of the classical orders, Sherman led his students through
exercises on proportion and the use of other architectural elements
such as arches, arcades, roof types, and wall treatments. Pope's course
in modern architectural history under Talbot Hamlin, which used Leon
Palustre's Architecture de la Renaissance as its text, glorified French
and Italian Renaissance forms. As an adjunct to this course, students
were required to draw historically significant structures and elements
from photographs and printed illustrations and to reconstruct them based
on a verbal description. This exercise linked the courses that taught
the orders and elements of architecture and the courses in design, and
it demonstrated to students the historical solutions to various building
problems they would later confront.
In Professor Maximillian Kress's German archeology
course, students read Ernst Kroker's Katechismus der Archaologie. It
covered all aspects of ancient art, beginning with Egyptian, and provided
the student with images and elementary explanations of major monuments
such as the Pantheon and the Arch of Constantine in Rome, the Temple
of Vesta in Tivoli, the Athenian Acropolis, and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus,
all of which Pope would later use as models for his own building designs.
In conjunction with this course, Pope also was required to draw capitals
and other architectural ornament, Greek house plans, and the rock-cut
tombs of Egypt and Asia Minor.
In the third year, when the newly developed course
in architectural engineering was introduced into the curriculum under
professors Frank Dempster Sherman and Grenville Snelling, historical
studies were still predominant, and in addition, Professor Hamlin's
course began to cover oriental ornament.
Given Ware's typically American disdain for theory,
one can assume that Pope was exposed only very generally to the works
of theoreticians such as Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, Gottfried Semper, Quatremere
de Quincy, the Blondels, Vitruvius, and Palladio.
The third-year course called Practice was primarily
concerned with the development of an ideal building specification that
would serve as a model for written building specifications called for
in professional practice. The effect of this training on Pope's later
work can be seen in his own specifications, wherein he would go to great
lengths to ensure that his directions were properly understood.
Two of Pope's designs from 1893 survive. The first
presents an aviary constructed of glass with vaguely Saracen metal arches
and designed in an oriental style, a mode that would have been covered
in the course (fig. 1-1). The parti for the aviary seems to be based
on the garden of the Villa Giulia in Rome, which has, however, been
reversed, creating a rather awkward spatial organization. Since Pope
had received high marks for his drawing work at CCNY, one would have
expected him to possess superior skills. In fact, this was not the case.
Although fully developed conceptually, the quality of the aviary scheme's
draftsmanship is rather poor, and is what one might expect of an early
student work. The line work is loose, tentative, and imprecise, even
in the rendition of simple iron columns. The applied washes are uneven
in color and poorly controlled in placement, giving the work a muddy
appearance overall.
The second drawing, for a column commemorating a naval
battle, is closely patterned after the column in the Place Vendome in
Paris (fig. 1-2) and is much more competently rendered than the oriental
aviary. The quality of the young Pope's draftsmanship, however, may
reflect something of Ware's attitude toward presentation and drawing,
which he considered secondary to composition. Consequently, there was
no reason to expect Pope to produce anything more than competent drawings
during his undergraduate years.
Pope performed extremely well in his fourth year. To
complete the requirements for his degree, he had to submit a final project,
a design for a casino. All evidence of this work is lost, but the design
must have been excellent, for Pope's work was chosen for exhibition
at the Architectural League's Annual Exhibition in 1894. Although Pope
received his bachelor of philosophy degree in architecture in June 1894,
postgraduate studies were an absolute necessity. To become a competent
architect required more training than the college could provide.
In the summer of 1894, Pope traveled to Intervale,
New Hampshire, to work as an assistant to Ware. This trip ensured Ware's
continued influence over Pope and signals the high regard in which Pope
held his first mentor's opinions. Pope returned to Columbia College
that fall and again worked as Ware's assistant. During this time, Pope
may also have been employed by Bruce Price, but no documentation exists
because Price's office records have been destroyed.
