H. and J. E. Billings of Boston: From Classicism to the ... · himself as an architect in the...

H. and J. E. Billings of Boston: from Classicism to the Picturesque

JAME S F. O'G O RMAN Wellesley College

Fig. I. Hammatt Billings, Church of the Saviour (Second Unitarian), Boston, 1846-1847. Bedford Street front (Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Print Department). Hammatt's exterior design for the Massachusetts Chari- table Mechanic Association building (1857-186o) is to the right.

During what until recently has been seen as the lean years be-

tween Bulfinch's departure and Richardson's arrival in Boston

(1818-i874), the population of the city rose from 41,000 to

nearly 300,000, and the number of architects from a handful to

over one hundred. Only now are the designers who gave shape to this urban growth beginning to receive the serious research they deserve. This paper outlines the careers of two of these men, the little-known Hammatt Billings (who was born the year Bulfinch

left and died the year Richardson arrived), and his lesser-known

brother, Joseph. Together, separately, and in collaboration with

others, the Billingses designed a large number of buildings across New England, beginning with the Boston Museum (I845-1846) and ending with the original buildings for Wellesley College (I869-I875). In addition, the universally talented Hammatt contributed overtly and covertly to the work of other architects to a degree that may never be accurately measured.

ONE MORNING in the fall of I847-it was, to be precise, Io November-the congregation of the Church of the Saviour in Bedford Street, Boston, assembled to dedicate its newly finished Gothic edifice (Fig. i). That afternoon, the congregation of the Church of the Messiah in Florence Street, a few blocks to the

south, gathered to lay the cornerstone of its own Gothic structure (Fig. z). It was a memorable day for the young Billings brothers: Hammatt, architect and builder of the Church of the

Saviour, and Joseph, designer of the Church of the Messiah.1

i. Boston Evening Transcript, 8 November I847, z; 9 November, z; Io November, z; 1 November, z. These churches seem to be among the few Boston buildings considered worthy of mention by Mrs. L. C. Tut- hill (History of Architecture, Philadelphia, 1848, 258), who, as has frequently happened since, compressed the brothers into one personality: "Two beautiful Gothic churches, of freestone, were built [in Bos- ton] in 1847. Billings, architect." I return to these buildings later in the text, and fns. 21-22.

54

Dow

nloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jsah/article-pdf/42/1/54/176780/989857.pdf by guest on 13 M

ay 2020

O'GORMAN: H. AND J. E. BILLINGS OF BOSTON 55

4)

Fig. z. Joseph E. Billings, Church of the Messiah, Boston, 1847-I848,

Exterior (lithograph courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New

England Antiquities).

Each was at the beginning of a productive architectural career that spanned the middle years of the I9th century (Fig. 3).2

Charles Howland Hammatt Billings (I818-1874) first listed himself as an architect in the Boston Almanac for 1842. He had

briefly attended English High School,3 but a childhood talent for

drawing4 led him into the workshop of Abel Bowen, the city's first wood engraver and creator, among other books, of Bowen's

z. It seems appropriate in an issue dedicated to John Coolidge to discuss an aspect of Igth-century Boston architecture, a subject about which he has taught us so much. I have therefore attempted to summa- rize our current knowledge about the careers of H. and J. E. Billings, fully aware that much remains to be done. In his own day Hammatt was noticed in print (see Ballou's Pictorial, x, I9 April 1856, 252, or Glea- son's Pictorial Line-of-Battle Ship, I, 6 August 1859, i for his portrait). The pioneer modern study, to which I am indebted, is Richard Stod- dard's "Hammatt Billings, Artist and Architect," Old-Time New Eng- land, LXII, January-March 1972, 57-65, 76-79. I am grateful to Wel- lesley College for a sabbatical year, 1981-1982, to devote to this and other research. Many people have helped, among them Lee Ann Clem- ents Pralle, George Wrenn, Ellie Reichlin, Margaret Floyd, Cynthia Zaitzevsky, Bettina Norton, Jean Baer O'Gorman, and others to be named below. This article concerns only the architectural works of the brothers; I plan to discuss Hammatt's astonishingly varied design career elsewhere.

3. Catalogue of the Scholars and Teachers of the English High School, Boston, I890, 10. Hammatt entered with the Class of I834 but did not graduate (only I6 of 46 did).

4. According to the obituary published anonymously in E. E. Hale's periodical, Old and New (ii, March 1875, 355-357; it is signed by "W"), Hammatt received his first drawing instruction about the age of ten (ca. 1827-1829) from a "Mr. Grater." This was probably Francis Graeter (Franz Grater), that "eccentric German drawing-teacher" who taught T. G. Appleton at the Round Hill School in Northampton in 1827 (T. G. A., A Sheaf of Papers, Boston, 1875, 19; Susan Hale, Life and Letters of Thomas Gold Appleton, New York, I885, z3ff., 28-29, 56), and who thereafter worked at the progressive Boston schools run by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Bronson Alcott (L. H. Tharp, The Pea- body Sisters of Salem, Boston, 1950, 45; [E. P. Peabody], Record of a School, Boston, zd revised ed., 1836, xxii). He may also have taught at the Mayhew School run by Richard Parker, where Hammatt is said to have received part of his early education (Boston Morning Journal, 17

HAMMATT B!LLINGS, BlLIlNS SIBEEPER, @ X S ,i , 1I tfR

ARCHIIITECT, S 460 Wa~hingto,u St.,

NO O ST., A I T ~NO. 46 COURT ST., 460 Washingtoit St., Corner of Trer.ont, "Liberty Tree Buildinlg." BO)ST ON.

Fig. 3. From The Boston Almanac for the Year 1854 (author's collection).

Picture of Boston ( 8 29), an illustrated guide to the local sights.5 In the mid-I83os Hammatt, as he soon called himself, branched

into architecture, studying with Asher Benjamin, then moving on

to the newly established Boston office of Ammi B. Young.6

November 1874, 2). In 1836 Graeter joined the Maine Geological Sur-

vey as draftsman (Charles T. Jackson, First Report on the Geology of the State of Maine, Augusta, 1837, [9]), and illustrated its reports.

Graeter turned out landscape and architectural views as well as figural designs, and was an illustrator of books as well as the author of a work on German tales, a German-English phrase book, and a report on Ger- man methods of the water cure. This versatility foreshadows Hammatt's career.

5. William H. Whitmore, "Abel Bowen," Bostonian Society Publica- tions, I, i886-I888, 35.

6. Old and New, op. cit.: "When less than eighteen [ca. 183 5] he went to Mr. Benjamin, to learn architecture.... With him he remained two or three years, until the new Custom House was begun by Mr. Young, into

t---_ - L_ L _-PS?_ I L -Q- I I L?

Dow


ay 2020

56 JSAH, XLII:1, MARCH 1983

Young was beginning work on the Custom House (837-I 847), and Hammatt's earliest known design is a view of that building dated I840.7

That view of the Custom House joins Hammatt to both Young and Bowen, to both architecture and illustration.8 He was never

to be solely, nor even primarily, an architect. The versatility, if

not the quality, of his talent in his own day won him comparison to Michelangelo;9 he was in fact a practitioner of the Renais-

sance art of disegno, producing with equal facility works in ar-

chitecture, painting, and sculpture, and designing landscape,

sepulchral and festival monuments (including fireworks dis-

plays), furniture, and other decorative works.10 He is perhaps

whose office he went as draftsman. He did not design the building; but all the drawings were made by him [see fn. 7]. He was with Mr. Young three years."

It is of note in light of Hammatt's later work as designer of monuments that Benjamin had in hand while Hammatt was with him the neoclassical Lexington-Concord Battle Monument in Peabody, Massa- chusetts (1835), and the Dr. George Shattuck Monument in Mt. Auburn

(I836): J. Quinan, "Asher Benjamin and American Architecture," JSAH, xxxviii, October 1979, 254. Young's move to Boston in 1838 fits the chronology given here: L. Wodehouse, "Ammi Burnham Young," JSAH, xxv, December 1966, 268ff.; idem, "Architectural Projects in the Greek Revival Style by Ammi Burnham Young," Old-Time New Eng- land, LX, January-March 1970, 73-85. See fn. iz.

7. Hammatt won a diploma for drawings of the Custom House exhibited in 1839 (The Second Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association .. ., Boston, 1839, 25). These probably formed the basis for the engraving "New Custom House, Boston. A. B. Young, Archt. Drawn by C. H. Billings. Engraved by G. G. Smith. 1840" (Bos- ton Athenaeum). There is another view of the Custom House by Billings "Published by S. Walker, Boston, 1850" (author's collection). His view of Isaiah Roger's New-York Merchants' Exchange (Avery Library) may be as early as 1840. The building was erected 1836- 842.

Hammatt created views of a number of Boston landmarks, including the State House, the Bunker Hill Monument, the American House Ho- tel, the Revere House, Faneuil Hall Market, and so on. No catalogue yet exists.

8. And to Alexander Jackson Davis, who preceeded Billings in supply- ing architectural views of Boston, and who thought of himself as an "architectural composer," a label which, as we shall see, perhaps fits Hammatt better than it fits Davis. Billings was succeeded as Boston architect and illustrator by Bertram Goodhue.

9. John H. Thorndike, chairman of the Building Committee of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, in Dedication of the Mechanics' Hall, Boston, i860, 6-7: "[if Billings lives long enough] he may prove to have been the Michael Angelo of this age."

