Henry Hobson Richardson was born at the Priestly Plantation in Louisiana on September 29, 1838. During his brief but productive career of 21 years Henry Hobson Richardson had perfected building solutions and design formulas for a wide range of building types, many of which were new to his age: smalltown and large-scale libraries, campus buildings, train stations, cathedrals, courthouses, city halls, state capitals, the commercial block, and the suburban home. As a gauge of the important role Henry Hobson Richardson attained in his day, the Amercian Architect and Building News in 1885 polled its readers for, "the ten buildings which the subscriber believes to be the most successful examples of architectural design in the country." Of the top 10 choices, half were by Henry Hobson Richardson. Trinity Church, Boston (1872-1877) was voted first (nominated by 84% of the voters). Also on the list were these works by Henry Hobson Richardson: Albany City Hall, Albany, N.Y. (1880-82); Sever Hall, Harvard University (1880-1882); New York State Capital (1867-1898); Town Hall, North Easton, Mass. (1879-1881).

At the time of his death in April 1886 at the age of 47, Henry Hobson Richardson was at the peak of his career, and the architecture that Henry Hobson Richardson had raised to a national style and that bore his name-Richardsonian Romanesque-could not be ignored by aspiring young architects who hoped to fall heir to his architectural dynasty. However, as evidenced by the assortment of buildings selected as Richardson's best, there was no consistent agreement as to what constituted the basis for his achievements even by his peers. Much, then, that would be mimicked in Richardson's work did not strike at the heart of his style.

Today, the term Richardsonian Romanesque is perhaps one of the most generalized stylistic categories in architecture; its vagueness allows one to apply the term to nearly any structure from the mid-1870s to the turn of the century that used rock-faced granite ashlar, one or more apparent arches, or a host of architectural features that one associates automatically with the master, namely, eyebrow windows, octagonal library rooms, short stubby columns, or the so-called "Loire dormers." Oddly, the term maintained as much latitude at the end of the nineteenth century as it does today, and an architect who mimicked all or any of these typologic elements could legitimize his end product by referring to it as Richardsonian. But these disparate parts in themselves do not begin to constitute the essence of Richardson's style; they are simply part of the design vocabulary that accompanies a more vital grammar. Instead, these design elements are synthesized into a powerful language that emerges from a very conscious and consistent design process that most Richardsonians failed to perceive.

Once Henry Hobson Richardson established this format (1877) of tower-gable-arch meeting the building at right angles (and placed visually off-balance to the long side of a structure), Henry Hobson Richardson was able to consistently tap these features for planning solutions in other building types as well by sliding features all along the long horizontal stretch of wall and adding on or dropping off others. The same features and formats are used over again along with the same approach to surface treatment by simply reshuffling the parts and materials and shifting the focus.

The repetition of such schemes allowed Henry Hobson Richardson to arrive at programmatic massing and siting solutions in a relatively short time. J. J. Glessner, for example, notes that after seeing the Prairie Avenue building site for his home only a few minutes, Henry Hobson Richardson drew a sketch during dinner of the L-shaped plan (that would be tucked into the rectangular lot) with boxed-off spaces for interior volumes, and said, "If you won't ask me how I get into it, I will draw the plan for your house." "The first floor plans," Glessner notes were "almost exactly as it was finally decided on." In essence, it was the Stoughton House and Converse Library schemes reversed and backed against a two-story blank wall of a proposed house to create an enclosed courtyard reminiscent of a palazzo cortile. Additionally, the Winn Public Library (March 1877) becomes the Billings Library of April 1883 by centering the portal in the gable and adding the end turret, which 4 months later would be grafted onto the Converse Library in Maiden, Massachusetts (August 1883).

The Billings Memorial Library (1883-1887) in Burlington, Vermont, was specifically designed to mirror the Winn Library at the request of the president of the University of Vermont. Van Rensselaer argues that this gave Henry Hobson Richardson the unique opportunity to improve his original inspired design. The Billings Library reflects an even closer affinity to the design elements of the Winn Library in earlier project sketches in which the tower is retained to the right of the gable instead of being shifted to the left of the gable and is loosely contained by two stubby turret forms. The oversized stair tower, the indefinite entry, and the picturesque grouping of features of the Winn Library are rethought and refined in the later library. In the Billings Library, the polygonal reading room (housing the Marsh Collection) is firmly integrated into the major fabric of the elevation. The ridge line, too, is allowed to continue in an unbroken line on the other side of the entrance grouping to connect with the apsidal form instead of allowing it to exist as an awkward appendage to the main structure as is the case in the Winn Library. In the Billings Library, compositional and spatial unity have been achieved through the adjustment of massing while establishing the dominance of the entrance feature. The perfected formula for a large-scale library in Richardson's oeuvre had now been achieved.

