The Frank H. Goodyear residence designed by Carrere & Hastings c. 1904 in Buffalo, New York. Goodyear was chairman of the board of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad Co. He died shortly after the residence was completed and after passing on to his son the home was demolished in 1938. Click HERE for more on Frank H. Goodyear.
Photos from Architectural Record, 1907.
11 comments:
What a handsome house.
For what it is worth, F.H. Goodyear was the uncle of A. Conger Goodyear, first president of the Museum of Modern Art, and builder of the famous house by Edward Durrell Stone in Old Westbury. Another nephew, Charles, married Grace Rumsey, the sister of Charles Cary Rumsey, who owned a Burrill Hoffman house (also in Old Westbury---I think?)
Link to article about demolition of this house: http://buffaloah.com/a/forestL/goodyr/source/3.html
A beautiful house- but a flat roof in Buffalo? Did a servant have to go out and shovel the roof all winter?
If you look closely at the parapet balustrade you will catch glimpses of the sloping perimeter mansard roof on the third floor. While not steeply pitched, even the main roof of the third floor was probably adequate. Plus, I am sure with the slate, concrete, steel and copper/lead flashings these roof systems probably did not leak in their prime and could hold tons of snow load.
Delaware Avenue seems to have been "the street" to love on back in the day. A nice collection of homes in all styles seem to be extant and well maintained.
Also as an early Christmas gift to a fellow blog afficionado DED, a close neighbor of Goodyear's, Seymour Know at 806 Delaware Ave, built a lovely home which is still extant. The interiors are very fine and the stairhall is quite beautiful. The architect you may ask? Yes none other than CPH Gilbert. He did get around.
Can I help it if Goodyear had better taste than his in-laws, the Knoxes?
A controlled, elegant composition by Carrere & Hastings, or another clunk by CPH?
LOL, you tell me.....
Okay, Archi, seriously for a second? IMHO, this is better than many of Gilbert's earlier buildings, but still the parts don't just melt together in a fashion that moves me. Any number of architects did this sort of thing better---let me count the ways----Delano, Aldrich, Pope, Schmidt, and David Adler, David Adler, David Adler...
:-)
Nothing short of a crime that this beauty was destroyed...If all the others survived, why not this one...!
Destroyed? Plus I believe the Goodyear site ended up becoming a parking lot? A "$#$&@#" parking lot? Truly a crime. Plus I agree DED that the Knox composition is better than some of CPH's earlier work. (Excluding Pembroke) I will take that. I do think the interiors are quite good and restrained and refined and the stairhall is magnificent. Meudon would have been totally different if it was constructed 15 years later like the Knox residence, taking advantage of CPH's maturing design skills. While CPH is not the number one all time great, I defer to Mr. Wright and Mckim, Mead and White to battle for that top honor, IMO, but he should be in the top ten of residential architects by virtue of the variety and quality of many of his amazing residential commissions, again, IMO. Like oranges and apples, they are not alike, but together, such variety makes a streetscape like Delaware Ave sing! I do like them both and Delano & Aldrich, John Russell Pope, Trumbauer, Carrere & Hastings, Charles Platt, etc, etc. All those mentioned designed some of the very best and also had a few disappointments. Merry Christmas to everyone responsible for keeping this blog and OLI stimulating.
Hmmm. Top Ten All Time Great? Does that mean you're putting Gilbert in the same company as Palladio, Bernini, Ledoux, Adam, Lutyens, William Kent, Francois Mansart, Le Courbusier, or even McKim Mead & White? I'll meet you half-way on this: I'll agree that Gilbert belongs on the list of 8,615 all time greatest. Somewhere around number 8,420 :-)
If we're talking merely a list of the greatest American Architects of his era, I'll up his ranking to the top 500 (but no higher). Ahead of him would be (in no particular order) McKim, Mead & White, Peabody & Stearns, Andrews, Jaques & Rantoul, Horace Trumbauer, Richard Morris Hunt, John Russell Pope, Albro & Lindeberg, William Lawrence Bottomley, David Adler, Cass--the other, better Gilbert, Bigelow & Wadsworth, Shepley Bulfinch Rutan & Coolidge, Delano & Aldrich, William Ralph Emerson, W.Y. Peters, Herbert Browne, Guy Lowell, John Calvin Stevens, Bruce Price, Willis Polk---all of whose careers overlapped his and who were far better designers and form givers
See? I can compromise. If we take your top ten, and my top 500, he ranks around 255 :-)
Happy Holidays
And for the record, on the subject of the Goodyear House, even Carrere & Hastings perplex me for a moment, with the clumsy handling of the dormer for the third floor servant's rooms. With all the careful, even perfect, integration of design elements, down to the elegant sunken service entrance, they then just insert that. Go figure.
DED thanks for bringing up Richard Morris Hunt, I did overlook him, but he truly was an inspirational architect. My list was for American architects and chiefly their residential work, but I'll take 255 considering how many hundreds of thousands of architects are churned out and produce crap on a daily basis. So will we also see a publication one day covering Maine's contribution to Gilded Age architecture, since the same concentration of families and architects are involved, or has that topic been covered by someone else's book?
Yes, when Richard Morris Hunt was brilliant, he was very brilliant indeed. When I visit the Breakers, leaving the size and elaboration of the place aside, I am always amazed by the sure sense of proportion, shape, and vista.
As to your question about Maine's rustic contributions, stay tuned. News at 11:00 (or maybe a couple of weeks...)
Post a Comment