Io. At the Stowe-Day Foundation in Hartford, and in the Print Room of the Boston Public Library, are scrapbooks containing sketches by Hammatt (and a few by Joseph) for a variety of design work, not all of it yet identified. These books were assembled by the Billingses' brother-in- law, the architect and civil engineer, Nathaniel T. Bartlett (ca. i828-

1883?). To what Stoddard (op. cit.) has collected to illustrate the versatility of

Hammatt's talent, we can add among other works the design for a temporary Moorish arch across Tremont Street opposite the Boston Museum to commemorate Water Day, z5 October I848 (Transcript, 26 October 1848, 2 [Fig. 4]), the Shaw Monument in Mt. Auburn Ceme- tery, 1848 (Boston Public Library scrapbook, fol. 4), a work clearly reflecting Benjamin's influence, the frame of the "Children's Clock" in

best remembered as a magazine and book illustrator. Among the more than zoo titles now known to have been embellished with

engravings after his designs are the first (185z) and the "illustrated" (1853) American editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the second volume of the first edition of Little Women (1869), and a host of children's books." During his lifetime Hammatt received

high praise for work in all areas of design. Hammatt's talent made him the guiding member of any design

team, including his occasional partnership with his younger brother. Joseph Edward Billings (ca. I 8I-I 88o) first appears as an architect in the Boston Almanac for 1846. His identity was and is often buried within that of his older sibling, unfairly as we shall see. There is some evidence that he, too, trained with Ammi

Young, but otherwise we know very little about his prepara- tion. 12 Joseph soon listed himself as an engineer as well as archi-

tect, and it would appear that he gave solidity to his brother's lines.

Faneuil Hall, I849 (Transcript, 6 November I849, 2), a rain-delayed fireworks display for Boston Common on 8 July 1851 (Transcript, 9 July 185 , z), a Civil War monument in the form of an obelisk at Concord, Massachusetts, i866 (Ceremonies at the Dedication of the Soldiers' Monument, Concord, 1867, 13), the granite base for Thomas Ball's Washington in the Public Garden, Boston, 1867 (Frank Leslie's Illus- trated Newspaper,xxviii, 17 July 869, 277, 28i; 3IJuly 869,307; T. Ball, My Threescore Years and Ten, Boston, I89I, 376-378; see fn. 45), and the base of the Civil War memorial in Braintree, Massachusetts, I873-1874 (George A. Thayer, The Braintree Soldiers' Memorial, Bos- ton, 1877, 49). Some of these, of course, were designed in association with Joseph.

The Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (Boston, 1892, 197) credit Hammatt with the design of the Myles Standish Monument at Duxbury, Massachusetts, but according to Stephen M. Allen, Standish Monument... Laying Corner-Stone, Octo- ber 7, I872 (Boston, 1873, 35), the architect was Alden Frink. See also the Boston Morning Journal, i6 November 1874, 3, and 17 November 1874, 2.

i. See my forthcoming catalogue, tentatively titled A Billings Book- shelf. Annotated Bibliography of Works Illustrated by Hammatt Bil- lings, expected in 1983, and, meanwhile, Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators, Princeton, 1958, 74-77, and supplement, 1968, 46-49 (there is a second, unpublished supplement in the Prince- ton library).

12. Joseph's obituary (Transcript, i6 August i880, 5) gives his age as 59.

The earliest notices of his professional activity appear in I844. The Mechanic Association awarded him a diploma for two line drawings of architecture (one a Corinthian capital) in this year (The Fourth Exhibi- tion of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, Boston, 1844, 34), and he also exhibited at the Boston Artists' Association. The Catalogue of Paintings, of the Third Exhibition of the Boston Artists' Association (Boston, 1844) lists several designs by A. B. Young drawn by Hammatt (nos. I, 2, 4, 5, and 28), and one (no. 26) designed by Young and drawn by Joseph. (No. 6 is an engraved view of the David Sears house after a drawing by Hammatt).

In I85I the Artists' Association gave way to the New England Art Union, itself quickly if briefly replaced by the Massachusetts Academy of Fine Arts (Transcript, z6 January I855, i). Joseph was active in the Artists' Association, while Hammatt was involved in all stages of the organization ("Journal of the Proceedings of the Boston Artists' Associa-

Dow


ay 2020


Fig. 4. "Boston Water Celebration, October 25, 1848." (lithograph courtesy of The Boston Athenaeum). The Boston Museum is to the left; the temporary Moorish arch is also Hammatt's design.

Hammatt Billings was born in 1818, the year Charles Bulfinch

transferred his skills from Boston to Washington, D.C., leaving behind in his design for the Massachusetts General Hospital the

seeds of the granite Greek Revival. There were but a few archi-

tects left in town to serve a population of about 41,ooo. Ham-

matt and Joseph grew up during the course of the Greek Revival,

connecting with it at its tail end in Ammi Young's office. The

granite block which distinguished the local Greek work also gave

special character to churches erected in the Gothic style in the

I83os, such as the Bowdoin Street Meeting House attributed to

Solomon Willard. As H. and J. E. entered practice in the I84os, Italianate forms began to replace Greek ones in classical work, a

more articulated, less blocky Gothic came to be used in church

design, and other historical styles occasionally appeared. The works of the brothers, as of their contemporaries, were to reflect

the waves of fashion in mid-I9th-century Boston architecture,

beginning with the classic-Gothic debate of the 84os, touching the exotic (Fig. 4), embracing the Second Empire style, and end-

ing in the i87os with the picturesque Anglo-French eclecticism of post-Civil War America. As we shall see, however, even the

tion," 2 vols. [Rare Book Room, Boston Public Library]). He designed the seal of the Art Union (Transcript, 23 March I850, z), and perhaps suggested the design for a building for the Academy. There is in the

Stowe-Day scrapbook (fol. I i) an undated elevation of an "Academy of Fine Arts" not otherwise identified.

most picturesque of the brothers' later work was rooted into

their classical training under Benjamin and Young.

By the time of Hammatt's death in 1874 there were more than

ioo architects serving a city with a population approaching

3 oo,ooo. He died the year H. H. Richardson began construction

of Trinity Church. His death coincided with the end of an era;

Trinity began another. Although little survives of the work of

either brother, to resurrect what we can from the dim past is to

reintroduce representative talents and significant landmarks

from a faded chapter in Boston's architectural history. Our first

task is to collect and briefly to describe the building and projects of the pair.

The collaboration of H. and J. E. Billings apparently began with a major commission.13 The Boston Museum once stood on

the east side of Tremont Street north of King's Chapel (Figs. 4 and 6), on a site acquired by David Kimball from the Athenaeum in December 1845. Earlier that year, the Athenaeum sponsored a

competition for the design of a building for its own use on the

site.14 The winner, a project by George M. Dexter, showed a

three-story Italianate facade, probably inspired by Charles

Barry's recent London clubs, which were known in America

through publications such as W. H. Leeds's The Travellers' Club

House (I839), and by direct knowledge by architects such as

Arthur Gilman, who had recently returned from study abroad, and was championing the Renaissance style in articles and lec-

tures. Within, Dexter proposed a vaulted central stairhall with

colossal Corinthian columns. The scheme proved too expensive; the Athenaeum abandoned the project and sold the site to Kim-

ball. The following year it called for new proposals for a new site

on Beacon Street. Entries were received from Hammatt and

others, including Edward Clarke Cabot (with his brother, James E.), whose winning Palladian facade still graces the site.

Meanwhile, Moses Kimball, David's brother who managed the Boston Museum, engaged Hammatt and Joseph to design the

new building for the Museum's use on the Tremont Street site

abandoned by the Athenaeum.15 Why he chose two unknown

13. There is evidence for another work during 1846. The Harvard College Papers, Second Series, xIII, 1845-1846, 307 (Harvard Univer- sity Archives) lists under treasury disbursements for 27 May "H. & J. E. Billings' bill ... [$]3z8.oo." That sum must have represented a significant commission, but nothing else in the Archives explains it.

14. [Jane S. Knowles], Change and Continuity. A Pictorial History of the Boston Athenaeum, Boston, 1976, passim.

I5. Selected bibliography: Catalogue of the Paintings ... [etc.] in the Collection of the Boston Museum ... , Boston, 1847, 29-30; Josiah Quincy, The History of the Boston Athenaeum, Cambridge, I85 I, I64- i66, 198-199; History of the Boston Museum, Boston, 1873 (another ed., 1875); Boston Museum.... Present Structure Erected 1846. Re- modeled I868, I872 and I876, and the Auditorium Entirely Rebuilt i880 ..., [Boston, i880]; Howard M. Ticknor, "The Passing of the Boston Museum," The New England Magazine, n.s. xxvin, June 1903, 378-396.

Dow


ay 2020


Fig. 5. H. and J. E. Billings, Boston Museum, I845- I846. Corinthian Hall (Courtesy of The Bostonian Society).

and untried architects remains a mystery, although with excep- tions such as Ammi Young, there were few experienced architects

available in the city, and perhaps Kimball was impressed by a

design, now lost, for the Athenaeum. The Kimballs acquired the

lot no earlier than December I845, did not get clear title, ap-

parently, until May i846, and the theater opened to the public on 2 November of that year; thus there is reason to date the

Billingses' design to 1 845, and to suggest that the facade at least

was adapted from an Athenaeum competition entry. The Museum was two buildings in one. It masked its existence

as a playhouse, still a dubious venue for some Bostonians, behind

a name suggesting education and culture. An authoritative 847

description of the building tells us that

... it is arranged in two main portions with an area between for light and air, one communicating with the other at either end by a wide passage. The building upon Tremont Street, the front of which is of [dressed Quincy] Granite in a chaste and beautiful style of Venetian [Renais- sance] Architecture, with three spacious balconies running the entire length of the building, contains on the first story, five commodious stores, and the entrance to the Museum. Above this story, the whole front building to the eaves, three stories, is occupied as a grand Corinthian Hall . . . containing the collection. The galleries . . . are supported by twenty stately columns rising from the floor.... A spacious staircase and

passage-way leads to the Exhibition Hall in the rear building... capable of accomodating nearly two thousand persons.16

r6. Catalogue of the Paintings, op. cit. This early description does not mention the gaslighted globes which were such outstanding features of the facade (Ballou's Pictorial, xvI, 26 March I859, 193), nor do they appear in the earliest views of the building ("Favorite Melodies from the Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp. As Pro- duced at the Boston Museum. Bufford Lith. 1847" [sheet music cover]). They were perhaps an early afterthought (they were in place by October 1848 [Fig. 4]).