Rome and the Grand Tour
Pope's education continued with the study of the great
architectural monuments of Europe--an essential component of an architect's
training. In the spring of 1895, Pope entered the competitions for the
McKim Travelling Fellowship and the Rome Prize offered by the American
School of Architecture in Rome. Both programs specified the design of
a savings bank following the stylistic precedents of the Italian or
French Renaissance, and based on the functional program and site plan
of McKim, Mead & White's recently completed Bowery Savings Bank.
When the Travelling Fellowship jury met to judge the
finished competition drawings, Pope's design was selected (fig. 1-3}.
A few weeks later, the American School jurors met and the same design
again won. It was, according to juror Frank Miles Day, "so distinctly
superior to all the others that the jury had not the slightest doubt
as to the correctness of its decision."
Pope's mode of presentation for the bank program was
in the manner of an envoi (a sketch dispatched by a student to a Master)
de Rome of a French Grand Prix pensionnaire (student recipient of a
stipend). The drawings, all orthographic projections, were carefully
rendered with ink washes, creating an authoritative image. His chief
rivals opted for more picturesque methods of depiction. Pope's decision
to follow the French model was a well-calculated one, for the jury was
predominantly French-trained and his chosen method of presentation emulated
the style that had set the standard for measured drawings of antique
buildings. Pope's mastery of this method convinced the jurors that he
possessed the technical skills necessary to profit from measuring the
monuments of Italy and Greece.
Pope's submission was up-to-date in its classical borrowing.
Reflecting America's newfound obsession with the classical, the elevation
of the bank is clearly based on Charles Atwood's Fine Arts Pavilion
at the World's Columbian Exposition. Not only had Pope seen the building,
but he could have studied the design in depth from the drawings at Columbia.
The Ionic arcade, furthermore, closely resembles that of Bruce Price's
American Surety Building (1894-96), which Pope surely knew. Pope's winning
drawings were exhibited at the annual Department of Architecture exhibition.
On the other hand, Pope was unsure of his own ability
to profit from an extended trip to Europe, and had hoped to have completed
his master's degree before leaving for Rome. In early June, he requested
that his award be deferred for a year. Ware supported Pope's request
to delay the departure in a letter to the president of Columbia College,
but the issue proved to be a volatile one. First of all, Ware's support
of Pope was not entirely unselfish. Ware would lose a trained assistant
in his studio and would probably be unable to replace him in time for
the fall semester. He was certainly aware that his students were insufficiently
trained in the principles of construction and the preparation of contract
documents. But in this case, Pope was also being used as a tool in an
on-going educational feud between McKim and Ware. McKim considered Rome
and Greece the primary sources of good architecture, while Ware believed
that foreign study should include the northern countries and the Gothic.
By keeping Pope under his wing, Ware was able to frustrate McKim's efforts
to completely control the program of the fledgling academy. Upon receiving
the president's assent to delay Pope's departure, Ware wrote to McKim
to seek the approval of the trustees of the American School of Architecture
in Rome. McKim and the other founders of the school were furious and
refused to agree. Richard Morris Hunt denounced Pope's request, saying
it would interfere with the tenure of the subsequent year's prize winner.
In addition, it would look very awkward for a Rome Prize winner to defer
the award, as that would imply that more educational benefit could be
derived from a year in New York than a year in Rome. McKim and the other
founders of the school were steadfast in their insistence that Pope
leave for Rome in the fall of 1895, and by August, Pope had agreed,
finally arriving in Rome on 15 October.
The schedule that Pope and his colleagues followed
while in Rome was vaguely modeled on the French academic program. Six
months were to be spent studying, measuring, and drawing the monuments
of antiquity and the Renaissance, while the next four were to be spent
in travel and study according to a plan approved by the resident director
of the school, Austin Lord, in conjunction with McKim.
