William W. Bosworth

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William Welles Bosworth
Notre-Dame de Reims

William Welles Bosworth (May 8, 1869 – June 3, 1966)

Ogden Codman.[2][3]

Bosworth is not as well known in the United States as other Beaux-Arts architects of that time, because his career, under the auspices of

Notre-Dame de Reims, projects Rockefeller was interested in and that he financed. In time, Bosworth was awarded the French Legion of Honour and the French Cross of the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, one of the few Americans ever to receive such honors. In 1918, Bosworth was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1928.[4]

Early life and education

Bosworth was born in 1868 in

H. H. Richardson before him as well as Ernest Flagg, Charles McKim, John Merven Carrère and John Russell Pope
, had all studied in Paris.

Architectural career

Bosworth designed the Cambridge campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including Building 10 and the Great Dome

Upon his return to the United States in 1900, Bosworth worked for the firm

West Haverstraw. For the Rockefellers he designed the gardens and main facade of Kykuit
, transforming a barren treeless site overlooking the Hudson into a lush and spectacular Beaux-Arts garden.

In 1912, Theodore Newton Vail (1845–1920) gave Bosworth his largest and most visible commission yet: the corporate headquarters of AT&T Corporation,[5] located on a prestigious site in downtown New York City at 195 Broadway, just a few blocks from Wall Street. It was a modern steel structure clad top to bottom in a Greek-styled exterior, the three-story-high Ionic columns of Vermont granite forming eight registers over a Doric base. In 1913, Bosworth received the commission to design the new campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MIT having outgrown its old buildings near Copley Square in Boston. The plan featured a large paved court (now called Killian Court) that is now, however, planted with grass and trees, at the head of which was a domed structure modeled on the Pantheon in Rome in the manner of the Altes Museum in Berlin. At the time it was the largest non-governmental building in the US.

Although some of Bosworth's subsequent American commissions were office buildings, like the Ocean Cable Office Building (1916) (since demolished), most were houses, estates, and townhouses. This included houses for

East 65th Street) in New York. In the Locust Valley area of Long Island, commissions included "Mallow" (1920), a mansion for Walter Farwell which now houses the East Woods School, and house alterations and a garden for Charles A. Stone. Vail, who was a great admirer of Italian art and had traveled extensively through Italy, asked Bosworth in 1916 to design his home in Morristown, New Jersey. Bosworth also designed extensive gardens for the house of Samuel Untermyer, a famous lawyer in Yonkers, New York.[6] In 1925 he designed the unbuilt Egyptian Museum for Cairo. In 1921 Bosworth built his own house, "Old Trees," on Long Island next to that of Stone, inviting the sculptor Gaston Lachaise
, with whom he had worked on the AT&T building, to carve four reliefs representing the four seasons out of sandstone.

Bosworth's American career, promising as it was, came to an end when he moved to France.

Notre-Dame de Reims. Bosworth was named Secrétaire Général of the "Comité Franco-Américain pour la Restauration des Monuments", a Committee created by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to supervise his donations. The five members were selected by the philanthropist and appointed by French President Raymond Poincaré. Former French ambassador to the United States Jean Jules Jusserand was given the presidency of this Committee, while American banker Henry Herman Harjes became its treasurer.[7] The other two members were former Minister for Foreign Affairs Gabriel Hanotaux and historian and diplomat Maurice Paléologue
who was also president of the Société des Amis de Versailles.

Later life

Although the Rockefeller project ended in 1936, Bosworth remained in his adopted country in semi-retirement, building a house (Villa Marietta) for himself and his family in Vaucresson (1935–1936). He was very active in animating the American Colony in Paris and founded the University Club of Paris in 1935. During WWII, Bosworth was chairman of the Paris committee of the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps. In 1945, he was named membre étranger of the Académie des beaux-arts. In 1949 he headed a fund drive for restoration of the village of Vimoutiers, which had been destroyed by an Allied bombing raid during the battle of Normandy. These efforts earned him considerable recognition in France.

Bosworth died at his home in suburban Vaucresson on June 3, 1966.[8]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ American National Biography Online Archived 2019-08-18 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Mark Jarzombek, Designing MIT: Bosworth’s New Tech Northeastern University Press, 2004.
  3. .
  4. ^ "NAD".
  5. ^ Dunlap, David W. (26 July 2006). "Manhattan: AT&T Building Landmarked". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  6. ^ Seebohm, Caroline. Paradise on the Hudson: The Creation, Loss, and Revival of a Great American Garden. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, 2020
  7. John Ridgeley Carter
    .
  8. ^ "W.W. BOSWORTH DIES IN FRANCE; Architect for a Wide Variety of Projects Was 97". The New York Times. 5 June 1966. Retrieved 25 October 2022.

Bibliography

  • Chafee, Richard. The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977.
  • Jacobs, S. Quentin. William Welles Bosworth: Major Works. Master's Thesis, Columbia University, 1988.
  • Jarzombek, Mark. Designing MIT: Bosworth’s New Tech. Northeastern University Press, 2004.
  • MacKay, Robert B., Anthony K. Baker, and Carol A. Traynor. Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects, 1860–-1940. New York: W. W. Norton and the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, 1997.
  • Pasquier, Eglantine. L’architecte comme conseiller : William Welles Bosworth et la philanthropie architecturale de John D. Rockefeller, Jr. en France pendant l’entre-deux-guerres. Thèse de doctorat en histoire de l'architecture, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, École du Louvre, 2022.
  • Pasquier, Eglantine. "John D. Rockefeller Jr. et la Maison internationale de la Cité universitaire de Paris : la place du mécène dans la conception et la mise en œuvre d’un projet architectural". Profils, revue de l’association d’histoire de l’architecture, no. 2, 2020, p. 68-79.
  • Pasquier, Eglantine. "Un Américain au Louvre ? L’architecte W.W. Bosworth et le réaménagement du musée du Louvre dans le cadre du « plan Verne » (1925-1939)". Les Cahiers de l’École du Louvre, no. 11, automne 2017.
  • Roberts, Ann Rockefeller. The Rockefeller Family Home: Kykuit. Photographs by Mary Louise Pierson; captions and additional text by Cynthia Altman. New York: Abbeville Publishing Group, 1998.
  • Seebohm, Caroline. Paradise on the Hudson: The Creation, Loss, and Revival of a Great American Garden. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, 2020.

External links