The historically important architectural features of the build-

ing were parts of the Tremont Street moiety: the Hall and the

fasade. The Hall (Fig. 5) contained curiosities of natural history and art ranging from the "Feejee" mermaid to Sully's monumen-

tal Passage of the Delaware (I8I9) on the landing of the grand staircase (and now in the Museum of Fine Arts). This was un-

questionably among the most dramatic spaces in mid-I9th-cen-

tury Boston. Its design may owe something to Dexter's stairhall in the first Athenaeum competition, but it was grander in propor- tion and more glittering in effect. It had its own progeny in Charles

Kirby's Boston Public Library (1854-85 8). Until its destruction in 1903, the Tremont Street facade was

one of the urban glories of Italianate Boston (Fig. 6). For their

first important public building Hammatt and Joseph followed

Dexter and Gilman in selecting a Renaissance model, but left

Florence for inspiration farther north. The broad, dressed stone

plane above the ground floor shops was interrupted by three

rows of identical, round arched openings outlined by crisp moldings and topped by a modillion cornice. In August 1846 this

seemed to several newspaper correspondents a daring or incor-

rect departure.17 Close inspection of photographs, however, reveals the facade to have been a round arched variation upon the Boston granite style, an update of the granite Greek mode

which Hammatt and Joseph had learned at first hand under

Ammi Young at the Custom House (still under construction as

they began work on the Museum). The fa:ade was not only a fine

17. Boston Post, 3 August 1846, i; 8 August, I; 14 August, I; I5

August, z (a letter from Arthur Gilman calling the building "beautiful"); Boston Courier, 22 August, 2; 26 August, 2. The novelty of the Ital- ianate details is clearly apparent in this otherwise murky exchange.

Dow


ay 2020


Fig. 6. Boston Museum. Tremont Street facade

(Courtesy of The Bostonian Society).

early example of the Renaissance Revival in America; it should now assume its place in the development of stringent lithic design in Boston, an important link in the chain of buildings which leads

eventually to the mature work of H. H. Richardson. All in all, then, the Museum was an impressive achievement for a pair of architects still in their twenties.

The Museum was the major but not the only Italianate design by H. and J. E. during these years. If for the Museum facade they looked toward the north Italian works, for the Temple Club

(I849-I850) they followed Dexter's lead in studying Raphael's Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence through Barry's London interpre- tations (Fig. 7).18 In fact, on i July 1846 Hammatt purchased from William Ticknor's Old Corner Bookstore at Washington and School streets a copy of Leeds's Travellers' Club.19 For the

i8. Articles of Association of the Proprietors of the Temple Club House, Boston, 1849; Ballou's, IX, 4 August 8 55, 76.

19. Ticknor and Fields Ledger, I843-I1848 (Houghton Library, Har- vard University, fMS AM 1185.I4 [I]), fol. IZo. Hammatt also purchased (on 23 July) Joseph Gwilt's Encyclopaedia of Architecture, probably in the second edition of 1845, a work illustrating north and central Italian palazzi.

From the same Ledger we know he owned other architectural works, including M. Wyman, Practical Treatise on Ventilation, Cambridge,

facade of the Temple Club, the scraped remains of which survive

in West Street, Hammatt and Joseph relied upon Leeds for general inspiration only, developing their narrow plane in three levels:

a classical arcade at ground level surmounted by paired, rectan-

gular bays opened by round arched windows at the second level

topped by grouped, triple, linteled openings at the third level, the

whole framed by quoins and a bracketed cornice. Among other

executed Italianate works of the period, Hammatt designed a

foursquare house (1848) at Wollaston, south of the city, for

Josiah Quincy, Jr., the second Boston mayor of that name (Fig. 8).20

Mass., 1846 (purchased 7 August I846), Pugin's Contrasts, zd ed., 1841 (acquired 18 September 1846), and Ruskin's Stones of Venice (April 1851 and November 1853). The majority of his purchases relate to his work as illustrator. See fn. 48.

o2. In a letter to the historian Charles Deane dated I7 October I849, Eliza S. Quincy mentions "my brother's house" and "Billings, the architect of the house" (Massachusetts Historical Society). We know she refers to Hammatt and not Joseph because she also mentions a drawing, The Dying Indian Chief, by the same Billings (it, too, preserved in the Massachusetts Historical Society). Eliza had two brothers: Edmund, the abolitionist, and Josiah, Jr., whose Wollaston house was erected the

Dow


ay 2020


I

Fig. 7. H. and J. E. Billings, Temple Club, Boston, I849-I850. West Street facade (Ballou's, 1855; author's collection).

The Italianate was suitable for civic buildings and country houses, but ecclesiastical design required the Gothic by the

I840s. Contemporary with work on the Museum, Hammatt

Joseph's name appears in the documents only once, as a mes-

senger) was designing the Church of the Saviour (later Second

Unitarian) in Bedford Street, a building removed before I88I.

He not only designed the church; he acted as contractor as well, with apparently unfortunate results. Our earliest notice is a

document dated i April I846 in which Hammatt Billings, archi-

tect, and Benjamin G. Russell, mason, agree "that they shall...

on or before the first day of September [I847] ... in considera-

tion of the sum of thirty three thousand dollars . . . erect build

and completely finish a Stone church ... in Bedford street ...

[according to] the plans and specifications . . . made by ...

previous year, according to Hobart Holly of the Quincy Historical Soci- ety. It was leveled in 1970.

This barely touches upon Hammatt's preoccupation with Italianate design during these years. The Stowe-Day scrapbook contains many sketches after Italian models and for Italianate projects, not all of them as yet identified. A sheaf of drawings between fols. 35-36, for example, is a presentation package dated 7 February I850 for a Perkins House. This is an elaborate, towered, Tuscan villa not unlike that Hammatt sketched as Uncle Sam's Palace for Emma Wellmont's temperance novel of that title, which he illustrated (Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey, 1853,

2zo). See also the Billings-Hall house, fn. 25.

Fig. 8. Hammatt Billings, Josiah Quincy, Jr. House, Wollaston, Massa- chusetts, I 848. Exterior (Courtesy of The Quincy Historical Society).

Billings.... And also ... provide all the materials and ... all the

labor and works ... proper to complete said church."21 Rough Newark freestone was to be used on the exterior. Alternate chancel designs are mentioned. Hammatt's lifelong financial

problems apparently originated with this venture, for the cost of

the completed building is given as $70,000 in contemporary

accounts, more than double the contract price, and in the next

decade it was reported that "he lost a great deal of money" on the

church.22 There is no evidence that he ever repeated his mistake.

The view of the exterior of the Bedford Street church preserved in a photograph by Southworth and Hawes (Fig. i) shows

a fashionable early Gothic Revival building of broad planes set

with pointed details enlivened by planted moldings. The single,

asymmetrical tower had a belfry but no spire; the body was

three-aisled with clerestory. The design, then, lies somewhere

between the granite Gothic of the I83os and the advanced eccle-

siastical style that Richard Upjohn was to use two years later at

St. Paul's, Brookline. That the brothers kept abreast of current modes, and were

especially aware of Richard Upjohn's career, is demonstrated by the history of Grace Episcopal Church in Lawrence, Massachu-

setts. H. and J. E. donated plans for the board-and-batten Gothic

edifice which opened on ii October I846, the first building erected for religious worship in the city.23 The small wooden

zi. Suffolk County Deeds, Lib. 559, fols. I96-I97. See fn. i. zz. The Boston Almanac for the Year I854, 59, and Gleason's Pic-

torial Line-of-Battle Ship, i, 6 August 1859, i. Hammatt's estate, con-

sisting mostly of art and architectural books, drawings, and supplies, was valued at little more than $z,ooo (Suffolk County Probate, #56345 [1874]). His prodigious production seems to stem in part from financial

pressures. See the remark of Ednah Cheney quoted later. See also fn. 2 5. 23. Merrimack Courier, I7 October I846, 2 ("J. & A. Billings"); M.

B. Dorgan, History of Lawrence, [Cambridge], 1924, 127; Edith Saun- ders, The First Hundred Years of Grace Church, Lawrence, 1946, 8.

Dow


ay 2020

Fig. 9. H. and J. E. Billings, Grace Episcopal Church, Lawrence, Massachusetts, I85I--85z. Jackson Street front (Photo: Jean Baer

O'Gorman).

structure was of a type just then being given broad usage by

Upjohn. Five years later the brothers provided the congregation with the granite structure, which, with some alterations, still

stands in Jackson Street (Fig. 9).24 The new church was conse-

crated on 5 May 1852 and thus must have been designed in

85 i. It is a bell-cote type which Pierson has observed "during the I85os . . . became common throughout the American

Episcopal community" in the wake of Upjohn's popularization of the type introduced at St. James-the-Less in Philadelphia

(I846-I848).25 In fact, Upjohn had just erected such a church at

St. Stephen's, Boston (1846). Both the original board-and-batten

chapel in Lawrence and its stone replacement display propor- tions more broad than narrow, and the crispness of the granite forms of the existing building also distinguishes it from Upjohn's current work.

24. A. H. Amory and William Lawrence, Sermons Preached at the

Fiftieth Anniversary of Grace Church, Cambridge, 1896, 5-6: "the new stone church was finished according to plans presented by Messrs. Bil-

lings, but modified by the builders." Nothing in the skimpy early records confirms this, according to the church office.

25. William H. Pierson, Jr., American Buildings and Their Architects.

Technology and the Picturesque; The Corporate and the Early Gothic

Styles, Garden City, N.J., I978, 1o9; for the board-and-batten church, 432ff.

