USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > New Haven, a book recording the varied activities of the author in his efforts over many years to promote the welfare of the city of his adoption since 1883, together with some researches into its storied past and many illustrations > Part 21
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[The sculptural decoration of the County Court House was entrusted to J. Massey Rhind, a Scotsman by birth and education.]
XV
HENRY AUSTIN : ARCHITECT OF THE OLD YALE COLLEGE LIBRARY.85
The Architectural Record is publishing a series of articles on the "Architecture of American Colleges." The second paper of the series, published in the issue of the Record for December, 1909, and written by Mr. Montgomery Schuyler, is devoted to the architecture of Yale College. This article, profusely illustrated, contains much interesting information, but it seems to me that its attribution of the design of the old College Library, begun in 1842, to Alexander Jackson Davis, should not go unchallenged. Davis supplied the design for Alumni Hall, built in 1853, but the credit of having designed the old College Library should not be taken away from Henry Austin of New Haven, unless it can be conclusively shown that he did not supply the design. The merit of the design hardly warrants the extravagant praise that has been bestowed upon it almost ever since it was built, but that, of course, has nothing to do with the question of the authorship of the design. As designed, the building fairly bristled with pinnacles, the inten- tion being to execute them in wood and to paint them to imitate the reddish brown masonry of the building. In the "forties" the application of wooden ornaments to masonry was not felt to be an incongruity by a people who had for nearly a century been embellishing their public buildings and dwell- ing houses with classical details executed in wood. The early engravings show these pinnacles in bewildering profusion and it has long been supposed that they were once placed on the building. It is probable that the design was never fully exe- cuted and that the building was never essentially different from what it is to-day and that we have been misled by engrav- ings made from the architect's drawings rather than from the building itself. Indeed, the first engravings were pub- lished before the building was finished for occupancy. At
85 From the New Haven Evening Register of June 19, 1910.
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least this is the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the evidence.
The College Library had at least the great merit of being very small in scale-the quality to which Ralph Adams Cram attributes so much of the peculiar charm and fitness and beauty of English collegiate architecture. The vaulting is of lath and plaster, but nevertheless the interior of the building is singularly pleasing.
In Atwater's "History of the City of New Haven," pub- lished in 1887, the following notice of Henry Austin occurs under the heading of "Architects":
"Henry Austin began business in 1837, and has since con- tinued as the 'Father of Architects.' Nearly all of the present architects of the city have served time under his teaching, and he has left the marks of his skill in almost every street in the city. Among the first of Mr. Austin's works was Mitchell's building in Chapel Street. Among the more prominent buildings of the city designed by him during the forty-five years he has been in business, are College Library, City Hall, Yale, Tradesmens, Mechanics, and Merchants banks, the New Haven Savings Bank (one of the finest bank- ing rooms in the country), Eaton School, Trinity Home in George Street, New Haven House, entrance to the City Burial Ground, and The Register Building in Crown Street. Among the more notable private residences of the city designed by Mr. Austin are those of O. B. North, Willis Bristol, H. M. Welch and Nelson Hotchkiss in Chapel Street, and the Sheffield residence in Hillhouse Avenue. In 1881, Mr. Austin admitted his son, Fred D. Austin, to the firm, the title being Henry Austin & Son."
Austin was living in 1887 when Atwater's history came out, and it is more than likely that he furnished the compiler with the data for the paragraph quoted. I daresay that much earlier statements in print might be found to the effect that Austin designed the old College Library. The testimony of persons told by Austin himself that he designed the building is not wanting. Two witnesses will answer the present purpose, though presumably more might readily be found.
