A Special Connection

As I mentioned yesterday new Apps are available that let you search special databases of photos. The picture above is a photochrom, a handcolored photo from the turn of the century. It's the west entrance to the inner quadrangle of Stanford University around 1901, pre-Earthquake of 1906. Does it look a little familiar?  It should. When H.H. Richardson died in 1886, a trio of his young assistants stayed together to finish his two dozen remaining assignments. These were George Shepley who had married Richardson's daughter, Charles Rutan, who married Shepley's sister, and Charles Coolidge, who married someone outside the firm. The trio stayed together after the Richardson commissions were finished and, according to Wikipedia, "continued to work mainly in the architectural vocabulary of Richardsonian Romanesque although with less imagination–for instance, Richardson's asymmetry disappears."

In 1888 Leland Stanford commissioned the firm to join with Frederick Law Olmsted to design the university named for his son who had died at age 16. Stanford, you may remember, was one of the Associates who financed the building of the Central Pacific and whose corruption made the Credit Mobilier scandal look like a schoolboy prank. The postcard here shows off the Olmsted landscaping very well; he also established the general layout of the school. I find the building to be very interesting. It combines the round arches and red roofs characteristic of Richardson's work with a definite Spanish flair picked up from California's own Mission style.

I'm not sure about the lack of originality-Richardson might get more credit for originality than he truly deserves if you look at commissions like railroad stations where he has multiple examples. Shepley, Coolidge, and Rutan adjusted to a changing customer demand as symmetrical colonial and classical revivial styles supplanted Richardsonian Romanesque. Here in Easton they contributed the 1904 Bank/Post Office building that blends Richardsonian elements with the symmetry of the 1896 Oliver Ames High School building.

Shepley like Richardson died in his 40s. When Rutan died in 1914, the firm was reorganized as Coolidge and Shattuck and then as Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbot from 1924 to 1952. The Children's Wing of the Ames Free Library was designed by that firm. Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson, and Abbott is the company name today, and it was that firm that designed Stonehill's new library