O'GORMAN: H. AND J. E. BILLINGS OF BOSTON 6I

That Hammatt's name stands alone as designer of the Bedford

Street church in Boston and the Quincy house in Wollaston

demonstrates that the brothers worked separately as well as to-

gether during the I84os. In addition to the spireless Church of

the Messiah (Fig. z),26 the details of which followed closely those

of Hammatt's Bedford Street design, Joseph produced two

simple school buildings for Cambridge (I847-1848),27 and he

was probably the Billings who collaborated in 1847 with Joseph W. Ingraham, a member of the Boston School Committee, in the

design of what, with his untimely death in 1848, came to be

called the Ingraham School.28 It stood well back from Sheafe

From these years, 185 1-1853, stem the sad events surrounding the erection of Hammatt's own house in Newton, Massachusetts. On 3 June i851 William Jackson sold J. E. Billings lot #19 of his North Auburn Dale subdivision in the northwest corner of Newton, a subdivision laid out in 1847 (Middlesex County Deeds, Lib. 609, fols. 66-67). J. E. paid $400 for a spectacular site high above the meandering Charles River. On I8 November 1853 he sold the lot to Thomas Hall for $3,000 (Lib. 666, fols. I70-I7I). We might conclude that J. E. erected a house on the lot, then sold it to Hall, but the latter recalled in a letter written in 19 5 (now in possession of the current owner of the house), that "Mr. Hammet

Billings started building the house in 1852. He had the frame up and roof on when his wife was taken Insane & [went?] to the Hospital. I bought the House and finished it and Ocupied it in i853[ sic]." Although this was written more than 60 years after the fact, it is accurate in its dates, and it agrees with one other available fact. On 1 March 185 2 Hammatt mentioned the "illness of Mrs. Billings" in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton (Harvard University, Houghton Library, bMs Am io88 [47I]). (It would appear to be a mere coincidence that Hammatt produced the view of the McLean Asylum in Sommerville used by Richard Frothing- ham as the frontispiece to his History of Charlestown [1845].)

Perhaps J. E. acquired the property because of Hammatt's financial difficulties following the erection of the Church of the Saviour. The

Billings-Hall house, a towered, Italianate villa, still stands at 122 Isling- ton Road. Thanks to Kirk Woods for help.

26. "Church of the Messiah, Florence St., Boston. J. E. Billings, Archi- tect. J. H. Bufford's Lith." Undated (Boston Athenaeum). See fn. i.

27. J. E. received $65 for the plan of the Centre Street School and $85 for the design of the second High School (Annual Documents of the City of Cambridge, 1848, 42-43; I849, 26-27). The latter, which survived until 1864, was a simple, two-story, gabled, wooden building relieved

only by a dentil cornice. The Centre Street School lasted until 1913. 28. Construction was authorized in May 1847 (Transcript, 22 May

1847, z), and the building dedicated the following March (Transcript, 3 April 1848, 4). It no longer exists. The notice of the dedication names

only Ingraham as the designer, but the Boston Almanac for 1849 (8z)

reports that the plans were prepared under his direction, and that "Mr.

Billings was the architect." Ordinarily I would assume "Mr. Billings" to mean Hammatt, but J. E. is listed as draftsman for the school in Henry Barnard, School Architecture, New York, zd ed., 1849, I90. Thanks to Robert McKay for this notice.

The Newton Historical Society (Jackson Homestead) possesses the

specifications for a simple wooden house, shed, and barn for one Sarah Baxter to be erected on Orange Street (later Highland), West Newton, from the design of J. E. Billings. The document is dated z February 1848. An 185 5 map of Newton shows the house on the site presently occupied

by 145 Highland Street, across from the residence of Horace Mann, now demolished. The foursquare, wooden structure at 3 8 Prince Street, to the rear of 145 Highland, could be the Baxter house moved to a new site. Thanks to Susan Abele and Barbara Thibault of the Jackson Homestead.

Dow


ay 2020

6z JSAH, XLII:1, MARCH 1983

Fig. io. Joseph E. Billings, Ingraham School, Boston, 1847-1848. Sheafe Street front (anonymous watercolor courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library).

Street in the North End, a foursquare, flat, stone block behind an

iron fence and landmark horse chestnut tree (Fig. io). What little

architectural detail this austere building possessed was probably closer to the Greek than the Italian. The school was characteris-

tic of the simple, almost styleless works we know Joseph de-

signed. His seems to have been an engineer's approach to archi-

tecture; Hammatt's, an artist's. J. E.'s early schools reflect the

lead of A. B. Young at the Charlestown High School, erected in

1847, a fact reinforcing other evidence linking the two.

By the I85os the brothers had parted company. Joseph joined Charles F. Sleeper in partnership from i85 into I853 (Fig. 3), and together they designed the first building of the Auburndale

Female Seminary (now Lasell Junior College) in Newton, Massa-

chusetts (i 85 I), and the severe, Italianate new National Theatre

at Portland and Traverse streets in Boston (1852; Fig. i ), but

Joseph was soon to make a different arrangement.29 In July 1853 he assumed the duties of Civil Engineer at the Charlestown (later

Boston) Navy Yard, and over the next dozen years carried out a

number of major improvements, some in the robust granite style

29. The building for the Female Seminary, later called Bragdon Hall, was added to in the I87os and pulled down in the I970s. It was an

L-shaped, gabled and clapboarded structure of no particular distinction. In a letter of z6 May 185 I, Edward Lasell, founder of the school, wrote that "Mr. Billings of the firm of Billings & Sleeper, Boston, is the Archi- tect & Superintendent, & may be refered to by the builders." (Lasell Junior College; thanks to Donald J. Winslow for the reference). The head of the Trustees of the school was William Jackson, with whom J. E. had previous dealings (see fn. 25).

The old National Theatre burned in April i85z (Transcript, 22 April 1852, 2); it was rebuilt and opened on I November (Transcript, 2 No- vember 1852, 2). The contract among the owner, leasee, and builders, which does not mention the architects, was signed on io May (Rare Book Room, Boston Public Library, MS. Th. I [6]).

We can guess that Hammatt's domestic difficulties at this time drove J. E. into a new partnership.

Fig. I i. J. E. Billings and C. F. Sleeper, National Theatre, Boston, 185 2. Portland Street front (Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Print De-

partment).

of his predecessor, Alexander Parris, his mentor, Ammi Young, or his contemporary (and his brother's erstwhile collaborator), G. J. F. Bryant.30 His chief monument there, and an area land-

mark for more than half a century, was the 2391/2-foot brick

chimney ( 857-I 85 8) of the Steam Engineering Building. With Joseph employed by the Navy, we must picture Ham-

matt very busy as designer and illustrator. He was one of the

principal artists for Gleason's Pictorial and its successor, Bal-

lou's, and for the annual Boston Almanac, during the i85os; worked for Ticknor & Fields, John P. Jewett, and other Boston

publishers; and turned out a pile of miscellaneous graphic work.31 Among his independent architectural projects during

30. Transcript, 12 July I853, 2; George H. Preble, "History of the Boston Navy Yard, I797-I874," 1875, 322ff. (MS in the National Ar- chives; a copy in the Curator's office, Boston Navy Yard, National Park Service); Bettina A. Norton, The Boston Naval Shipyard, 1800-1974,

Boston, 1975 (reprinted from the Proceedings of The Bostonian Society, I974).

3 . He was gradually eased out of Ballou's by the younger Winslow Homer. Hammatt's other magazine illustration ranged from the third masthead of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator (i850) to designs for Harper's Weekly and Oliver Optic's Magazine in the i86os. Other design work included a number of engraved certificates and diplomas for the United States Agricultural Society and the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. A catalogue of this work is still to be compiled.

Dow


ay 2020

this period were a new stairhall for the Athenaeum (1850), a corrective to the Cabots' unsatisfactory interior,32 a granite house for Charles Eliot Norton at Newport (I852-I853),33 a

design commissioned by Gleason's for the Boston Public Garden

(I853),34 and a preliminary sketch for the case of the Great

Organ installed in George Snell's Music Hall (i858; the definitive design was apparently the work of the builders, Herter Brothers of New York).3 He also designed the baroque canopy over Plymouth Rock (I854; replaced by McKim, Mead and

White's existing pavilion), and designed, publicized, and raised funds for the colossal granite National Monument to the Fore- fathers in the same place (1854 on).36 The monument was fin-

32. Josiah Quincy, History of the Athenaeum, op. cit., 232-237;

Change and Continuity, op. cit.; Ralph W. Emerson, Journals, x, 250 (June i868): "The Cabots built the Athenaeum; Billings went into it and said, this hall and staircase want greatness, and drew his plans. The Committee and Cabots assented at once, and Billings was added to the Cabots as one of the architects." In addition to Hammatt's well-known sketch preserved in the Athenaeum, there are a plan and a perspective of the stairhall in the Stowe-Day scrapbook (between fols. 43-44).

Probably of the same year is Hammatt's drawing for the extension of the federal capitol (Stowe-Day, fol. 8A). According to Robert Ennis, there is no mention of Billings in the documents relating to this enlargement, which was, of course, the work of T. U. Walter. Whether there is a connection between this sketch and the project by Billings's mentor, A. B. Young, remains to be seen.

33. Billings is mentioned as the architect in correspondence between Norton and Alexander McGregor, the builder, dated 7 January, 14 January, 9 March, 14 May I85z, and 8 January 1853 (Houghton Li- brary, Harvard University, MS Com 3 *). The house, actually erected for Andrews Norton, Charles's father, and used by his mother after An- drews's early death, still stands, as altered in the i87os, at Webster and Spring streets. The house needs further study. Thanks to Richard Cham- plin for help.

In a letter to Norton dated i i March 1852 (Houghton Library, bMs Am Io88 [471]), Hammatt comments on an article Norton was to pub- lish as "Dwellings and Schools for the Poor" (a review of Hector Gavin, The Habitations of the Industrial Classes, London, I85 I) in the North American Review, 74, April I852, 464-489. Billings is identified in the footnote on p. 480 as "one of our most experienced architects" (without being named), and his views quoted. Thanks to Cynthia Zaitzevsky.

34. iv, 26 February 1853, I37. The project called for a colossal statue of Daniel Webster, the forerunner of Hammatt's proposals for Plymouth and Lexington (see fns. 36 and 45).

3 5. That Hammatt's contribution to the design of this wooden baroque giant has been overstated is clear from contemporary accounts, such as this one in Dwight's Journal of Music, xxIII, 3 October 1863, 126: "The general outline of the facade followed a design made by Mr. Hammatt Billings, to whom also are due... the Saint Cecilia and the two groups of cherubs ... ," or this, from the same journal of 12 December I863 (p. 147): "The ... case was constructed by the Brothers HERTER ..., the germ of the plan being a design by HAMMATT BILLINGS .... who was the first to recognize the improvements suggested by the artist builders, and to urge the adoption of their modifications of his plan." The organ survives at the Methuen, Massachusetts, Memorial Music Hall.

