Richard Upjohn; Architect and Churchman
New York: Columbia University Press, 1939. First edition. Octavo (9 1/8 inch tall), original green cloth, printed paper spine label, original printed dust wrapper. Book fine, mild toning, slight edge-wear, and closed tear to unclipped dust wrapper. A near-fine copy. Item #1727
"THE ETERNAL CITY—BUILT FOR THE PERFECTED SPIRITS OF THE JUST"
First edition of Everard Upjohn's illustrated biography of his ancestor Richard Upjohn—"the most important figure in American architecture between Jefferson and Richardson."
A professor of Art History at Columbia University for 35 years, Everard M. Upjohn "was an authority on American architecture, and in 1939 wrote 'Richard Upjohn, Architect and Churchman,' a biography of his great-grandfather, the designer of Trinity Church at Wall Street and Broadway and a founder of the Gothic Revival movement in this country in the early 1800's" (New York Times, Obituary: Nov. 8, 1978). With the author's short Preface ("Everard M. Upjohn / Columbia University in the City of New York / August 11, 1938") lamenting a substantial and "completely unexplored middle period" of American architecture. Everard further cautions that this giant in nineteenth-century American architecture was more than just the architect of Trinity Church. The "reputation resting on a single building, Trinity Church, was not unjustified. But that belief, so widely held, is due to our ignorance of the course of American architecture from 1830 to 1870." Also with a brief Foreword, by the architectural historian Kenneth Conant, describing Upjohn's single-handed establishment of architectural taste: "His attitude toward Gothic as an ecclesiastical style and Renaissance as a civic style dominated for several generations."
The book consists of ten chapters: 1. Introduction, 2. Birth and Early Life, 3. Launching a Career, 4. Trinity Church, 5. Early Maturity - The Formation of a Style, 6. Production in Quantity, 7. Some Matters of Professional Practice, 8. Foundation of the Institute, 9. The Impact of the Victorian, 10. Epilogue: "The Gothic Revival then, in England and America, was the most important development in architecture during the century...Richard Upjohn's position with regard to that movement is unquestionable. To a peculiar degree the mature stage of the Revival is his own work. His religious fervour gave the particular cast to that movement, a form...intimately connected with the Oxford movement in the English Church." Illustrated with a frontispiece portrait and a title page vignette, along with 109 photographs, sketches, and plans gathered after the epilogue. The text is supplemented with an Appendix: Corpus of Works by Richard Upjohn, arranged in three classes: I. Class A (The more important buildings and projects), II. Class B (Secondary Works), III. Class C. (Minor Alterations, Projects, Consultations, and Work of Doubtful Authorship). Concludes with a brief Bibliography and an extensive Index. Sponsored by The American Council of Learned Societies.
Price: $150.00