Because financial matters were a problem for the young
school, McKim came over in December 1895 to assess the state of the
institution. He also directly supervised the students there and advised
them about places to visit. He was very specific in prescribing the
appropriate monuments for his young charges, urging them to study the
remains of ancient Rome, followed by further exposure to the works of
Bramante, Peruzzi, the Sangallo family, and Vignola. One can only imagine
the forceful impression created by McKim leading his small group of
students through the streets of Rome in search of his favorite buildings.
By 4 May 1896, the American pensionnaires had just
completed six weeks in Greece and were finishing work at the Acropolis,
where Pope measured the Erectheum and the Propylaea. He used a homemade
version of a pantograph, with which he produced exact full-size details
of these monuments. By 15 June the group had worked in Sicily, the Peloponnisos,
Corinth, and Naples, and had just returned from Pompeii, where Pope
had measured a Roman villa then called the Casa Nuova. (Attempts to
determine the modern name of this villa have proved fruitless.) Pope
later turned these measurements into an envoi. The drawing style that
Pope employed in producing these envois seems to reflect his lack of
confidence: they are hard-edged, mechanical, and lightly drawn.
In the final months of 1896, Pope undertook a brief
tour through northern Italy. Traveling first to Siena, he measured the
entrance to the library of the cathedral and the Palazzo Pellini. In
Perugia, only the Udienza del Cambio seemed to catch his eye. In Pistoia,
during the last few days of August he sketched the churches of San Giovanni
and San Andrea (fig. 1-4). In Florence, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Library
of San Lorenzo, and the Duomo were visited and recorded in September,
along with, in Venice, the monument to the condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni
(fig. 1-5) and the church of Santa Maria Della Salute, the tomb of Dante
in Ravenna, the cathedral in Orvieto, the Palazzo Communale in Bologna,
and brickwork details in Rimini.
Pope's sketches, watercolors, and renderings were focused
on Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance structures. Not one depicted
a classical monument. It seems that he followed Ware's advice of producing
an eclectic visual sampler of buildings, and chose to illustrate details
more than complete building forms, indicating that he was more interested
in decorative elements than general massing and scale. It also seems
that he believed Rome gave him all the necessary models for the massing
and large-scale composition of buildings, while northern Italy provided
the models for decorative elements and furnishings.
In general, the drawing technique shifted away from
the stiff, self-conscious technique of his earlier work to show a stronger,
more confident hand characterized by broad, bold strokes with little
evidence of correction or erasure. His sketch of the Duomo in Florence
(fig. 1-6) is probably the best example of his work during this time.
He turned his set of sketches of the Colleoni monument into an envoi
that demonstrates the increased refinement of his technical skills.
The washes are clear and crisp, and the architectural elements and decoration
are rendered with a bold hand, while the depiction of the equestrian
statue strongly conveys the three-dimensional nature of the subject.
A few of Pope's sketches bore the notation "see
photograph," indicating the beginning of a long-term interest in
photography, which would have such appeal that Pope would later abandon
his sketchbooks for a large-format camera. On other drawings, color
notes were written, a typically American technique. During his travels,
Pope also produced a few watercolor sketches in a rapid, painterly manner
with an evenness of color value that tends to flatten the volume of
the structure depicted.
It was during these early years in Europe that Pope
began to compile a large inventory of the classical forms that would
later appear in his work. He thus began to define a drawing style that
could be characterized as idiosyncratic within the academic manner.
Almost all of the surviving images from 1895 to 1896 are objective pencil
elevations that record buildings in a restrained classical manner. However,
his free application of notes on color as well as the general style
of his watercolors demonstrate a slightly romantic countercurrent in
his work. When the Academy drawings were exhibited at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in 1899, Pope's drawings of the Casa Nuova in Pompeii
were singled out as being among the most important in the New York Times.
Ecole des Beaux-Arts
By the end of 1896, Pope was in Paris to begin the final
episode in his twelve years of formal architectural education. He entered
the atelier preparatoire of Godefroy and Freynet, a choice probably
influenced by the fact that some of his classmates from Columbia had
used this atelier to prepare for their entrance exams at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts.