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Leoni W. Robinson, an architect himself, is certainly a competent witness. He was well acquainted with Austin, and during his student-day vacations worked in Mr. Austin's office. This was in 1866 or 1867. When so employed Mr. Austin showed him the original drawings for the old College Library and told him that he designed the building. Mr. Robinson remembers the circumstance distinctly. He never saw the drawings again, and does not know what became of them. Mr. Robinson says that, when he worked in Mr. Austin's office, the tradition of the office was, that when Austin designed the old College Library he had in his employ a skilled English draftsman who worked on the drawings. As Mr. Robinson worked in Mr. Austin's office only twenty-five years after the library was built, this tradition undoubtedly rested on the statement of persons who knew all the facts. Indeed, Mr. Robinson believes that many of the older New Haven architects would, if they were alive, testify that a skilled English draftsman worked for Austin on the drawings for the old College Library. The point is significant. Mr. Austin designed a good many houses and a few churches in the "Gothic taste," all for execution in wood. An examination of these designs does not indicate that Mr. Austin was inter- ested in true Gothic, or that he understood it. His taste, such as it was, was of a different sort. He was not a schoolman; he had no such training as architects here and in Europe have to-day; and he never had any opportunity of studying first hand the architectural monuments of the old world.
I am thus led to doubt if Austin unaided, could have done as good a piece of designing in the Gothic style as the College Library. It may, however, be mentioned in this connection that Mr. Robinson has in his library two volumes of Pugin,86
86 "No more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.
A final glass for me, though : cool, i' faith ! We ought to have our Abbey back, you see. It's different preaching in basilicas,
And doing duty in some masterpiece Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart !"
Robert Browning, in "Bishop Bloughram's Apology."
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which he procured from Austin, who in turn bought them at the sale of the architectural library of Ithiel Town-supposed to have been one of the best collections of books on architecture brought together in this country up to that time, and unfor- tunately dispersed at his death. These two books of Pugin's are superbly illustrated with copperplate drawings of English and French Gothic work, and it may well be that Austin got ideas from them in designing the old library. I do not mean to claim that the English draftsman designed the library, but it seems to me that the fact that Austin had in his office at the time an English draftsman of training, helps to account for the merit of the design. I am the more disposed to conclude that this is so, because the old College Library is the only design of Austin's in what may be called the Gothic style. The presence in Austin's office of a trained designer might well account for the correctness of the interior design and the rather exceptional four-center arches of the main hall of the building-arches that President Hadley says are perfect of their kind, and show a knowledge of the subject not com- mon, at least, in this country in the "forties." Even if it were definitely known that the drawings were made by the English draftsman under Austin's direction, Austin would not be the less entitled to be called the architect of the building, as the responsibility of the design was on his shoulders and he undoubtedly directed the work. The public do not generally understand that many of our best architects spend little time at the drawingboard, but express themselves very largely through expert draftsmen.
It is rather significant that nearly twenty years later another man in Austin's office, the late David Russell Brown, should have made another Gothic design. I now refer to our City Hall, which Brown in fact designed though the tablet in the building bears Austin's name, and properly so, as Austin was responsible for the work rather than Brown. Brown's original drawing has been presented to the New Haven Colony His- torical Society by his partner, Ferdinand Von Beren; the design was greatly applauded by the citizens of that day. The
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contrast between the old College Library and the City Hall is significant to a student of design. The design of the Library was founded on old work and related in a way to the study of Gothic buildings by English architects, following the publica- tions of Pugin. The City Hall, on the other hand, was an imitation of Victorian Gothic which was a very feeble and perverted imitation of Italian Gothic. Mr. Brown himself told me not long before his death, that he founded the design for the City Hall on a picture he saw in an English illustrated paper or magazine to which Austin, his employer, was a sub- scriber. The point to be borne in mind is that the library was designed before Victorian Gothic "laid waste" England itself.
Shortly before Mr. Austin died he asked Willis K. Stetson, librarian of the New Haven Public Library, to call at his house with reference to some books which he planned to give to the Public Library. Mr. Stetson tells me that during this call Mr. Austin told him that he designed the old College Library and the circumstances under which the design was made.
It appears that Mr. Austin on his return from a business trip to Charleston, S. C., was met by a member of the Cor- poration of Yale College, who told him that the Corporation had determined to build a library. Mr. Austin was invited to submit designs to the Corporation, which was to meet in just three weeks. Mr. Austin laid aside all other work and, by applying himself unremittingly to the task, was able to place before the Corporation on the day of their meeting three weeks later, a full set of plans for the Library. The Corpo- ration accepted the plans and the Library was built forthwith.
