The Architecture of Ralph Adams Cram and His Office [Hardcover]

Ethan Anthony (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0393731049 | ISBN-13: 978-0393731040 | Edition: First Edition

This book examines the life and works of a major architect whose buildings today surpass him in recognition.

In the early twentieth century—a time when modernism was favored over classicism, and architectural iconoclasm over tradition—the commissions of Ralph Adams Cram were inspired by elegant practicality, mystical philosophies, and a keen sense of history and place. Among them were such religious masterpieces as St. John the Divine in New York City, the chapel at West Point, and campus architecture at Princeton. 200 b&w illustrations

Editorial Reviews

Review

One splendid book. (Denver Catholic Record, George Weigel) REVIEW: Handsomely illustrated....Anthony's unparalleled access to the firm's records accounts for the insightful quality of the writing. (Ecclesiology Today, Hilary Grainger) REVIEW: Profusely illustrated volume...bequeaths the whole of the man's kaleidoscopic output to a new generation of architects. (First Things, Matthew Alderman)

Handsomely illustrated....Anthony's unparalleled access to the firm's records accounts for the insightful quality of the writing.

Review

Handsomely illustrated....Anthony's unparalleled access to the firm's records accounts for the insightful quality of the writing.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (April 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393731049
• ISBN-13: 978-0393731040
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 0.8 x 11.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,768 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Biography: Ethan Anthony

Ethan Anthony was born October 14, 1950 in Iowa City, Iowa. He spent his youth in Stow, Massachusetts where he attended Stow public schools through eighth grade. He graduated from Xavier High School (Jesuit) in Concord, Massachusetts in 1968, studied at the Boston Architectural College 70-77, and received his architectural degree from the University of Oregon at Eugene in 1980. There, Mr. Anthony studied architecture with Professor Gary Moye, and studied painting under Frank Okada and Brian Kaslov.

Mr. Anthony then was employed in the firm of Payette Associates 1980-83 where he was a project architect in John L. Wilson's studio. He was lead designer under Mr. Wilson for hospitals and medical office buildings in Maine and Georgia and a hotel in Egypt.

Mr. Anthony founded Anthony Associates in 1983 where he practiced until 1990. During that time he designed a program of additions to the Springfield, Vermont Hospital and numerous residential and educational projects. In 1991 Anthony Associates merged with the firm of Hoyle, Doran and Berry (successor firm to Cram and Ferguson).

From 1991 to 1996 Mr. Anthony and his partner David Hulihan completed many projects for MCI Telecommunications Corporation throughout the Eastern half of the United States. Other clients included New England Telephone, Allmerica Insurance and National Life Insurance Company among others. In 1997 David Hulihan retired and the firm name was changed to HDB/Cram and Ferguson to reflect a return to the origins and traditions of the practice.

Today the firm concentrates on the New Traditional Planning, design of new religious and academic buildings and restoration of historically significant buildings. Recent work includes a new 1000 seat church for St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Farragut, Tennessee; a new 1200 seat church for St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Hampshire, Illinois; A new 1500 seat church for St. john Vianney Parish in Fishers, Indiana, Syon Abbey a new Benedictine Monastery near Roanoke, Virginia among many others. To see examples of current work visit the firm website at http://www.hdb.com.

Mr. Anthony and his wife Luz have traveled extensively in England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy over the last ten years. During that time they have documented the current state of historic churches architecture an archive he uses in his design work. Also after extensive work in the firms archive of drawings and photographs Mr. Anthony wrote the history of the architectural work of the firm and its founder Ralph Adams Cram published by WW Norton in April 2007.

Mr. Anthony is a frequent lecturer on current building in Gothic and Romanesque modes and current ecclesiastical and liturgical issues in architecture as well as the history of the firm and on the work of Ralph Adams Cram among other topics. He may be contacted at 617-424-6200 or by email at [e-mail].

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Seriously Flawed May 1, 2007

By B. Smith

Format:Hardcover

From the front cover of a building at Rice University not even by Cram, well the foreground arch is, to the many factual errors this book is rather a disappointment. The rather short Cram biography which opens the book adds not much to our understanding of Cram, and the errors begin here, from Cram being received into the "Anglican Communion of the Catholic Church" to the description of the Oxford Movement as a renwal movement in the Catholic Church after the Catholic Emancipation in England. The author dismisses previous works by Shand-Tucci, which at least gave us a three-dimensional person, even if controversial, and Shand-Tucci certainly understood the religious aspect of Cram's art. This intro biography is rather like an encyclopedia article. What makes the book worthwhile is the chronological review of the firm's work through presentation drawings and archival photos. There are some missing buildings which it would have been nice to see covered, and St John the Divine doesn't actually merit any photographs, just a few drawings. The captions to the photos are cursory and some are labeled incorrectly i.e. a photo of Bodley's model for Washington Cathedral identified as a model of Cram's for a DC Presbyterian Church. The chapel for Holy Cross in West Park as being for the Society of St John the Evangelist. Really fundamental things which should have been caught in editing. None of Cram's decorative works are really covered, and there seems to be little understanding of Cram's deep faith being the underpinning of all his art. There are errors in the projects list as well which don't warrant discussing here. It would have been nice to see some color photos, of which there are none. I would recommend buying this book only for the coverage of some lesser known works, as it's not terribly expensive, but all in all it is not a book which adds to our understanding of Cram and being by the President of Cram's firm it is rather lacking.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An Architect of Faith March 5, 2008

By Matthew Milliner

Format:Hardcover

"When I was wandering through North Italy, I had come to Assisi, and there... before the tomb of St. Francis, by some unaccountable impulse I had found myself on my knees and trying to say something in the way of prayers." This is how a gifted young man from a family of New England Unitarians described his first step towards classical Christian faith. He continues, "I did not make out very well, for it was actually the first time in my life when anything of the sort had happened. With a mystical philosopher for a father and a mother of keen rationalistic convictions (albeit a poet), prayer, or indeed, anything approaching formal religious action, was out of the question..." The year was 1887, and the young man, then 24, was Ralph Adams Cram, soon to be one of the 20th century's most prodigious American architects. Following the Assisi experience came Christmas Mass in Rome, an event powerful enough to result in his conversion.