Most of the exams tested knowledge of mathematics and
perspective and skill in drawing; only one, the concours d'admission,
presented the students with a minor design problem. Developed by Julien
Guadet, professor of architectural theory; it called for the design
of an entry to a children's hospital. Pope chose as his parti a barrel
vault flanked by coffered, trabeated passageways (fig. 1-7). This is
exactly the same parti used in the Hotel des Monnaies in Paris, the
Palazzo Farnese in Rome, and Leon Vaudoyer's Conservatoire des Arts
et Metier, all later illustrated in Guadet's Elements et theorie de
l'architecture. This choice was probably a calculated move, since Pope
had the opportunity to learn the partis favored by Guadet from his lectures.
Pope's design obviously met with success, for not only was he admitted
to the second class, but he placed second among the competitors.
Pope then entered the atelier of Henry Deglane and
immediately set to work on the compulsory examinations and elements
analytiques. He probably entered this particular atelier for two reasons:
first, because several of his classmates from Columbia were there, and
second, because Deglane had just been awarded the commission for the
Grand Palais of the Paris Exposition of 1900 and had received a great
deal of press.
By October 1897, Pope had passed three of the five
required examinations; he had prepared the two required analytiques;
and he had begun to practice for other projects in the first class.
He devoted the rest of 1897 and the first eight months of 1898 to the
completion of three projets rendus. He also received high marks for
his final two compulsory scientific exercises, a Troisieme Medaille
for his construction project, and credit for his drawing, modeling,
ornamental design, and architectural history exercises in rapid succession
between February and June 1898. By August 1898, sixteen months after
he had entered the Ecole, Pope had amassed twenty-four valeurs and was
promoted to the first class. He was the first in his class to be promoted,
and thus received the Prix Jean Leclaire for his effort.
In the next sixteen months, Pope continued to work
at a feverish pace, and became known for spontaneity and skill in the
presentation of his designs, especially the sketch problems (esquisses).
One of his esquisses, that for an entry to a convent, was retained by
the Ecole and has thus survived (fig. 1-8). Here Pope's progress as
a draftsman is immediately evident. The free lines of the perspective
view flow into unity with the plan and elevation, and the technique
is vigorous, expressing an uncommon vitality. Surprising as well is
his choice of style for the building, whose romantic, medievalizing
forms are carefully governed by the underlying principles of symmetrical
composition and axial planning.
Of the remaining three competitions, two were exercises,
one each in drawing and modeling; the third was the Concours d'histoire
de l'architecture. This last competition, for the restoration of the
wells in the cloister of the hospital of St. Jean d'Angers, for which
Pope received a Premiere Seconde Medaille, is the second and final one
from which any visual record survives (fig. 1-9). The method of presentation
is much more romantic than any drawing seen previously from his hand,
but such a composition is appropriate for the subject. The plan, elevation,
and perspective are integrated into a unified vertical composition.
The worm's-eye view of the well establishes a context for the object
and provides an excellent view of the major facade of the structure,
while the side elevation and plan flow out of the foliage surrounding
the perspective. The success of the composition is most evident when
it is compared to the entry by another American, Albert Nash, of the
atelier Pascal. Nash's composition is overly stiff, and his attempt
to integrate the various views through the use of a sweeping curved
line is unconvincing.
By early 1900, Pope had accumulated more than enough
valeurs to begin his diploma problem, but several events prevented him
from staying on in Paris. The terms of the McKim Fellowship, from which
he was then benefitting, would have required his return to Rome by June
1899. However, the American School of Architecture in Rome had by then
become the American Academy, and no longer accepted visiting scholars
other than its own fellows. Pope enjoyed the confusion by staying on
in Paris until the terms of both of his fellowships had run out, but
due to a lack of funds, he was then forced to return to the United States
in January 1900 before his last concours was judged.