From Duncan MacArthur, now employed in the drafting department of the Consolidated Road, I learn that he worked as an apprentice in Mr. Austin's office in the "seventies." He well remembers the drawings of the old College Library, kept by Mr. Austin in his office library of which Mr. Austin was very proud and which contained many books bought at the sale of the famous library of Ithiel Town. Mr. MacArthur recalls that Mr. Austin often spoke to him of the English
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draftsman (Henry Flockton) as a genius. Flockton was then a man of middle age and tradition describes him, with- out reproach, as "uncommon shiftless." Without reproach, I say, since shiftlessness was once regarded as a mark of genius-a delusion thrown aside by our commercial age. He was one of many Englishmen of training who sought their fortunes in this country in those early days. Upjohn, the architect of Trinity Church, New York, was another. It is worth noting that, since Trinity Church was begun in 184I and finished in 1845, its erection was cotemporaneous with the building of the College Library. He too seems to have drawn inspiration from Pugin, whose books had revived in ' England an interest in true Gothic architecture. Flockton was also a water-colorist and made the water-color drawings con- tained in two volumes of Austin's designs now in the College Library. . Some of these water colors by Flockton are dated in the "forties," and in this way the fact is established that Flockton was working for Austin at that time. Mr. Mac- Arthur considers that Flockton was largely responsible for the design of the Old Library, which he thinks Mr. Austin could not have done alone. The persistence of the tradition that an English draftsman had a hand in the design and the char- acter of the design itself, gives color to Mr. MacArthur's - claim that Flockton should have a large share of the credit of the design.
Mr. MacArthur does not recall that Austin ever claimed to him that he made the design and it is a little curious that the two volumes referred to do not contain the design for the College Library. However, that is probably a matter of coinci- dence rather than of significance. I may add that Austin's sister-in-law, who is still living, was always led to understand by him that he designed the building. His son David makes the same claim, and his niece says that "Uncle Harry did it."
What ever became of the original drawings made for sub- mission to the Corporation of the College in 1842, I have not been able to discover. Austin showed them to Mr. Robinson, as already narrated. These drawings may yet come to light, though that is unlikely. If they could be found, they would
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probably settle once for all the question of the authorship of the design of the building. If signed, they would be the best evidence to be had. But evidence of almost equal persuasive- ness we have in the full page steel engraving published in 1843 in the Yale Literary Magazine. This engraving shows the Library complete, and I am confident was made from the architect's drawing rather than from the building itself. At any rate, it was drawn by D. C. Hinman, a New Haven engraver, and engraved by Daggett, Hinman & Co., a New Haven firm, and on the plate appears the name "Henry Austin, Arch." This engraving conclusively settles the ques- tion in my own mind, and completely disposes of Mr. Schuy- ler's attribution of the design to Alexander Jackson Davis. Hinman was himself living in New Haven and was undoubt- edly well known by Austin and secured the original draw- ing from him. Moreover, the Library was even then in the course of erection and the name of the designer of a building then going up must have been a matter of common report. The engraving referred to was used again and again in differ- ent publications, and no one ever challenged its attribution of the design to Austin. I understand that Mr. F. B. Dexter, who must be regarded as the highest authority on all matters connected with the College buildings, says that the invariable tradition has been that Henry Austin was the architect of the old Library. The venerable Hon. Frederick J. Kingsbury87 of Waterbury, now in his eighty-seventh year, writes me: “I was in college when the Library was built and I always under- stood Austin to be the architect. I should have said so without any hesitation had I been asked. In fact, I have no doubt of it any more than I have that Ithiel Town was architect of the Old State House." "Austin and Stone were the
87 Born in Waterbury Jan. 1, 1823; Yale Coll. 1846. LL.D. Yale 1899. Died at Litchfield Sept. 30, 1910. The writer was privileged for many years to be one of Mr. Kingsbury's correspondents and is indebted to him for many facts of interest regarding "old times." Mr. Kingsbury was greatly interested in colonial architecture and helped the writer in the preparation of a paper on David Hoadley, of which a summary is printed in this book.