Just as Cram sought more traditional fiber in matters of the spirit, so did he in his chosen profession. "Gothic is less a method of construction," he suggested, "than it is a mental attitude, the visualizing of a spiritual impulse." It was an impulse that resonated deeply in early 20th-century America. After Cram won his first major design competition--a robust Gothic makeover of the Academy at West Point--commissions followed nationwide. As a result, Cram's fresh interpretations of the Gothic tradition continue to shape daily life in Boston, Chicago, Washington, Detroit, Houston, Princeton, South Bend, and dozens more American towns. His crowning achievements were saved for Manhattan: St. Thomas' Fifth Avenue and St. John the Divine. The latter, like so many of the European Gothic cathedrals that inspired it, remains incomplete.

Cram is an unusual addition to the pantheon of modern American architects, for in the much that he wrote, he was never shy about his faith. Perhaps because of this he remains unfashionable, but it would be wrong to say that Ralph Adams Cram has been neglected. Lately, scholarship on him has been decidedly thorough, such that readers seeking unusual interpretations of every detail of his life and thought can consult the over 1,000 pages of Douglass Shand-Tucci's exhaustively researched, two-volume biography of Cram, which is both highly informative and heavily saturated in Queer Theory. Others will prefer architect Ethan Anthony's more straightforward approach, The Architecture of Ralph Adams Cram and His Office, out this year from W. W. Norton.

As president of HDB/Cram & Ferguson, Anthony is perpetuating the legacy of the firm founded by Cram. Using his access to firm archives, Anthony is able to provide a handsome catalogue raisonnée of Cram's achievements. Many readers will likely examine the entries, surprised to find that a familiar church is in fact one of Cram's designs. The book's biographical essay provides a coherent and faithful account of his life and motivation, notwithstanding a few missteps. Cram was not Time's 1925 Man of the Year (the first was Charles Lindbergh in 1927), but he did, at the peak of his influence, appear on the cover of Time in 1926. And while Cram may have liked to think he was received into the "Anglican Communion of the Catholic Church" or that the Oxford Movement was "a revitalization of the English Catholic Church," both Cram and the Oxford Movement were Anglican.

Still, from co-founding Commonweal to securing a Nihil obstat and imprimatur for one of his books, Cram was never far from Rome. His faith was deeply sacramental, and he believed that "Protestantism has been a purely destructive force so far as religious art is concerned." The Brooklyn Tablet, a Catholic journal of his day, exasperated that "God alone understand why Cram did not embrace the faith." But an Episcopalian he remained. Cram's "Gothic quest" was an ecumenical one, seeking to resume that organic and flexible style which, he believed, had been not exhausted, but prematurely murdered by Henry VIII, by whose intervention "the doom of Christian architecture was sealed."

Ethan Anthony observes that both Cram and his more celebrated contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright, were in a constant search for architectural absolutes. But "unlike Wright, Cram found his most emphatically in medieval Europe," an era which served as his antidote to 20th century industrialization, global war, and moral decay. Still, Cram was not a slave to the past. He denigrated mere "Gothic revival" as "archaeology not architecture," insisting on creative development of the tradition. Cram conversed with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and admired Pablo Picasso, while still insisting on swimming against the modernist stream. As his principles became out of step with the style that consumed the fillet of the 20th century, Cram persisted; yet, Anthony explains, "Ultimately, [Cram] was happy to acknowledge that most of his work appealed more to the public." One imagines that Ethan Anthony's experience as a traditional architect today enables him to relate.

Cram sought to make an enduring contribution to modern life, but without severing connection to past Christian culture. In this he succeeded. "I have scant sympathy with that entirely modern view of art that makes the artist a rebel against a constituted society," he wrote. "An abnormal phenomenon feeding upon his inner self, cut off from the life of his fellows and issuing his aesthetic manifestos in flaming defiance..." For Cram, such art could not succeed because it contained no "conscious and vital link with the art of past generations." In retrospect, Cram's vision for 20th-century art was itself a sort of flaming defiance. North Americans would do well to save on European airfare, and rediscover the architecture of Ralph Adams Cram. Thanks to Ethan Anthony, we now know where to look. Better yet, from Anthony's firm and ones like it, we can expect more new buildings with a conscious and vital link to the past.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars very valuable view of a forgotten architect May 14, 2007

By David W. Scudder

Format:Hardcover

This book concentrates on the architecture of Cram, a neo-gothic master who at one time was ranked among our most important architects. Responsible for the campuses of much of Princeton and Rice, as well as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NY, Cram was a crucial exponent of the gothic tradition. While the book is somewhat short on its subject's life, it does full justice--both in words and pictures--to the architecture.