Though he had to return before achieving a grand succes,
Pope's European sojourn had been beneficial in developing his confidence
and skills. He had cultivated an ability to solve formulaically complex
problems in a very short period of time and then to transmit this information
very effectively through his sketches and projets rendus. These skills
are essentially the sort necessary to run a successful office, and within
five years of his return to the United States, he was doing just that.
Apprenticeships
Pope returned from France at the perfect moment to begin
a career as a proponent of the "academic reaction." The American
economy was at the height of a twenty-five-year period of expansion
and consolidation. The continental frontier was officially closed and
cities were growing rapidly. Wealth was accumulating in New York at
an exponential rate. In the architectural profession, the call for a
uniform classicism, already sounded before Pope's departure for Europe,
had virtually triumphed, creating a perfect climate for the designer
who could provide grand monuments for a newly powerful America. McKim,
in summarizing the requirements for success in this milieu, contended
in the American Architect and Building News of 20 December 1902 that
"great opportunities demand thorough training. Confidence comes
not from inspiration but from knowledge. The architect who would build
for the ages to come must have the training of the ages that are past."
With five years of direct contact with the paradigms for America's new
classicism, Pope could certainly claim to have satisfied McKim's prerequisites
for architectural success.
McKim, Mead & White
Some have suggested that Pope worked for McKim, Mead
& White, but the firm's employment records never mention him. It
is known that McKim nevertheless did proffer some work. On 31 January
1900, McKim asked Pope, who was apparently ill, if he would be willing
to prepare on a freelance-basis, under White's supervision, the formal
rendered plans for the development of Belle Isle in Detroit. White had
already sketched out a scheme that featured a huge Doric column framed
at the base by a colonnade, topped with a tripod fueled by natural gas,
and illuminated by electric beacons. Having spent a great deal of time
on the project, White was apparently anxious to turn the development
of his sketches over to someone else to reduce costs. He also needed
help to meet a deadline that was only a fortnight away. Given his previous
relationship with McKim, Pope probably took the job. Furthermore, his
later competition entries for the Monument on the Great Lakes (1905)
and, in Ohio, the Perry Memorial (1912) borrowed heavily from the Detroit
scheme, lending further circumstantial evidence to support the case
that Pope worked for White. In working for White, he would have been
exposed to what has been described as the most carefully composed and
detailed work of White's career. Pope's subsequent ability to synthesize
McKim, Mead & White's dignified borrowings from Renaissance and
Roman sources with his own form of monumental classicism surely required
an extensive and intimate prior knowledge of the firm's work, which
could only have come from working in the office. Despite the fact that
the Detroit project was never built, Pope would have been exposed to
the elemental sobriety that typified the firm's work in the first decade
of this century.
Bruce Price
Whatever his experience with McKim, Mead & White,
Pope went on to work for Bruce Price later in 1900. Even if he had not
already worked for Price as a student, he would anyway have been attracted
to the firm. Price had by this time attained the zenith of his architectural
career, but had limited his involvement in the design process, and Pope's
decision to enter the firm may have been further influenced by this,
for it offered a young designer opportunities for increased authority.
Another reason for Pope to join Price was that the latter had built
a house for Pope's uncle, Alfred Loomis, in Ringwood, New Jersey (1887),
thereby establishing a family connection to the firm.
Since the office records of Price's firm have disappeared,
it is impossible to determine with certainty what Pope's role might
have been. But given Price's apparent withdrawal from design work, such
responsibility may have fallen to Pope. However, the issue is confused
by the fact that Pope joined the firm at the same time as Jules Henri
de Sibour, an architect who later became known for his flamboyant designs
of Washington residences. Samuel Graybill, Price's biographer, noted
(in an unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1957) a surprising
change in Price's work following the arrival of Pope and De Sibour.
