George Champlin Mason Sr. | |
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| Born | July 17, 1820 Newport, Rhode Island, U.S. |
| Died | January 30, 1894 (aged 73) |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Spouse | Frances Elizabeth Dean |
| Children | George Champlin Mason Jr. |
| Practice | George C. Mason & Son |
| Buildings | |
George Champlin Mason Sr. (1820-1894) was an American architect who built a number of mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, during the Gilded Age. He helped to found the Newport Historical Society as well.
George Champlin Mason was born to George Champlin Mason and Abigail Mumford Mason in Newport, Rhode Island in 1820. The Masons were a prominent New England family; his great-uncle Christopher G. Champlin was a U.S. Senator, and his aunt Elizabeth was married to Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. After his early schooling in Newport, he moved to New York at the age of 15, where he worked in a dry goods establishment for six years. He left because of poor health and not long afterwards went to Europe to study art in Rome, Paris, and Florence, specializing in landscape paintings. He returned to the United States in 1846 and two years later married Frances Elizabeth Dean. Their son, George Champlin Mason Jr. (who would also become an architect), was born in 1849. [1]
Mason spent the 1840s trying unsuccessfully to make a living as landscape painter in a Romantic pastoral style derived from the Hudson River School. [2] During this period, he published Newport and Its Environs, a collection of 11 engravings of his landscape views of Newport that is one of the earliest books about Newport to showcase its potential as a vacation destination. It was noted as volume 1, but no further volumes ever materialized.
In 1851, Mason switched professions and became part owner and editor of the Newport Mercury newspaper. He often wrote about architectural subjects, and he worked with fellow citizens on developing the then-expanding plat of Newport. [2] Beginning a few years later, he would occasionally write articles for the Providence Journal , the New York Evening Post , and other newspapers, sometimes using the pen names 'Aquidneck' and 'Champlin'. In 1854 he published Newport Illustrated, a guidebook that emphasizes the history of Newport buildings and places, and in 1884 he published a compendium of his occasional pieces under the title Reminiscences of Newport. Both were illustrated with black-and-white line drawings or engravings of Newport buildings, many of which are now long gone or substantially changed. Mason was also influential in the establishment of the Newport Historical Society (originally a branch of the Rhode Island Historical Society), and he was active in the Redwood Library and Athenaeum and other local organizations. [1]
Around 1858, Mason resigned his editorship and began to study architecture in earnest. Two years later set himself up as an architect, opening the first professional architectural firm in Newport, where many of his 150 buildings are located. [2] This was a period when Gilded Age New Yorkers of extreme wealth were building large summer homes in Newport, and Mason became a dominant architect of these residences in the 1860s. [2] In 1860, Mason was commissioned to build the financier August Belmont's summer mansion "By-the-Sea". The commission came to him through Belmont's wife Caroline, who was a daughter of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, a relation of Mason's. [3] "By-the-Sea" was an Italianate villa with many of the features that would become hallmarks of Mason's style: a formal, squarish building giving an impression of solidity; a modified French mansard roof; a three-bay entrance portico; and extensive use of bracketed trim. [2] [4] Mason's style owes something to that of the Providence architect Thomas Alexander Tefft, who died in 1859.
Also in 1860, Mason designed another large Italianate villa as a Newport summer home for Edmund Schermerhorn. Named "Chepstow", it was bequeathed with most of its furnishings intact to the Preservation Society of Newport County in 1986 and is now open to the public, one of a handful of buildings featured on the preservation society's website alongside more famous buildings like The Breakers. [5] Chepstow includes features such as an interior staircase that pay deliberate homage to American pre-Revolutionary architecture, prefiguring the Colonial Revival period of the 1890s. [2]
In 1867, Mason's son began working with him, and in 1871, he brought his son into partnership and renamed his firm George C. Mason & Son. In 1873, the firm designed the commanding officer's quarters (today known as the "Eisenhower House") at Fort Adams in Newport, which President Dwight D. Eisenhower used as his summer residence during his administration. [5] [6] "Woodbine Cottage," which Mason built for himself in 1873 in collaboration with his son, was a 23-room mansion in an ornate Swiss chalet style. Like the slightly earlier "Edgewater" (1869–70), it features the elaborate kinds of wooden trim that increasingly crept into Mason's later work. It has since been turned into a hotel, the Architect's Inn. [7] Possibly the most stylistically adventurous of Mason's mature work is the "Loring Andrews House", which expresses the Modern Gothic style through facades that are almost completely covered in stick work. [2]
Sometime between 1881 and 1887, Mason was elected as an honorary member New York Society of the Cincinnati. [8] Prior to 1887 Mason transferred to the recently reorganized Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati. [9] This was probably in recognition of his interest in preserving historical records and his family connection to Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry.