36. Canopy and Monument were part of the same package. The history of this commission is revealed in documents in the archives of the Pilgrim Society, Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth (boxes 3, 4, 6, 9, ga, and 9b). Thanks to Jeanne Mills for guidance.


ished, somewhat altered and reduced in size, in I889, long after both brothers were dead. It rates mention as a forerunner of the Statue of Liberty, although it lacks the grace and the technical achievement of Bartholdi's lady.37

In July 1854 the Trustees called for plans for a monument to the Pilgrims "on or over the Rock." By 15 November proposals had been received from Asboth & Zucker (and a second, unnamed architect) of New York, and Paul Schulze, H. Noury, and Richard Bond of Boston. Billings submitted nothing. On 20 December the proposal of Asboth & Zucker, who are described elsewhere in these documents as "two Hun- garian gentlemen," was accepted.

Although Billings avoided the competition, he had, even before the call for designs, contacted the Society with plans for the monument. As early as June 1854 he was having a model made of his proposal, and wanted to present it to the Trustees. "The success of any design," he wrote, "is predicated upon the effect which its magnitude and grandeur will have in awakening the feeling of the Public, and in the method by which I propose to collect the funds" (Hammatt to Richard Warren, President of the Society, 12 June 1854). Already he had in mind a colossal image and a scheme for financing it. In an undated fragment of a letter written after the award to Asboth & Zucker, Billings protested that "as it is to be a National Mon[umen]t it should be the work of a native artist." On 27 February 1855, having gained support from a number of the Trustees, Hammatt appeared before them to present his proposal. By April the "Hungarians" had been routed, or at least paid off and dis- missed. The contract between Billings and the Society is dated 23 May. In it the designer agreed to erect two monuments: (i) the canopy over the Rock, to be finished by August 1859, and (2), his colossal figure of Faith, to be erected on a site of his choosing, to be finished by August I868. Billings was authorized to collect funds in the name of the Society.

The cornerstones were laid in August I859, but neither project was finished on schedule. The canopy was completed by I867, but the reduced figure of Faith dragged on for another zz years. The delays were due to problems of fund raising aggravated by the divisive Civil War. Edward Everett wrote to Hammatt on z November 855 praising the figure: "Its colossal dimensions symbolize the magnitude of the event & the moral grandeur of the characters commemorated.... The erection of such a work ... is well calculated to promote fraternal feeling throughout the Union...." But the need to draw support from the entire nation had to await the outcome of battle, and then hobble along in postwar economic uncertainties.

This is not the place to detail Hammatt's sources, except to mention that he saw his 70-foot high figure on an 83-foot high base as a worthy successor to the great colossi of the past (The Illustrated Pilgrim Al- manac, Boston, I 860, one of the many promotional publications created by the architect). He and others also saw it as a corrective to Robert Mills's Washington Monument. Charles A. Alexander, an architect of Portland, Maine, wrote to Billings on 28 December 1855 to compliment the design (he praised the combination of architecture and sculpture), and to beg that it be widely published so that the public could "see the contrast between it and the huge pile which is so likely to disgrace the country in the shape of the 'Washington National Monument."' Ham- matt himself had signed an open letter from the artists and architects of Boston opposing a federal grant in aid of the Mills design (Transcript, 26 February 1850, 2). See also T. H. Bartlett, "Civic Monuments in New England," American Architect and Building News, x, 9 July i88i, I5- 16; Stoddard, op. cit., 62-63.

Billings joined others to design an unbuilt colossal figure for Lexing- ton (see fns. 34 and 45).

37. J. F. O'Gorman, letter to the Book Review Editor, JSAH, xxxvin, May 1978, 134. To be fair, Hammatt's design should be judged by the metal models issued in the I85os, and not by its clumsy realization at Plymouth in the I87os and i88os.

Dow


ay 2020


As if this exhausting list of independent works did not represent enough for one man, Hammatt during these years frequently also collaborated with other architects, either overtly, or, as we shall see, covertly. His graphic talent cast him in the role of

designer whether he joined with his brother or with others. He had a gift for picturesque composition which carried over from illustration to architecture, and he was often called upon to provide massing or skylines for the plans of others. It is probable that

through such collaborations he had a greater impact upon mid-

i9th-century Boston architecture than can ever be properly as- sessed.

This aspect of his career stood out in the memories of others.

James Jackson Jarves, whose books on Hawaii were among the works Hammatt illustrated, wrote in the Art-Idea (1864) that "the mere overflow of his mind would make a reputation for the common run of architects and artists. Indeed, we fancy, more is

already due him in Boston than appears on the surface, for his own generous virtues and modest self-appreciation stand in the

way of his worldly prosperity."38 Ednah Cheney, who was

briefly married to Hammatt's fellow artist, Seth Cheney, in the 8 5 os, later remembered that he "excelled in his talent for nearly

every art. But... he scattered his forces in many different direc- tions. His pecuniary necessities forced him into work for other

architects, who bought his designs and used them according to their own purposes."39 As late as I920, Charles F. Read, who had worked briefly as an architect and apparently knew the

Billings brothers in the I87os, recalled that "many buildings were erected from his designs and he also assisted other architects in their work who did not possess his genius."40 Much evidence sustains this testimony; there is ample documentation for Ham- matt's roles as both design consultant and ghost.

The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association building in Boston is one example of Hammatt's service as collaborator.

Another project of this period was Hammatt's 860 proposal for the enlargement of Boston City Hall, a commission that eventually went to Bryant and Gilman (Report of the Committee on Public Buildings Upon an Enlargement of the City Hall, Boston, i860, 3-4; G. L. Wrenn III, "The Boston City Hall," JSAH, xxI, March I962, I88-192). Ham- matt's design is preserved in lithographs at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

38. J. J. Jarves, The Art-Idea, New York, 1864, 241. Hammatt provided illustrations for Jarves's Scenes and Scenery in the Sandwich Islands, Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1843, and his Kiana: A Tradition of Hawaii, Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe and Com- pany, I857.

39. Ednah Dow Cheney, Reminiscences, Boston, 1902, 132-133. Seth was Ward's brother (see fn. 53).

40. C. F. Read, "Hammatt Billings, Artist and Architect," typescript of a talk given to the Bostonian Society in I9z0 and preserved in its library. Read was born in 1853 (thanks to Mary Leen for help). The name "Charles F. Read" appears as a witness to Joseph's signature on a document of 1878 (Suffolk County Probate, Hammatt Billings #56345), so he must have known the brothers as a young professional.

In 1857 a committee of members of the Association, including the architects Gridley Bryant and Nathaniel J. Bradlee, produced a plan for a new building, after which it moved "to procure a

design for the facades on Bedford and Chauncey streets. For this

purpose they obtained the assistance of Mr. Hammatt Billings, who, in the course of a few days, handed in a sketch on a small

piece of paper, about five inches by four."41 The committee

requested him to develop his concept at a larger scale, and this "was with the plan drawn by the Committee, submitted to the Government [of the Association], and received their approval" on 4 May 18 5 7.42 This is a history of collaboration we encounter in a variety of forms throughout Hammatt's career.

The Mechanic Association building consisted of three floors, with a bank on the first, rental offices on the second, and the hall of the Association on the third. The exterior was described at the time as Italian Renaissance modified by Lombardic or Roman-

esque details, which in 9Ith-century terms is accurate enough up to the French roof (Fig. i). The central niches of the third story on the Chauncey Street elevation held figures of Charity, Labor, and Thought. Were they, too, shaped by Hammatt's pencil?

There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that Hammatt was one of the many collaborators who worked with prolific Gridley Bryant, although it would appear that they never formalized their relationship. They were in contact as early as 1848, when Hammatt designed a view of Bryant's Suffolk County Prison

(now called Charles Street Jail).43 We have mentioned their collaboration on the Mechanic Association building. In the same

year, I857, the trustees of the estate of Joshua Sears commissioned Bryant to design, among other structures on Franklin Street (formerly Bulfinch's Franklin Place), a building at numbers

74-76 on the corner of Devonshire, and Bryant turned to Bil-

lings for exterior embellishment.44 For the five-story, Quincy granite structure intended to commemorate Sears and bearing his initial at the top, Hammatt provided sculptural details, in-

cluding the keystone heads at the ground level arcade, and other "alto-relievos" across the faCade (Fig. 2). As we shall see, it was

4I. Dedication of the Mechanics' Hall, op. cit., 6-7. This description of Hammatt's graphic method is fully confirmed by the diminutive sketches in the Stowe-Day scrapbook (Figs. 14, i6, and I8).

42. Two sketches for elaborate fireplace walls in Mannerist style dated May 1857 may relate to this building (Stowe-Day, fols. 20, 71).

43. "View of the New Jail for Suffolk County ... 1848. H. Billings, del. G. J. F. Bryant, Architect. J. H. Bufford's Lith." (Boston Athenaeum).

44. Boston Almanac for the Year I859, 51-52. Hammatt had been closely associated with the Almanac as artist and writer since he designed its title page for the 1852 edition, and the illustrations to Presi- dent James Walker's article on Harvard College in this volume are after his drawings (Harvard College Papers, Second Series, xxxv, no. 267 [Harvard University Archives]), so this information can be assumed correct. Charles S. Damrell, A Half Century of Boston Building, Boston, 1895,46-48.