The Ames Library (1877-1879), on the other hand, represents a consolidation of the library format and a simplification of the plan over what was presented in the Winn Library 6 months earlier; it offers a more practical and economical scheme for small town libraries that required less book space, but still provided ample space for a reading room while eliminating the museum special collections addition. As opposed to the Winn format, the polygonal museum space was simply lopped off. The entrance porch became less of a distinct and isolated element and was absorbed into the center of the tower-gable complex (as in the later Billings Library). The entrance grouping is allowed to assert itself more and is pushed forward. This is the same general arrangement as for the Crane Library (1880-1883); in both cases, the fireplaces that previously were placed in the central hall crossing (the far "transept" wall) of the Winn and Billings libraries are redirected to the short reading-room space to the right of the entrance; the reading-room fireplaces are now in direct line with the long alcove book collection area. This adjustment of format plan from a continuous cross axis to that more resembling an "L" shape allowed Henry Hobson Richardson to exaggerate in later schemes the subtle format gestures present in the Ames Library to those more in keeping with the picturesque open planning of Queen Anne house forms and indicates that even in his more elaborate structures Henry Hobson Richardson was often thinking in terms of domestic planning and features. In this regard, the homelike ambiance of the interior reading-room space of even the large-scale libraries (such as the Billings Memorial) harkens back to the gentleman's library tradition. Such private estate libraries of the Colonial era in the United States are visually referred to in the selected design features used by Henry Hobson Richardson to bridge the new "public" library movement. This new building type (as part of the larger cultural revolution in America machalls, parks, and public school buildings throughout the second half of the nineteenth century) was sponsored largely by Richardson's design solutions and programs for large and small town libraries.

Henry Hobson Richardson (whose office after 1874 was located in Brookline, Mass.) provided a scale that was public, but at the same time mitigated the "public" aspects by inserting potent domestic references familiar to the New England consciousness. The massing profile of the Crane Memorial Library in Quincy, Massachusetts, for example, assumes the character of a New England saltbox house. On the interior of the Billings Memorial Library, one finds a seventeenth-century New England style hearth (complete with built-in kettles, and irons, cooking cranes) and a personalized version of a Colonial-era grandfather clock nearby. All these features, although based on New England vernacular traditions, are elevated to the level of a conscious work of art, what might be appropriately termed high-style vernacular; the chimney lintel, for example, historically used for hanging cooking utensils now celebrated a stylized floral carving that anticipated Sullivan's Auditorium period. Hence, the vernacular domestic medieval (not just the ecclesiastical medieval) often served Henry Hobson Richardson as a starting point for progressive, high style design.

When Henry Hobson Richardson was called on to design more monumental structures, such as large university buildings, civic and commercial structures, or cathedrals of the magnitude of Trinity Church, his elevations became more symmetrical (often relying on projecting end pavilions to contain the mass of the block and a central tower to mark monumental entry), and his planning became more formal. In the Harvard University structures of Sever Hall (1878) and Austin Hall Law School (1881), French classical planning of the type similar to the project for the Worcester General Hospital of the late 1860s was revived. As in the hospital plan, one enters on axis through a clearly marked entrance and is struck by the apparent flow of the cross-axial movement. In Sever Hall, circulation patterns are clearly evident on entering: One may pass directly through the structure and leave through an equally balanced facade in the rear, choose the vertical circulation up a stairway opposite the entrance to the upper stories, or proceed laterally into the first-floor classroom area. In Austin Hall, a large lecture hall was needed; thus, in lieu of a stairwell space, the rear of the building is projected out in the manner of the Worcester General Hospital plan except that in the law school, the space radiates inward to provide space for lecture-hall seating. As in Sever Hall, the cross axis again leads to classrooms and to upstairs stairwells.