The designs produced by the firm after 1900 reflected dichotomous trends,
one being a restrained classicism, and the other a more exuberant and
flamboyant adaptation of the eclectic modern French style. Using the
later work of these two architects as a guide, one can certainly distinguish
De Sibour's aggressively eclectic designs from Pope's restrained and
severe classicism.
The first project that Pope may have participated in
was the Georgian House for Seven Thousand Dollars, designed for the
October 1900 issue of Ladies' Home Journal (fig. 1-10). Although one
would expect a house of such low cost to be decorated simply, the severity
of the design seems more characteristic of Pope's later work than Price's
previous work, and available illustrations do not carry any indication
of authorship. The interior plan is unassuming and direct, as one would
expect in a building with few rooms. Additional evidence that Pope was
involved in this project is found in his "moonlighting" work.
In 1901, almost immediately after the publication of the design, Pope
produced a Georgian house for Professor Willard Humphreys in Princeton
(figs. 1-11, 1-12). With the exception of the addition of eyebrow dormers
on the side elevations, the house (destroyed by fire in 1904) exactly
corresponds to the published Georgian house in plan and elevation. In
order for Pope to have produced such a set of drawings, he must have
been involved in the design of the Ladies' Home Journal project.
In 1901, Price's office was also designing an additional
mansion known as Kingscote on the Charles Gould estate in Lakewood,
New Jersey, for Gould's son Kingdom. The exterior of the house was rectilinear
and formally severe in the same manner as Pope's later work. It was
essentially an elaboration of the Ladies' Home Journal project. The
porches of the suburban house became porticoes, while the ground-floor
windows were converted to French doors. The interior layout was an open,
axial plan in which a large entrance hall was crossed by a narrow hallway
that allowed the visitor to understand the entire ground floor arrangement
immediately. Although the same plan had already been used by Price at
Georgian Court (1899), the main house on the Gould estate, its later
use by Pope in many of his country house designs suggests that Pope
was involved in the design of Kingscote.
Following a similar line of reasoning, the George St.
George house (c. 1900, fig. 1-13) in Tuxedo Park, New York, can be attributed
to Pope. The severity of the colonial revival form would be the primary
link to Pope. Aside from similar style, the St. George house, built
on a grander scale than the Kingdon Gould house, also shares certain
design similarities with it, most notably its elemental massing and
use of exaggerated quoins, indicating a common designer. Again, these
decorative traits were familiar elements of Pope's later houses. Finally,
as with the Gould family, Pope would receive a later commission for
the Tuxedo Club (begun 1927) from the St. Georges.
Two subsequent commissions were also probably designed
by Pope: the Perrin house (1902) and the Howard house (1907, fig. 1-14),
both in Washington, D.C. The houses, situated within a block of one
another on Sixteenth Street, were sober and severe and simple in plan).
Both were excellent interpretations of the Georgian revival style.
Pope surely worked on two conservative public buildings
designed by Price's office during this period. The first, the Washington
County Library (1900-1901) in Hagerstown, Maryland (fig. 1-15), possessed
a raw sobriety. The motif of an arched pediment supported by Ionic columns
in antis was later used by Pope in a study for the Frick Collection
in New York and in several of his country house designs. The final project
in Pope's collaboration with the Price firm dates from after Price's
death in May 1903. This was the competition for the Freedman's Hospital
(1904-08)in Washington, D.C. (fig. 1-16). On 3 March 1905, Price's firm
was selected from among twenty entries.
Completed in 1908, the hospital was an essay in the
stark, late-Georgian style. A shallow Ionic portico was flanked by ranges
of windows with projecting surrounds, while a saucer-shaped dome rose
slightly above a stepped parapet, breaking the cubic and horizontal
emphasis of the design. The sobriety of the forms complemented the simple
volume of the structure and added to the severe, monumental impact of
the hospital. In this design one sees Pope's first experimentation with
a domical parti, a motif he would continue to explore and refine throughout
his career.
(C) 1998 Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-8478-2086-6
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