Dow


ay 2020


i

i

Fig. 12. G. J. F. Bryant with H. Billings, 74-76 Franklin Street, Boston, 18 57. Exterior (Courtesy of The Bostonian Society).

not the last time either architect worked at this corner, nor was it the last time they worked together.45

Bryant was not Hammatt's only professional customer. The Tremont Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston was be-

gun in i860 and dedicated in 1862.46 According to one of Ham- matt's obituaries, "when he was asked [presumably by the architects S. S. Woodcock and G. F. Meacham] to draw a design for

45. Billings and Bryant collaborated with the sculptor Thomas Ball on an unexecuted, colossal Minuteman Monument for Lexington ca. 1859 (certificate of the "Lexington Monument Association, I 860" [Hammatt Billings, del., I861]; author's collection). See also Bartlett, "Civic Monu- ments," op. cit., 17. They also joined in the design of an unexecuted Civil War monument for Boston Common in i866 (G. J. F. Bryant and H. Billings, Specifications of Stone-Cutter's Materials & Works for Memo- rial Monument, Boston, [1866]; Stoddard, op. cit., 63-65). Martin Mil- more's existing shaft on Flagstaff Hill superseded it.

I have not yet verified H. T. Bailey's assertion that the pair designed the decorations for the reception of the Prince of Wales of i860 ("An Archi- tect of the Old School," New England Magazine, xxv, 1901, 337; Harper's Weekly, 27 October i86o, 684-686). He seems to have con- fused the Plymouth and Lexington colossi. Nor have I elucidated the several references to Hammatt in Bailey's "Complete Catalogue of Plans ... [etc.] The Property of Gridley J. F. Bryant ... ," 1890, now in the library of the University of Oregon, with a copy in the author's possession. Thanks to Robert McKay and Bryant Tolles for discussing the problem with me.

46. Stoddard, op. cit., 6i; Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 7 August I869, 327, 333.

Fig. 13. S. S. Woodcock and G. F. Meacham with H. Billings, Tremont Street M. E. Church, Boston, i860-i86z. Exterior (lithograph in author's collection).

the exterior of that church, he walked to the spot to see the shape of the lot. Standing on the corner, he drew upon a piece of paper,

resting on his hat, the outline of the structure, to which he added

a few slight embellishments. It was the work of a few minutes."47

This charming account of inspired picturesque composition gives us insight into this aspect of Hammatt's career. For

Woodcock and Meacham, who supervised construction and

apparently designed the plan and interior, Billings provided an

attractive silhouette. As exterior design consultant he created a

two-towered skyline with the taller tower-three stories plus broach spire-at the reentrant angle between church-three

aisles without clerestory-and parish house, and the shorter

tower to the left of the main facade (Fig. I3). It was his most

memorable ecclesiastical massing, a richly colorful work un-

doubtedly inspired in part by his reading of Ruskin in the preced-

ing years.48 The lithographic view of the church published in i86z credits

only Hammatt as architect.49 His contribution to Woodcock and

Meacham's project, then, was recognized by his own effort. But,

47. Boston Morning Journal, 17 November 1874, z. The obituary in Old and New (op. cit.) states clearly that the interior was "not from his design."

48. See fn. I9. In addition to the Stones, Billings purchased "Sheep- folds" on Io July 851 (Ruskin's Notes on the Construction of Sheep- folds, I851?), Modern Painters on I October 1852, and z8 February and 24 September 1856, The Elements of Drawing on 20 August I857, and The Political Economy of Art on i February i858. According to the obituary in Old and New (op. cit.), Hammatt "was one of the first and most intelligent of Ruskin's admirers in America; but when he read 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture,' he said 'After all, Ruskin is possessed with a devil of a theory.'"

49. "Methodist Episcopal Church. Hammatt Billings, Arch. J. H. Bufford's Lith. Boston" (Boston Athenaeum).

Dow


ay 2020


i

i

i

dJyz4rme -416- ac,"l- ,A,cr C/ ? /

y ̂~/~JpF ,4a I 1

,114Y,111i-Ifllw, -

Fig. 15. G. F. Meacham, South Congregational Church, New Britain, Connecticut, 1864-1868. Exterior (author's collection).

Fig. I4. Hammatt Billings, Preliminary study for a church, New Britain, Connecticut, 1864. Ink on blue lined paper, 8" x 5" (Courtesy of The

Stowe-Day Foundation, Hartford).

as James Jarves and Ednah Cheney hinted, this was not always the case. In the Stowe-Day scrapbook is a "Sketch of Church at

New Britain, Conn./Hammatt Billings, May 4th I864."50 The

drawing (Fig. 14) shows church-three aisled without clerestory -and chapel set at right angles to one another, with a tower-

three stories plus broach spire-placed at the angle. A lower

tower rises from the right side of the main facade. The style is

English Gothic. This is, in short, a close adaptation of Ham-

matt's Tremont Street concept. Two other scraps show the complex in relation to its site, an

irregular plot at the acute angle formed by converging, unnamed

streets. The church faces down the single street created by their

confluence. Armed with this information it takes no time to

locate the building in New Britain. The South Congregational Church at the meeting of Arch and Main streets, an English Gothic design of red sandstone obviously built in the i86os, faces down Main with its chapel perpendicular to the chancel

end of the nave (Fig. 15). There are two towers of unequal

5o. Folio Iz.

height, too, although the taller-four stories plus broach spire- is to the right of the principal entrance, while that at the angle is shorter. The tower arrangement, then, is the reverse of that shown on the Billings sketch.

An inquiry to the church's historian brought curious results.

Nothing in the record mentions Hammatt Billings, and there is no evidence of a competition. The building committee was appointed on 17 March 1864, the building begun in April i865, the

chapel finished and dedicated on 29 March 1867, and the church itself dedicated 16 January i868.51 The architect was George F.

Meacham of Boston, one of the pair who commissioned the exterior silhouette of the Tremont Street church. The question arises, then: since the South Congregational Church in New Britain recognizably reflects Hammatt's sketch, dated just six weeks after the formation of the building committee, why is it that only Meacham is remembered as the architect? We must have here an example of Hammatt's ghosting for another archi-

5I. The [New Britain] True Citizen, z5 August I865, z; The New Britain Record, 17 January i868, z; [David N. Camp], A Half Century of the South Congregational Church, New Britain, I893; Kate Brooks, A History of the South Congregational Church, New Britain, I938, I6-17. Thanks to Elizabeth Meagley for searching the records.

Dow


ay 2020


tect. His hand went unrecognized in the design of the South

Congregational Church until this article, and he seems on more

than one occasion to have been a vital factor in the shaping of

buildings credited to others. We know he worked with Bryant, with Meacham, and with his brother. With how many others?

Joseph Billings withdrew from the Navy Yard on 4 July I866, and rejoined his brother in architectural practice.52 Again artist and engineer were together, although there apparently remained

independent projects for each. The Stowe-Day scrapbook and

that in the Boston Public Library preserve many of their efforts, not all of which are completely understood at this writing. Sev- eral reflect the brothers' work west of Boston.

All but one of the surviving working drawings for Cheney Hall

at Manchester, Connecticut, are signed by Hammatt alone, and

the earliest is dated April 1866, so this may have been the com-

mission that brought the brothers together again.53 What brought the Billingses and Cheneys together remains unanswered. The

structure served as a community center for employees of the

Cheney Brothers Silk Company, and stands a stone's throw from

its former mill buildings. An auditorium occupies the majority of

the main floor. This gives shape on the exterior to a two-story,

rectangular, red-brick box with corner pavilions and a one-

52. See fn. 30. Apparently just before the brothers rejoined, Hammatt submitted a lost project for Harvard's Memorial Hall (R. B. Shaffer, "Ruskin, Norton, and Memorial Hall," Harvard Library Bulletin, III, 1949, 213-23 ). There is apparently no record of this at Harvard Uni- versity Archives.

It should be mentioned, in connection with Hammatt's post-Civil War work, that he spent the summer of 1865 in London, apparently looking for British commissions for illustrations. Our skimpy knowledge of his stay comes from two sources. First, there is a tiny sketchbook in the Department of Prints and Drawings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (M 28144) with Hammatt's name and address (17 Charlotte St., Bedford Square, London). It contains landscapes, figure studies, and copies after the old masters dated May to September I865. One sketch, dated 12 September, is labeled "S. Deerfield," indicating that he had returned by then. Second, a letter in the Rare Book Room, Boston Public Library (MS. Am. 1470) is dated io August (no year given) and addressed to "Townsend" (the British illustrator Henry James Townsend?) in Paris. Hammatt gossips about people and money problems, and is clearly writing from London, where he is hoping for work on the (Illustrated London?) "News." I can find no trace of his name in that periodical during i865-i866.

53. Microfilms of the working drawings are on file in the Manchester Town Planning Office. Thanks to Alan Lamson for access to them, to Alison Cornish for bringing the building to my attention, and to Jon Harrison for help. See Anderson Notter Feingold Inc., Preservation and Development Plan for the Cheney Brothers National Historic Land- mark District, Boston, I980, I9-z0.

Sketches dated I867 and I869 in the Stowe-Day scrapbook (fols. 34-35, 65-67) are preliminary studies for a house at South Manchester for Ward Cheney (fol. 74 is a design for a desk for a "Mr. Ward ..." whose last name is cut off). In The Architecture of H. H. Richardson (Cambridge, MA, I966, I04), H.-R. Hitchcock mentions the "simple mansarded style" of Hammatt's house for Ward Cheney, and dates it to I869, but at this writing the Manchester Historical Society is unable to identify it.

c4:--^/' f5^*t

Fig. I6. Hammatt Billings, Preliminary sketch for the Mt. Holyoke Li-

brary, South Hadley, Massachusetts, i868. Pencil and red ink on blue lined paper, 7" x 41/2" (Courtesy of The Stowe-Day Foundation, Hart- ford).

story, arcaded, entrance porch. High mansards cap the pavilions and the main block. Details include pointed arches of polychromatic voussoirs surrounding round-arched openings at the main

level, Gothic dormers, and Neo-Grec decorative accents inside and out. Hammatt here created an eclectic pile, part English, part French, but linked to his previous work by its classical balance.

The building survives in sad but hopeful condition, awaiting restoration by the town.

