Roosevelt Island Historical Society

Jul

Friday, July 15, 2022 – HIS DESIGNS ARE CLASSICS AND KNOWN ALL OVER THE WORLD

By admin

FROM THE ARCHIVES

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A DEEPER DRIVE INTO

OUR

JAMES RENWICK, JR.

Stephen Blank

The architect James Renwick Jr. was closely associated with our Island. He designed our famous smallpox hospital; he was the supervising architect for the building of our lighthouse and possibly responsible for the design of Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary. Of course, Renwick also designed St Patrick’s Cathedral on 5^th Avenue.

James Renwick Jr. https://www.villagepreservation.org/2018/11/09/james-renwick-jr-19th-century-architect-extraordinaire/

Few of us know more about him. So, let’s delve a bit more into the story of one of New York’s most successful architects and one much involved in our history.

Renwick was born in 1820, into a wealthy and well-educated family. His mother, Margaret Brevoort, came from an affluent and socially prominent New York family. His father, James Renwick, was an engineer, architect, and professor of natural philosophy at Columbia College, now Columbia University.

A gifted kid, Renwick attended classes at Columbia at age 12, graduating with a degree in engineering in 1836 and earning a master’s degree three years later. When he graduated, with his father’s connections, he became a structural engineer with the Erie Railroad and then served as supervisor on the Croton Reservoir, acting as an assistant engineer on the Croton Aqueduct. Renwick may have been involved with the High Bridge, but his only known completed work was a fountain in Bowling Green.

He received his first major commission at the age of twenty-three in 1843 when he won the competition to design Grace Church. This was a big deal. The Grace Church congregation was one of the wealthiest in the city, composed of many prominent New Yorkers. The Church had been located at Broadway and Rector Street since its formation in 1808, but the Rector and his congregation were thinking of moving uptown, following the northern migration of its fashionable members.

Renwick was not formally trained as an architect. His Wikipedia biography tells us “His ability and interest in building design were nurtured through his cultivated background, which granted him early exposure to travel, and through a broad cultural education that included architectural history.” (If this is what it takes, I could have been an architect!) Is there a back story? Maybe.

Grace Church would be built on the Brevoort country estate, composed of 86 acres between East 9th and 18th Streets and Fifth Avenue to the Bowery. This was Renwick’s mother’s family. When Henry Brevoort died in 1841, his son, Henry, Jr., began selling off the family lands and, two years later, the Grace Church trustees purchased the large plot at the northeast corner of Broadway and East 10th Street. The abrupt bend in Broadway, attributed to Brevoort’s stubbornness in keeping the new Broadway off his property, provided a perfect site for the church.

As seen here in around 1890, the site at the abrupt turn of Broadway provided an advantageous setting — photo NYPL Collection

Brevoort, Jr.’s nephew was James Renwick Jr., a young engineer with an interest in architecture, but without formal credentials. Nonetheless, Renwick was given the commission to design the new Grace Church – an example of architectural nepotism?

The rector, Thomas House Taylor, had toured Europe looking at church designs. He determined that the new church would be in the Gothic style, a style which sought to revitalize medieval Gothic architecture, competing with the neoclassic style which had dominated public construction since the early days of the Republic. (Until the last decades of the 19^th century, Gothic Revival was the preeminent style in Europe and North America.) And so, Grace Church would be the first significant Gothic Revival structure in Manhattan.

Renwick’s youth and inexperience notwithstanding, Grace Church was a huge success. Clearly, Gothic Revival clicked with him, and he became a major actor in this new movement. His Grace Church design was much praised, and for a full generation after it was built, it was the most fashionable church in New York. Construction immediately began on the church rectory and this, too, emerged as a Renwick triumph. And Renwick was launched on a remarkable career.

New contracts came quickly. In 1846, Renwick won the competition to design the Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington, DC. The Smithsonian Institution had been established with funds from James Smithson (1765–1829), a British scientist who left his estate to the United States to create “at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” (Interestingly, Smithson had never been to the US and had no connections with anyone here.) “The Castle,” as it was commonly called, was built between 1847 and 1855, designed in Romanesque style, as requested by the Smithsonian Board of Regents

Smithsonian Institution Building, Washington, DC. Wikipedia

In 1849, Renwick designed the Free Academy Building (City College of New York) at Lexington and 23rd. It was one of the first Gothic Revival college buildings on the East Coast. The building was plumbed for both water and illuminating gas and on each floor was found the last word in modern innovations—drinking fountains supplied with fresh water from the Croton Reservoir.

photograph from the collection of The New York Public Library

Soon, he went on to design what is considered his finest achievement, and his best-known building, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He was chosen as architect for the Roman Catholic cathedral in 1853, construction began in 1858, and the cathedral opened in May 1879. St Patrick’s was built in what was the rural fringe of the city. It faced Columbia University gardens across 5^th Avenue, and hospitals, asylums, and other public institutions were found along the nearby blocks on the avenue. The church’s design included references to the variety of Gothic styles from European nationalities that had become part of the New York Catholic Diocese.

https://saintpatrickscathedral.org/history-heritage

Renwick’s commissions included the Corcoran Gallery of Art (now home to the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery), in the Second Empire style, in Washington DC (1859–1871); first major buildings on the of Vassar College campus (1861–1865); Saint Bartholomew’s Church (1871–1872) at Madison Avenue and 44th Street (now demolished); All Saints’ Roman Catholic Church (1882–1893) in Harlem. Renick was responsible for the main building of the Children’s Hospital on Randall’s Island, the Inebriate and Lunatic Asylums on Wards Island and, of course, his work on our island.

Not all of Renwick’s creations were public buildings. He designed the St. Denis Hotel, completed in 1853, which stood at the corner of East 11th Street and Broadway. The property, owned by the Renwick family, had been given to them by Henry Brevoort and the hotel was named for its first proprietor, Denis Julians. It was said to be “one of the handsomest buildings on Broadway” by Miller’s New York As It Is, Or Stranger’s Guide-book to the Cities of New York, Brooklyn and Adjacent Places. The St. Denis originally featured elaborate terracotta ornament, meant to compliment and reference Grace Church across the street. It was host to numerous historical figures over the course of its lifetime, including President Abraham Lincoln, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Mark Twain, Roscoe Conkling, Chester A. Arthur, P.T. Barnum, and Sarah Bernhardt.