A reading of the elevations of the two Harvard structures provides nearly all of the monumental design dieturns of the Ecole: simplicity of form, majesty of scale, a central mass to express clarity of intention, and formal massing stressing good proportion. Again, one observes the general tendency to begin with a spreading horizontal form that is organically rooted to the ground line by a flaring base and is entered on axis (in this case, a purposefully centered axis) to stress formality. As is typical with Richardson's large-scale structures, an imposing hip roof is relied on to tame impersonal formality and to present a domestic association. The uninterrupted roofline, however, maintains the geometric qualities of the form as a whole (providing visual unity) and provides it with the monumentality it seeks by extending its lines. The organizing principles inherent in these two stylistically divergent buildings generally establish the massing patterns of other diverse buildings such as the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and the New York State Capital; a simple horizontal form is reinforced visually by a prominent hip roof and is consistently bounded by towers or projecting bays that serve to contain the block and give it formality, focus, and marked symmetry.

As a variation, structures seeking added monumentality were given centered groupings of a projecting pavilion, chateau roof, or tower bounded by two vertical forms (side towers or pavilions), and the entrance was given visual focus by being centered and accented by either one large arch or a grouping of three. Hence, while it is accurate to speak of the Worcester High School format (1869-1871) as using a palazzo organizing scheme for the elevation, augmented by Second Empire massing, and High Victorian Gothic coloration, what results is the adoption of a central tower form (now buttressed by side pavilions) for large municipal structures such as the Allegheny County Court House (1884-1888). Similarly, for planning schemes in larger structures, such as Trinity Church (1872) and Albany Cathedral (not built), Henry Hobson Richardson condensed the parti and turned more-or-less to a contained, compact block surmounted by built-up pyramidal massing elements over a Greek cross plan. Because the Brattle Square Church, Boston (1866-1873) was originally conceived in a cruciform plan, O'Gorman believes that in plan and in styling (the first appearance of the Romanesque in Richardson's work) that Brattle Square anticipates Trinity. But, although the German Romanesque provided a turning point in Richardson's search for an appropriate architectural language. Trinity's powerful, simple massing led Henry Hobson Richardson more clearly along the path of a personal style that would be independent of historical sources. Richardson's search for a new style was attained more through massing solutions and surface treatment that would provide simplicity of form and wholeness of conception than the prominence of any one style. Even though his formats and individual features might be derivative, Henry Hobson Richardson was successful in fitting new and challenging building programs into massing schemes rich in historical associations compatible with it and making an architectural statement totally his own.

The basic qualities of mass, simplicity, proportion, and concentration were clearly seen by some of his contemporaries, and it was these same qualities that Henry Hobson Richardson seemingly used with a vengeance in the Marshall Field Warehouse (begun 1885), in Chicago, when Henry Hobson Richardson clarified his format for the "commercial box." The Marshall Field building represents a continual process of simplification of form and a paring away of excessive eccentric details present in earlier commercial formulas. The Cheney Building of 1875, for example, shunned the use of the mansard roof of the Union Express Company Building, Chicago (1872) but retained two slightly projecting pavilions. The basic cubic quality and visual alignment of windows under attenuated arches (which unite several stories and then divide at the top floors into two smaller arches) already signaled the refined format of the Marshall Field Warehouse. The single "tower" that asserts itself in the side elevation of the Cheney Building scheme disrupts the organization achieved in the cubic section and is a residue of the older formula of the Union Express Company.

But what happened to this "simplicity of treatment" and this sense of pure form only 4 months later (August 1885) when Henry Hobson Richardson designed the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Building? Was it a step backward in Richardson's supposed quest for a progressive architecture of his times-"an unfortunate aberration defying rational explanation" as some suggest? Or, is it essentially a dual view of the concept of "reality" that was present throughout Richardson's career, as Gowans suggests?

