Category Archives: Lamb and Rich

About the late-nineteenth-century architectural firm of Lamb & Rich and related firms.

Pseudonyms in William I. Russell’s autobiography

Posted on by
Reply

One of the main sources of information on the early days of the Romantic suburb of Short Hills, New Jersey is William Ingraham Russell’s gossipy book The Romance and Tragedy of a Widely Known Business Man of New York. It appears to have been self-published in at least three editions through 1913 as Russell added postscripts. No one yet seems to have tried to figure out the pseudonyms he used for his neighbors in the early 1880s:

  • “Frank Slater” is Franklin H. Tinker
  • “Charlie Wood” is Charles Towner Root
  • “George Lawton” is George M.S. Horton
  • “Charlie Fiske” is Charles Alonzo Rich
  • “Walter E. Stowe” is William Ingraham Russell
  • “Knollwood” is Short Hills
  • Ingraham’s trade paper is American Metal Market
  • “A. * * S. * * * & Co.” is Arthur Strauss & Co.
  • “Mr. Mallison” might be Mr. Allison, since it appears that way once
  • “A gentleman of wealth” is Stewart Hartshorn

House names (“Redstone,” “Sunnyside”) are unchanged, as are place names and addresses outside of Short Hills. “Edward ‘Ned’ Banford,” “William Curtice,” “George Todd,” “Albert Caine,” and “Mr. Viedler” will require more work. The Banfords rented 39 Knollwood Road and the Todds rented 1 Park Place around 1893, so it should be possible to identify them.

Campus preservation and expansion

Posted on by
Reply

A couple of articles (one in pdf) explain how Barnard College used one of the Getty Foundation’s grants to create a plan for the preservation of Charles Rich’s historic campus. It turns out that Getty has shut down its campus heritage grant program, as the Chronicle‘s campus blog laments; there was even a story in the Wall Street Journal on the program shutting down after funding plans at 86 institutions.

The physical campus section of President Wright’s ten-year report mentions all the work done at Dartmouth over the last decade.

—–
[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to Barnard articles removed.]

Past and future of the Heating Plant

Posted on by
Reply

Engineer Richard D. Kimball and his firm helped design Dartmouth’s Heating Plant and original network of steam pipes in the mid-1890s. It turns out that RDK Engineers is still around and claims that its project at Dartmouth was the first underground steam distribution system in the country.

The 2001 Arts Center Infrastructure Analysis (pdf) by Rogers Marvel with Ove Arup suggests that the heat plant eventually move to Dewey Field, north of the Medical School. That would allow the Hood Museum or other arts functions to take over the old plant building.

More changes for Hanover’s frame houses

Posted on by
Reply

The Office of Residential Life plans to renovate the ca. 1812 James C. Brown House at 26 East Wheelock as a sorority, The Dartmouth reports. A second building slated to become a sorority house is the Parkside Apartments, a Jens Larson faculty housing block at 17 East Wheelock Street. The firm doing the work is Haynes & Garthwaite.

Meanwhile, the status page for the 4 Currier Street project notes that the three frame buildings on the site have been demolished: 4 Currier Place, 6 Sargent Place, and an outbuilding at 18 South Street.

[Update 09.07.2008: Haynes & Garthwaite information added and Parkside Apartments substituted for Ledyard Apartments, named incorrectly in original post.]

[Update 05.07.2009: Leftover reference to Jens Larson, correct when the post referred to Ledyard Apartments, removed.]

Will South Fairbanks survive?

Posted on by
Reply

Thayer currently seats 700, according to The Dartmouth. The news release of November 10 regarding the Trustees’ meeting stated that the replacement for Thayer Dining Hall “will have seating for 750 diners and a large performance space.”

Unless the new dining hall does more than Thayer did to create a usable basement or second level or expands significantly into the parking lot behind the building, it seems likely that South Fairbanks (at least) will have to be moved. One assumes it will be moved rather than demolished, since the architects are “green” and would not consign a useful structure to the landfill for merely aesthetic reasons, especially when it is a historic building.