Two years after beginning Cheney Hall H. and J. E. designed a

library for Mt. Holyoke Seminary at South Hadley, Massachu-

setts. Preliminary sketches for a library building appear in the

Stowe-Day scrapbook dated 14 July I868, and one of them

includes the name, "Miss French." During the presidency of

Helen M. French (1867-1872), Mrs. Henry F. Durant, wife of a

Trustee of Mt. Holyoke and founder of Wellesley College, offered the school $io,ooo for books, if a suitable, fire-proof

building could be erected within three years. On 5 June i868 a

building committee including Henry Durant was appointed, foundations were laid in June I869, and the building dedicated

in i870.54 The Stowe-Day sketches (which are close to what was

built) and old photographs depict a small brick building located

to the south of the school's first structure, erected in I837. A

rectangular plan with polygonal bay to the east and rectangular

bay to the west rose into a boxy space with flat ceiling subdivided

into alcoves by bookcases. Ceiling and walls of the interior were

stenciled with classicizing motifs, and the woodwork bore Neo- Grec patterns. The same vocabulary of decorative details found

on Cheney Hall was repeated on the gabled exterior here (Fig. 16), as was the symmetrical massing. The end elevations of the

54. The Stowe-Day sketches are on fols. 27 and 72. See Mary 0. Nutting, Historical Sketch of Mount Holyoke Seminary, Washington, D.C., 1876, 6, iz; S. D. Stow, History of Mount Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley, 1887, 22i, zz6-227, 270o. There are several letters from the Billings brothers, ranging in date between February and October I869, in the College History Collection at Mt. Holyoke. Thanks to Elaine Trehub.

Dow


ay 2020


Mt. Holyoke library appear in photographs to have been almost

Georgian in effect. Habits of design learned in the i83os clearly survived into the works of the i 86os.

There are a number of drafts in the Stowe-Day scrapbook for the brothers' unsuccessful entry in the competition for the Con- necticut State Capitol (i87i-i872).55 The large number of

recognized and supposed Connecticut projects, in fact, suggests that the Billingses' practice was expanding westward from the Hub toward the end of Hammatt's life,56 but the solid achievement of these years remained in and around Boston. For the city the brothers produced a number of important commercial build-

ings, including Hammatt's surviving, granite-style Wesleyan Association Building in Bromfield Street (I869-I87I),57 and

Joseph's demolished Odd Fellows' Hall at Tremont and Berkeley streets (I87I-I87z).58 Their characteristic styles seem reversed in this pair, the Wesleyan building being the more austere of the

two, which suggests caution in the separation of hands in these

individually credited works. The brothers joined forces at the Cathedral Building at Frank-

lin and Devonshire streets, which was erected to replace a build-

55. Stowe-Day, fols. I, 40, 46-47, and 51-52 all seem related to this project. A copy of the "General Description and Specifications to Ac- company Design for State Capitol," signed H. and J. E. Billings, is in the Stowe-Day Foundation. The project was overlooked by David P. Curry and Patricia D. Pierce, eds., Monument: The Connecticut State Capitol, Hartford, I979, but is mentioned in David P. Ranson, Geo. Keller, Architect, Hartford, 1978, 71. There was an undefined connection between Keller and Billings. The Stowe-Day owns a copy of Kate N. Dog- gett, trans., The Grammar of Painting and Engraving, New York, 1874, which was once owned by Keller. It has Hammatt's signature on the title page. Thanks to Diana Royse for the information.

56. There is a photograph of an undated design for an unnamed in- surance company building for Hartford in the smaller Boston Public Library scrapbook.

57. E. M. Bacon, King's Dictionary of Boston, Boston, 1883, 297; King's Handbook of Boston, Boston, 7th ed., i885, 202; C. Hanton, A. Semmes, and R. Spears, "The Wesleyan Association Building," 1980 (a paper written by students of E. Sekler, Carpenter Center, Harvard Uni- versity).

William Claflin, whom we shall meet below, was President of the Association during I868-I87z. A letter of 3 April 1869, (now in the Claflin Collection, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont, Ohio), signed Hartwell & Swasey, Architects of Boston, discusses their alternate proposals for the building.

Two other projects in the Stowe-Day scrapbook are worthy of notice. Folios 49-50 hold the "Design for a Town Hall to be built of rubble stone with granite dressings. H. & J. E. Billings. May I4th 1870." This may or may not be one of the 16 designs submitted in competition for the Brookline, Massachusetts, Town Hall after z8 March 1870 (Proceed- ings at the Dedication of the Town Hall, Brookline, Brookline, I873). Folios i 3-17 contain variant designs for the fa:ade of a railway station dated January 1871. If this station was to be erected in Boston, I would guess that these are related to E. A. P. Newcomb's Boston and Lowell Station (1871-1872) rather than Peabody and Steams's Boston and Providence Station (1872 on).

58. "Odd Fellows Hall. Architect J. E. Billings. Crosby and Co. Lith., Boston" (Boston Athenaeum).

ing of the same name destroyed by the Great Fire of 1872. The first Cathedral Building was standing by 1864 on the site diag- onally opposite from 74-76 Franklin, a site formerly occupied by Bulfinch's Holy Cross Cathedral (replaced on another site by Patrick Keely in 865- 875).59 Although Gridley Bryant is given sole credit for the design, at least one Bryant scholar thinks that

here, too, we have evidence of Hammatt's ghostly hand. The Second Empire building was closer to the embellished facades of

74-76 Franklin, across the intersection, than to other Bryant buildings in the area. It was five stories of arcades and round arched openings capped by a mansard roof. At the second and fourth levels were keystones decorated with human heads, in the manner of 74-76, which this Cathedral Building was certainly intended to rival. In the center of the Devonshire Street facade at the fourth level was an "R" set into the axial window recess, the initial of Isaac Rich, the developer.

The first Cathedral Building vanished in 1872 and was re-

placed by 1874 with a second building of the same name (Fig. 17). This "handsome iron structure," as Edwin Bacon described

it, was French-inspired and five stories, but lacked the mansard -that lumber pile in the sky the proliferation of which throughout center city had fed the blaze and which was legislated out of the rebuilt area.60 Sources cite only the Messrs. Billings as architects of the replacement, and there seems no reason to suppose that Bryant was involved with the rebuilding, although the de-

veloper, whose initials now crown the block in three places, remained the same. The second Cathedral Building was H. and J. E.'s definitive contribution to downtown Boston.

The brothers worked in the suburbs as well as the city. For their client at the Wesleyan Association Building, William

Claflin, they designed a suburban villa in Newtonville. Claflin was the 23rd Governor of Massachusetts at the time, and the owner of much property in the area, including an Italianate

home, "The Old Elms," erected in the 18 5os. The new house was

59. Keating, Lane & Co., Wholesale Clothing, first occupied 8I Franklin Street in 1864, according to the Boston Directory. For a photograph of the first Cathedral Building see J. H. Kay, Lost Boston, Boston, 1980, 87.

60. E. M. Bacon, Boston Illustrated, Boston and New York, [ca. i886], 96-97; Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Investigate the Cause... of the Great Fire ..., Boston, 1873.

Folio 6 of the Stowe-Day scrapbook holds Hammatt's sketch for a fireplace "For private counting room znd Story Cathedral building. Mar. 7. 1874." Fig. 17 reproduces a photograph mounted in the smaller scrapbook in the Boston Public Library. A pencil note, presumably in N. T. Bartlett's writing, informs us that it was "Built by H & J. E. Billings." See fn. io.

Also after the fire, H. and J. E. designed for the developer, Isaac Rich, a "New York iron front" on the site at the intersection of Summer and High streets formerly occupied by the home of Daniel Webster. The occupant was William Claflin & Co., wholesale boots and shoes. See the Boston Mercantile Journal, io November 1873, i. Thanks to Tess Cederholm and Steve Daly.

Dow


ay 2020


Fig. I7. H. andJ. E. Billings, Second Cathedral

Building, Boston, 1873-1874. Exterior

(Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Print

Department).

for Claflin's daughter and son-in-law, Charles W. Ellis, but the

preliminary sketches in the Stowe-Day scrapbook, and the con-

tract drawings which are still in the house, all bear Claflin's name

alone; the latter are dated July i869.61 As erected at 170 Otis

Street, the structure was a stylistically updated version of the

towered villas the Billingses were designing in the fifties, with

mansard roofs and applied Neo-Grec details.

Although there survive many sketches for residential work

which certainly date from the late I86os or early i870s, no

others have yet been identified. The one late suburban building that is known, other than Wellesley College, is the Thayer

Library (now the municipal waterworks) in Braintree, Massa-

chusetts. It was commissioned in 1871, contracted in March

I873, and dedicated in June i874.62 No competition is docu-

mented, but there is in a private collection an 1871 design for the

building by L. Briggs and Company showing a towered Venetian

Gothic building. The Stowe-Day scrapbook contains an un-

labeled, undated drawing related to the Thayer which shows

alternative window treatments, and demonstrates that the

brothers originally thought of a towered silhouette as well, al-

61. Mary B. Claflin, Under the Old Elms, New York and Boston, 1895. The sketches are on fol. 3z of the Stowe-Day scrapbook; foundation, principal, and chamber plans plus the street elevation, all signed by architect, builder, and client, remain in the building. It has experienced some alteration and addition, but is in the main well preserved. Thanks to Susan Abele and Mark Stockman.

6z. Norfolk County Gazette, 6 June I874. Thanks to Malcolm Walker for help.

'. ... . ? i ? i

Fig. 18. Hammatt Billings, Preliminary study for the Thayer Library, Braintree, Massachusetts, 1871. Pencil on paper, 4/8" x 7/8" (Courtesy of The Stowe-Day Foundation, Hartford).

though a lower one with classical details (Fig. i8).63 The building erected in 1873-1874 lacks the tower. It is a bichromatic, red-

brick and stone-trimmed, neoclassical building with hip roof and

triangular central pediment (Fig. i9).64 Once again, as at the Mt.

Holyoke library, we are reminded of Georgian design.

63. Folio io. 64. The December 1873 sketches for the Haverhill, Massachusetts,

Public Library (Stowe-Day, fol. 3) present a puzzle. The building was erected during 1874-I875 from the design of local architect Josiah Littlefield (Architectural Heritage of Haverhill, Haverhill Public Library,

Dow


ay 2020


Fig. I9. H. and J. E. Billings, Thayer Library, Braintree, 1871-1874. Exterior (Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities).

