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Gervase Wheeler
A British Architect in America, 1847–1860
Renée Tribert , James F. O’Gorman
Series: The Driftless Connecticut Series & Garnet Books
Sales Date: 2012-01-15
The American career of an influential English architect
Gervase Wheeler was an English-born architect who designed such important American works as the Henry Boody House in Brunswick, Maine; the Patrick Barry House in Rochester, New York; and the chapels at Bowdoin and Williams colleges. But he was perhaps best known as the author of two influential architecture books, Rural Homes (1851) and Homes for the People (1855). Yet Wheeler has remained a little known, enigmatic figure. Renée Tribert and James F. O'Gorman's study sheds new light on the course of Wheeler's career in the states, and brings crucial issues to the fore—the international movement of ideas, the development of the American architectural profession, the influence of architectural publications on popular taste, and social history as expressed in the changing nature of the American house. Wheeler's career is traced chronologically and geographically and the book is lavishly illustrated with over fifty images, including building plans and historical photographs.
A Driftless Connecticut Series Book, funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
Preface
Introduction
New York City, 1847
Brunswick, Maine, 1847–1848
New Haven, Connecticut, 1847–1849
Hartford, Connecticut, 1849
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1849–1850
New York City, 1850–1851
Norwichtown, Connecticut, 1851–1852
New York City, 1853–1860
Epilogue
Appendix: Business and Residential Addresses
Notes
Index
RENÉE TRIBERT is an independent historian and writer living in Simsbury, Connecticut. JAMES F. O'GORMAN is the McNeil Professor Emeritus at Wellesley College. He is author of Henry Austin: In Every Variety of Architectural Style, winner of Historic New England's 2009 Book Prize and the 2010 Henry-Russell Hitchcock Award from the Victorian Society of America.
"The definitive study of an important figure in the history of American architecture."
~Michael J. Lewis, author of Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind
"Gervase Wheeler was a man of considerable talent and even more considerable ambition, as is evident from his thirteen-year sojourn to the United States. Though Wheeler is usually found in the shadow of A. J. Downing, Renée Tribert and James F. O'Gorman have turned a bright spotlight onto him, documenting his peripatetic travels, his significant commissions, and his contretemps with other architects."
~Kenneth Hafertepe, Baylor University