Here’s hoping that the century-old fraternity house designed by Charles Rich is moved to Mass Row (between North Mass and Hitchcock) or is permitted to become part of the new dining hall. Neither approach should be out of reach for a skilled designer.

Name change of campus firm (Atkin Olshin Schade)

Posted on by
Reply

Atkin Olshin Lawson-Bell Architects is now Atkin Olshin Schade and presently features features Collis and Fahey-McLane on its front page.

The firm’s Collis page has some new photos, including one showing the Lone Pine Tavern. The only detailed plan of the Hitchcock renovation yet available is on the site as well.

Hitchcock Hall undergoing major renovation

Posted on by
Reply

Atkin Olshin Lawson-Bell is designing an extensive renovation of Hitchcock Hall, announced on the OPDC project page. The work will involve the demolition of all interior partitions (not the fireplaces), Charles Rich’s original shed-roofed (?) “resort room” in the crook of the ell, and the room’s early-1980s one-level flat-roofed expansion by Charles Hilgenhurst & Associates.

In the crook, on the original resort room footprint, will go a full-height enclosed fire stair in the same white-sided vocabulary as the interstitial elements of the firm’s Fahey and McLane Halls, across the Mall. The building will also gain a west entrance with a portico.

—–
[Update 11.10.2012: Broken link to article fixed.]
[Update 01.24.2007: link to fireplace note, other details added.]

Lamb & Rich buildings list expanded

Posted on by
Reply

The list of works of the firm of Lamb & Rich has been expanded to include several projects:

  • House in Belle Haven Park, Greenwich, Conn.
  • Cottage for Samuel Harris in North Long Branch, N.J.
  • The Orange Club House, Brick Church, N.J.
  • House for J.A. Minott, Orange, N.J.
  • Bethel Presbyterian Church, Plainfield, N.J.
  • Three houses on Sixth Avenue for H.M. Blasdell
  • House on 68th Street for Anthony Mowbray
  • Commercial Building at 37, 39 Greene Street
  • Addition to 103-107 Prince Street for Edward Tuck and J.P. Townsend
  • Washington Life Insurance Building
  • Store at 24 East 22nd Street for W.H. Stern
  • Store at 512-516 Broadway and 55-66 Crosby Street for William H. De Forest
  • Addition to 7 Park Avenue for Charles P. Noyes
  • Franklin Bank Competition Entry
  • Unbuilt design for Brownell Hall, Barnard College

Phi Delt attribution, finally

Posted on by
Reply

The architect of the Phi Delta Theta (now Phi Delta Alpha) house on Webster Avenue has been elusive. Although Alexander Anderson McKenzie “built into this house his own integrity,” as a plaque inside states, he did not design the building.

The American Architect and Building News stated in its “Building Intelligence” section for November 10, 1900:

The Dartmouth College Chapter of Phi Delta Theta fraternity will erect a chapter-house on Webster Ave., after plans by Charles A. Rich, 24 Nassau St., N.Y. City. The structure will be built in the Colonial style prevailing in the college buildings, the lines in general being similar to those of the Gov. Hancock House, Boston.

The Phi

The Gym’s stair

Posted on by
Reply

The Athletics website has an update on the Gym renovation. One of the photographs shows the upper drill hall, which the project will return to the industrial space it really is.

One of the first things the College did when it took over the Gym from the alumni was to add a central north stair to the eastern and western runs that already led to the main entrance. Now the school is replacing that narrow central run with a single broad main stair and substituting bicycle racks for the eastern run and a ramp for the western (see plan [pdf]). One expects that the ramp nevertheless will see the greatest use, since most people arrive from the west. The chunky cornerstone, laid by President Ernest Fox Nichols at his inauguration on October 14, 1909, may be obscured by the ramp.