Female Seminary (something after the general plan of Mt Hol-

yoke ...) on my country place.... The main object is to give education of the highest standard to young ladies of the middle

classes at very modest prices. It is to be an eminently Christian

College.... I do not expect to build the Seminary for two years at

least."65 Durant had already engaged the Billingses' services for his

Wellesley estate, however. The Stowe-Day scrapbook contains a

sketch for the "Front Elevation of Lodge and Gateway for H. F.

Durant Esq. Wellesley. Mar. 31st. i869."66 The building, now

called East Lodge at the College, was erected to a reduced design. A concoction of random, parti-colored masonry and Flemish

gables, the lodge remains the most picturesque work of the broth-

ers' later career.

Durant's acres lay on the eastern shore of Lake Waban, across

from the celebrated horticultural domain of H. H. Hunnewell.67

Durant followed the plan of most colleges of the era, especially the new female schools such as Vassar, in providing one huge

building to house all aspects of the institution.68 The Billingses'

campus plan consisted of two gate lodges (both surviving) giving access to a serpentine road wandering over the undulating land-

scape and leading finally to College Hall on its commanding site

above the picturesque earth- and waterscape (Fig. zo). Hammatt's final design for the building followed the example

set by James Renwick at Vassar, the evolution of the design

moving from the Second Empire style the Billingses had used

downtown to the Anglo-French-plus eclecticism gaining popu-

larity in the early I87os, although axial control was never aban-

doned. His preliminary drawing is undated but must have been

made before July 1871, and may stem from as early as 1869 (Fig.

I).69 It projected a symmetrical building some 360 feet in over-

Fig. zo. H. and J. E. Billings, College Hall, Wellesley College, I871- 875. View across Lake Waban from the H. H. Hunnewell estate (Cour-

tesy of Wellesley College Archives).

The crowning achievement of the Billings brothers was their

work at Wellesley College (Fig. zo). The clients were Henry Fowle Durant and his wife, Pauline, whom we have met in con-

nection with the Mt. Holyoke library. The works at the schools

are contemporary. Our earliest notice of Durant's plans for Wel-

lesley is found in a letter of Io October I869 to William Claflin, another Billings client in these years, asking him to serve as a

Trustee: "It has been my intention for many years to build a

1976, 20). H. and J. E.'s design is Venetian Gothic, while Littlefield's descends from Kirby's round-arched Boston Public Library. No competition is mentioned in the library's records (thanks to Gregory Laing for the information), so these sketches represent either an unproductive collaboration between the architects, or Hammatt's fishing for a commission he did not catch.

65. Wellesley College Archives. Thanks to Wilma Slaight for guidance.

66. Folio 37. This drawing was discovered by Lee Ann Clements

Pralle, whose undergraduate thesis, "'Tower, and Roof, and Pinnacle': A Study of College Hall and its Architects," Wellesley College, 1978, first examined the building in detail (see her "A New Light on College Hall," Wellesley Alumnae Magazine, 6z, Spring I978, 4-7, where the

gate lodge sketch is reproduced). Another drawing on the same folio is dated i6 April 1869 and shows a plan close to what was built.

A letter of 21 October I869 at Mt. Holyoke (College History Collec-

tion) suggests that the iron roof cresting for the library there might follow the same design as the one the brothers "are making ... for Mr. Durant's private use." This may refer to the gate lodge.

67. A. J. Downing, The Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, 6th ed. by H. W. Sargent, New York, I859, 44 ff. See also Jean Glass- cock et al., Wellesley College, I875-I975, Wellesley, 1975, passim.

68. Montgomery Schuyler, "Architecture of American Colleges X: Three Women's Colleges-Vassar, Wellesley & Smith," The Architec- tural Record, xxxI, May I912 z, 51 -537.

69. All the drawings discussed here are in the Wellesley College Ar- chives.

Dow


ay 2020


? .i',,; Z,M,,,,

*1 'iq ~ i : 4 ,1-i; i i' B 111

ljjfidjl i s MI , */tl IJI^ II xII

g^^^*" . Xy Xi

Fig. z . Hammatt Billings, Prelimi-

nary design for the south front, Col-

lege Hall, Wellesley, 1869 or 1871. Red and blue ink and pencil on

graph paper, I53/4" X i"

(Courtesy of Wellesley College Archives).

Fig. zz. Hammatt Billings, Inter- mediate design for the south front, College Hall, Wellesley, 1871. Pencil and watercolor on heavy paper, 71/4" x z7" (Courtesy of

Wellesley College Archives).

all length, with central and end pavilions at right angles to the

long, double-loaded corridor that formed the spin of the build-

ing. The facade was to be capped with mansards. Penciled notes

suggested problems and changes: there was the question about the location of the kitchen, another concerning the placement of the chemistry rooms in the basement ("?Sunshine"), and a sim-

ple notation, "Tower." Centre Hall was ill-defined, the library with chapel above was in the west pavilion, and the dining room with gymnasium above was in the east pavilion (the reverse of the final arrangement). This was clearly an exploratory drawing.

A diagrammatic plan for digging the cellar is dated July- August 871. The overall length had stretched over 450 feet, and the perimeter of the plan was more irregular than that of the

preliminary scheme. Cornerstones were laid in August and Sep- tember. An undated "Sketch of South Front of Wellesley Female

Seminary" shows a building roughly 500 feet long (Fig. zz). Red

brick with stone trim enriched the facade, while turrets between the pavilions enlivened the perimeter and silhouette, and a slen- der tower now thrust skyward from the western end. The nearly definitive design appears in a drawing of the north front dated 27 October 1871. The chapel was now in the eastern pavilion and marked by a fleche which further enriched the profile. Hammatt had evolved a lively, eclectic composition, a fitting complement to Wellesley's rolling landscape, and a rich crown to the hillside above the lake.

The architectural sources among contemporary designs for this picturesque ensemble of architecture and landscape are ob- vious to the historian: if not Vassar then such a prototype as Fuller and Jones's Parliament House in Ottawa (I859-1867) comes to mind. But there may be another, albeit poetic source, if not for the specific architectural forms, then for the essence of the scene. The lively vision of Durant's "eminently Christian Col-

*

Dow


ay 2020


Fig. z3. Steel engraving after a design by Hammatt Billings, an illustration to P. Bailey, Festus, Boston, i853 (Courtesy of The Boston Athe- naeum).

end to end, giving access to all public and private rooms, and

focusing on Centre Hall, a fern-bedecked, early Renaissance

courtyard open through five floors (and creating a flue through which spread the fire which destroyed the building in I9I4). The

east pavilion housed a I zo,ooo volume library beneath the chapel; the west pavilion, the dining hall. Kitchen, music rooms, and

gymnasium were isolated in an attached wing beyond the west

pavilion. As many student and faculty living rooms as possible were placed on the south, toward sunlight and lake view. The interior of the building contained a rich collection of art, includ-

ing several works by Hammatt, many of which were lost in the fire. The College opened its doors for the first time in September I875.

Hammatt, however, had died ten months earlier while on a

visit to New York. He is buried at Milton, Massachusetts, his

family's ancentral home. He left Joseph to carry on at Wellesley, with the Monument to the Forefathers at Plymouth, and with other, lesser works, until his own early death in August I880. Of the two, Hammatt was certainly the leading personality, an im-

portant if occasionally silent design presence in I9th-century Boston, but Joseph's independent ability was demonstrated at

lege" seen from the Hunnewell pinetum across Lake Waban (Fig. zo) recalls Hammatt's illustration to the following lines in the

1853 Boston edition of Philip Bailey's Festus (Fig. 23):

Above us rose the gray rocks, by our side Forests of pines, and the bright, breaking wavelets ... There they built, Out of the riches of the soil around, A house to God.... Tower, and roof, and pinnacle without70

The various aspects of Hammatt's career as romantic designer seem, then, to merge in this final work, with its correspondence of architecture and illustration-both conceived as evocative

scene-making. The interior layout of the College is shown on the definitive

plan, apparently prepared by Joseph after Hammatt's death (Fig. z4). The double-loaded corridor some 475 feet long stretched

70. P. Bailey, Festus: A Poem, Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey and Com- pany, I853, 396-397. Hammatt's illustration, of course, owes much to Thomas Cole. Durant's copy of the poem, in another edition, is in the Wellesley College Library.

Dow


ay 2020


U I LJL.J . T--I .--,r * .,pLA

tlg'i '-t , .tiEitEli ] - . '^ -1

*Ai r ^ frprTT L - ? h i rI :w nTT

^^i|^ f j * j;:::. "^^*^; i'-T

5 vJ4=TTiV 1J g T XILV% : ;- YTNITTTTT:i12: i I H T

OI AEU

i { i"

Fig. 24. H. and J. E. Billings, Definitive plan of College Hall, Wellesley, 1875 (Courtesy of Wellesley College Archives).

STORY

the Navy Yard, and he should now emerge in his own right as a factor in the history of Boston building. Separately and together H. and J. E. Billings have an important place in that history. Neither was an innovator, but as the architects of the Boston Museum and Wellesley College-to mention only their first and last, their most significant (and, alas, demolished) works-they need take second place to no architects of their generation.

The careers of H. and J. E. Billings are instructive as well as

significant. Although they worked well into the second half of the Igth century, their approach to design was formed in the first half. Axial planning, simple geometric massing, balanced com-

positions, and monochromatic exteriors were the standards of

their education. As the century evolved, polychromatic, asymmetrical, picturesque architecture little by little replaced the Greco-Roman tradition, and the Billings brothers altered their work to suit the new fashion. But it is suggestive of the potency of the classical force in America in general and in Boston in particular, that they were never able completely to free themselves of it. Other men in other places, trained a generation later, might feel at home with the drama of picturesque eclecticism (at least until the classical tradition reasserted itself in the I89os), but the Bil-

lings brothers, like other Boston architects of their generation, continued to find the axis a necessary backbone in the process of design.

Dow


ay 2020

Date post:	13-May-2020
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	2 times
Download:	0 times