One definition of reality (that sponsors the creation of such elevations as the Field Building) holds that reality in architecture is "an expression of the intrinsic qualities of stone: its texture, its capacity to carry weight, the constructional techniques appropriate in such a medium;" the other definition of reality, as Gowans sees it, means "archaeological accuracy-the demonstration of how forms of a past style may be adapted to modern uses with minimum sacrifice of historical reference." This later definition gives birth to such structures, Gowans feels, as the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce building. Gowans stated that, "essentially both buildings proceeded from the same impulse and premises." However, these two structures are not essentially different, except in intent. The Chamber of Commerce building is not an anomaly in Richardson's work that stands as a blaring impasse to his more progressive developments. It comes from the same conscious selection of forms and design formulas Henry Hobson Richardson had consistently drawn on throughout his career. In fact, one can view the Chamber of Commerce Building as the Marmanesque elements, or even Colonial features, this does not make him a historical or revivalist architect; this, essentially, is the shortcoming of such terms as Richardsonian Romanesque. Henry Hobson Richardson uses these elements in a fresh and original manner often purely for compositional or associational qualities, as in the brick "sidelights" or stretched dormers of Sever Hall. These elements become "found objects" (to use Marcel DuChamp's meaning of the phrase) and possess vitality and meaning that is "Richardsonian"-not historic. Therefore, the character of the Chamber of Commerce building does not reflect another view of "reality," as Gowans proposes, but a consciously conceived format that has been manipulated for a desired effect. What Henry Hobson Richardson has done in the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce is to merge the hip roof-the two but tressing towers vocabulary of the State Hospital, Buffalo with the Renaissance design formulas of his earlier commercial structures to yield a formal yet "humanistic" structure. Or seen another way, the Chamber of Commerce Building stands as a bridge between the more "romantic" massing of the earlier Merchant's Union Express Office with its French roof and side pavilions and the later "rational" massing and design features of the Field building. Simply flatten the roof of the Chamber of Commerce Building and remove or recess the side towers, and the remaining elements speak with the same power and simplicity as does the Field building.

This dual sensitivity toward romantic and rational schemes runs throughout Richardson's career and accounts for the disparity of judgment among what contemporary critics saw as Richardson's "best" work, works that seemingly drew from inspiration far afield from one another. Richardson's broad-based popularity, then, likely stems from the dual nature of his designs. Coeval architects, who held widely divergent design biases, could each find something they could draw from in the rich and varied offerings within Richardson's oeuvre.

The difference in handling of these two structures results from a difference in intent. The Field Warehouse was designed as a utilitarian, investment structure with no pressure to present a corporate image and, therefore, could afford to be severely simple, whereas the problem presented by the Chamber of Commerce building, as Van Rensselaer states, had not the hampering monotony of a simple commercial building but it was quite as modern in way. American merchants, like their far-off predecessors in Belgium and Holland, want a great and dignified happy assemblage; but with a keener eye to revenue, they that it shall be combined with an "office building"-Urat every possible foot of space shall be put to use in ways that are often quite at variance with the chief use of a building, and that as many such feet as possible shall be secured by vertical extension. The form that the Chamber of Commerce takes, it appears, results from a desire to satisfy the demands for "dignity" (in its use of the hip roof and side turrets) and the desire for utility (in its compactness and expressed separation of parts).

As O'Gorman is quick to inform us, Richardson's quest for a personal style does not reflect a direct development. Although there are consistencies in format applications and spatial arrangements, his path is less than direct in synthesizing the "derivative and often awkward eclecticism" of the late 1860s to the mid-1870s into the "profound and powerful" language of his maturity. The key to Richardson's eventual success, however, has less to do with coming to grips with any one style than with the final resolution of his design process and aesthetic philosophy with which he could address all of his styles. Henry Hobson Richardson gained full command of his resources, as O'Gorman put it, in 1878. Oschner recounts: that Richardson's professional maturity was marked by a series of projects beginning in 1878: Sever Hall, Cambridge; The John Bryant House, Cohasset; the Amea Monument, Wyoming; and the Crane Library, Quincy. In these projects, Henry Hobson Richardson began to simplify form and to ruminate archeological detail. Henry Hobson Richardson turned instead to basic Kapes, continuous surfaces, and the innate qualities of his buildings.

In this manner, buildings from widely divergent stylistic roots became swatches from the same design fabric. Stoughton is the Glessner House rendered in granite instead of shingles; Ames Gate is Sever formed out of glacial boulders in lieu of brick. Sweeping surfaces allow for the synthesis of form and feature into a unified whole.

It was Richardson's unique ability to manipulate masses imaginatively into functionally distinct volumes, design within a fixed framework of several formats, and apply a consistent aesthetic philosophy to the surface treatment that defined the essence of his mature style. The end result is a highly powerful and original architectural statement free of historical precedent. After 1878, America had its first original style-Richardsonian. American architecture had come of age.