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architects of New Haven for many years. Square Grecian stucco88 seems to have been the specialty of Austin."
The writer has made no attempt to make a list of the build- ings designed by Austin, but to the list already given in the text may be added the old Chapel Street railway station ( 1848) which it would be hard to classify as to style. He had a wide reputation and received commissions from all over the State and from the South and middle West. He built the present Kingsbury house in Waterbury, as well as the house now owned by the Hon. Irving H. Chase-by some considered the most dignified private residence in Waterbury to-day, though even more notable in purity of style and in elegance was the Colonel William Leavenworth house, built in 1800 by David Hoadley and torn down a few years ago to make way for the Hotel Elton. The Scovill house, now owned by Mr. Chase, was designed by Austin for Mr. Kingsbury's father-in- law, William H. Scovill, Esq., one of the foremost men of Waterbury for many years, and the founder of the great con- cern which still bears his name.
Austin also designed many churches. The most notable of them was, perhaps, the First Congregational Church in Dan- bury, built 1857-8, destroyed by fire May 6th, 1907, and
88 "New Haven abounds with tasteful residences. Hillhouse Avenue, in particular, is remarkable for a neat display of Tuscan or Italian Suburban Villas. Moderate in dimensions and economical in construction, these exceedingly neat edifices may be considered as models for this kind of dwelling." (Andrew Jackson Downing in "A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America." Fifth Edition, N. Y. 1854, p. 388.)
Downing's characterization of the Hillhouse Avenue mansions of that day as "exceedingly neat" must have seemed nothing less than spiteful to a provincial community complacently accustomed to regard the avenue as the most beautiful, the most dignified and the most aristocratic street in the country, "if not in the world." Where, indeed, was any street having quite its spaciousness and air of "refinement and repose" to be found? The side streets of New Haven undoubtedly contained some "exceedingly neat" dwellings; but the more one thinks of it, the description of the "stately homes" of Hillhouse Avenue as "Moderate in dimensions and economical in construction" and "exceedingly neat" must have been regarded as almost malicious-a thrust at Connecticut from New York.
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replaced by the present structure on Deer Hill Avenue, designed by Messrs. Howells & Stokes of New York. "In one of the most spectacular fires that this city has ever witnessed, the historic old First Congregational Church with its proud spire towering more than two hundred feet above Main Street, the most notable of all the city's landmarks, was swept out of existence last night." (Danbury Evening News, Tuesday, May 7, 1907.) I include this item about the burning of the "pride of Danbury" as a reminder that, although the tower of the United Church on our Green is claimed to have been on fire not less than three times within the last ten years, the church is not fireproof, and there may be cause enough to regret that the church was never surveyed. A careful set of drawings of the church should be made immediately. Every day is a risk. Without such drawings the rebuilding of the church and the tower would be out of the question.
I am satisfied to rest here. In the face of such proofs as I have been able to adduce, Mr. Schuyler's attribution of the design of the old College Library to Alexander Jackson Davis must be withdrawn and the credit given to a lesser man-to our local architect, Henry Austin, who, although wholly self-taught and in no sense a great designer, did creditable work and was in the line of succession from Ithiel Town and David Hoadley. Austin was well entitled to be called the "Father of Architects," since most of the men who followed him were at one time or another in his office, in which he sometimes had as many as twelve assistants-so greatly were his services in demand. He was a man of fine personal qualities, genial, generous, large- minded, helpful ; his work was thorough and honest, and bears witness for him to-day. Henry Austin was born at Mt. Carmel December 4, 1804, and died in New Haven December 17, 1891. He is buried in the Grove Street Cemetery.
At about the time the above article was written, I visited the Grove Street Cemetery to inspect the grave of Austin and was surprised to find that his own name and dates had
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never been cut upon the ornate brownstone monument which in his own lifetime he erected as a family memorial and which presumably he designed himself. I then drafted the following inscription and had it cut upon the monument with the permission of the authorities of the cemetery, the charge being shared with Mr. Leoni N. Robinson, who was at one time a student in Austin's office.