Mason died in 1894 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was buried in the Island Cemetery of Newport. He was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2006. [1] [10]
Many of Mason's buildings have been demolished to make way for residential subdivisions; however, seven of his residences still stand along the north side of Narragansett Avenue in Newport. [2]
From the late 1870s to the 1920s, the Vanderbilt family employed some of the best Beaux-Arts architects and decorators in the United States to build an unequaled string of townhouses in New York City and palaces on the East Coast of the United States. Many of the Vanderbilt houses are now National Historic Landmarks. Some photographs of Vanderbilt residences in New York are included in the Photographic series of American Architecture by Albert Levy (1870s).
Richard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and an eminent figure in the history of American architecture. He helped shape New York City with his designs for the 1902 entrance façade and Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, and many Fifth Avenue mansions since destroyed.
Marble House, a Gilded Age mansion located at 596 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, was built from 1888 to 1892 as a summer cottage for Alva and William Kissam Vanderbilt and was designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the Beaux Arts style. It was unparalleled in opulence for an American house when it was completed in 1892. Its temple-front portico resembles that of the White House.
Alfred Bult Mullett was a British-American architect who served from 1866 to 1874 as Supervising Architect, head of the agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government buildings. His work followed trends in Victorian style, evolving from the Greek Revival to Second Empire to Richardsonian Romanesque.
Thomas Alexander Tefft was an American architect, from Providence, Rhode Island. Tefft, one of the nation's first professionally trained architects, is considered a master of Rundbogenstil and a leading American proponent of its use. Prior to his untimely death, Tefft "offered the most advanced designs of [his] day in America"
Christopher Grant Champlin was United States Representative, Senator and a slave trader from Rhode Island.
Russell Warren (1783–1860) was an American architect, best known for his work in the Greek Revival style. He practiced in Bristol and Providence.
The Redwood Library and Athenaeum is a subscription library, museum, rare book repository and research center founded in 1747, and located at 50 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. The building, designed by Peter Harrison and completed in March 1750, was the first purposely built library in the United States, and the oldest neo-Classical building in the country. It has been in continuous use since its opening.
Robert Henderson Robertson was an American architect who designed numerous houses, institutional and commercial buildings, and churches.
Kingscote is a Gothic Revival mansion and house museum at Bowery Street and Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, designed by Richard Upjohn and built in 1839. As one of the first summer "cottages" constructed in Newport, it is now a National Historic Landmark. It was remodeled and extended by George Champlin Mason and later by Stanford White. It was owned by the King family from 1864 until 1972, when it was given to the Preservation Society of Newport County.
Trinity Church, on Queen Anne Square in Newport, Rhode Island, is a historic parish church in the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. Founded in 1698, it is the oldest Episcopal parish in the state. In the mid 18th century, the church was home to the largest Anglican congregation in New England.
Chepstow is an Italianate house museum located at 120 Narragansett Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, built in 1860. It originally served as a summer "cottage", but the Preservation Society of Newport County now owns the property. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Ochre Point-Cliffs Historic District in 1975 and within the Historic District of the City of Newport.
Elbridge Boyden (1810–1898) was a prominent 19th-century American architect from Worcester, Massachusetts, who designed numerous civil and public buildings throughout New England and other parts of the United States. Perhaps his best known works are the Taunton State Hospital (1851) and Mechanics Hall (1855) in Worcester.
George Champlin Mason Jr. (1849–1924) was an American architect who is considered the first professional architectural preservationist in the United States.
George C. Mason & Son (1871–94) was an American architectural firm in Newport, Rhode Island.
Ronald J. Onorato is a Professor of Art History and Chair in the University of Rhode Island Art and Art History Department. His scholarship focusses on American architecture, public sculpture and funerary art with a special interest in the architectural heritage of Newport, Rhode Island from the colonial period to the present. He is chair of the National Register Review Board for Rhode Island and an honorary member of the American Institute of Architecture, Rhode Island Chapter. He has served as Co-Chair of the URI Center for the Humanities, on the Board of Directors, Newport Historical Society, as President of the Board, Pettaquamscutt Historical Society and is a trustee of the Newport Art Museum.
Dudley Newton (1845-1907) was an American architect from Newport, Rhode Island.
William R. Walker was an American architect from Providence, Rhode Island, who was later the senior partner of William R. Walker & Son.
Second Empire, in the United States and Canada, is an architectural style most popular between 1865 and 1900. Second Empire architecture developed from the redevelopment of Paris under Napoleon III's Second French Empire and looked to French Renaissance precedents. It was characterized by a mansard roof, elaborate ornament, and strong massing and was notably used for public buildings as well as commercial and residential design.
Edmund Henry Schermerhorn was an American businessman of New York's Dutch Schermerhorn family.
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