Monumental Architecture
(from John Russell Pope
Architect of Empire)
By Steven McLeod Bedford
 |
Finished in the autumn of 1916, the Temple of the Scottish
Rite would be the subject of constant praise for the next twenty years.
The January 1916 issue of the London Architectural Review noted that
"this monumental composition may surely be said to have reached
the high-water mark of achievement in that newer interpretation of the
Classic style with which modern American architecture is closely identified."
In 1917, Pope's peers awarded him the Gold Medal of the Architectural
League of New York for the design. French Architect Jacques Greber in
his L'Architecture aux Etatis-Unis of 1920 described it as "a monument
of remarkable sumptuousness …the ensemble is an admirable study
of antique architecture stamped with a powerful dignity" (Vol.
2, 17). In his book American Architecture (1928), Fiske Kimball used
this building and its "overwhelming simplicity and grandeur' as
an example of the triumph of classical form in America." The project
also earned Pope a place in the 1928 edition of Sir Banister Fletcher's
monumental History of Architecture on the Comparative Method, and even
the adamant modernist Lewis Mumford agreed that it was an excellent
example of its type. In the late 1920s, a jury of Pope's peers selected
and published measured drawings of the Temple as one of the three best
public buildings in the United States, ranking it with Bertram Goodhue's
Nebraska state capitol (1920-32) in Lincoln and Paul Cret's Pan-American
Union (1907-10) in Washington, D.C. A poll of federal government architect
in 1932 still ranked it as one of the ten top buildings in America.
In his first major public commission, Pope had crated a landmark in
American Architecture. His next project would further solidify his reputation
. He was ready to try to obtain the greatest prize of the year, and
possibly of a lifetime: the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
(C) 1998 Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-8478-2086-6
Go Back to Office of the Building Preservation, Maintanance
and Development Page