Henry Austin, Architect, born at Mount Carmel December 4, 1804, died at New Haven, December 17, 1891. A good designer and a sound builder. For nearly fifty years he was the leading architect of this region. A pupil of Ithiel Town.
NOTE. Since writing the foregoing, I have stumbled upon a reference to the College Library in a work entitled, "His- tory of Architecture, from the Earliest Times; Its Present Condition in Europe and the United States," by Mrs. L. C. Tuthill, published by Lindsay & Blakiston of Philadelphia, in 1848. Mrs. Tuthill89 was born in New Haven and lived here many years. A veritable blue-stocking and the Mrs. Montagu of her day, she wrote with equal facility on an amazing range of subjects-gardening, architecture, calisthenics, deportment, and "Tales for the Young." Mrs. Tuthill shows herself to be familiar with the work of Henry Austin, several of whose
89 Mrs. Tuthill should also have a place in our gallery of New Haven Worthies; she was "town born" and is credited with having been the first to characterize New Haven as the "City of Elms." Literary, relig- ious, sentimental and serious, she was indeed what her generation was pleased to call "a superior female." From what I have been able to gather about her, I fancy that the haute noblesse of the old town found her superior learning and "exalted worth" rather fatiguing. The range of her literary activity is sufficiently indicated by the titles of her books. An incomplete list is given in the notice of her in Lamb's "American Biographical Dictionary." Her most important work seems to have been the "History of Architecture" referred to in the text. This elab- orate work, published in 1848 after the author's removal to Princeton, is dedicated to the "LADIES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE ACKNOWLEDGED ARBITERS OF TASTE." In her preface, Mrs. Tuthill observes :
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designs are illustrated in her big book, including a full page engraving of the College Library almost exactly following the engraving already referred to above as having been published in the Yale Literary Magazine. In her text, Mrs. Tuthill says :
"Yale College Library is built of rough freestone, and is a symmetrical effective building, in the Gothic style (Plate XXVII). The main building is devoted to the hall for the library of the College, the wings to rooms for the society libraries. The interior of the hall is beautifully arranged; the windows of the clere-story and the large windows at the end let in the light from above, upon the clustered columns and well-filled alcoves. This beautiful edifice was completed in 1847. Henry Austin, Architect."
According to Mrs. Tuthill the Library was not completed until 1847, only a year before her book was issued. If this is correct, my surmise that the engraving was made, not from the building but from a drawing, is supported. The state- ment of this writer, who was in a position to know the fact,
"This writer considers a taste for architecture as adding to the innocent pleasures of life, such as a taste for flowers, or furniture, and as suitable for women as a knowledge of Chemistry or Astronomy."
Her classification of architecture among the "innocent pleasures of life," paints Mrs. Tuthill's portrait at a stroke. The naïve commingling of flowers, furniture, architecture, chemistry and astronomy, makes us of to-day smile at yesterday's "pursuit of culture."
But let us suffer no delusions. We may be no more secure than was she. The "pursuit of culture" remains, though we have a different quarry. In Mrs. Tuthill's time, sixty odd years ago, the quarry was science and art-now it is philosophy. Sixty years hence will not our successors smile as they read our "highbrow" talk, even as we smile to-day over the "aspirations" of the excellent Mrs. Tuthill. Listen to this aspiring language from the Boston Transcript of a year or so ago, when everyone with any pretensions to culture struggled with Pragmatism as with a new discovery and never learned that Confucius was the great founder of the Cult! "Pragmatism in its all aroundness must consider pluralism. Monism must establish unity, otherwise it is a failure. Pluralism may easily be satisfied with a small number. Pragmatism abjures absolute monism, also absolute pluralism. Since monism is devoted to one, then pragmatism must be classed with pluralism." It is not given to many to understand that. Mrs. Tuthill's portrait should hang in the same gallery with portraits of Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, Mrs. Perez Morton, Mrs. Emma Hart Willard and Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, the "American Hemans."
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must be regarded as conclusive; or at least, of such force that it can be disturbed only by the statement of someone in an equally good position to know the fact, and writing equally near the date of the event.
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