Background
Asher Benjamin was born on June 15, 1773, in Greenfield, Massachussets.
( Asher Benjamin (1773-1845) published the first American...)
Asher Benjamin (1773-1845) published the first American builder's guide, and his architectural books played an invaluable role in disseminating the new language of the Greek Revival. When originally published, they were remarkably popular, and were among the most influential of all Greek Revival handbooks. Throughout the American South, Midwest, and New England, one still comes across houses built in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s patterned directly after Benjamin's designs.The two books incorporated here, Practice of Architecture (1833) and The Builders Guide (1839), are his most accomplished Grecian pattern books. With the growing number of contemporary architects who are designing buildings based on the forms on nineteenth century Grecian architecture, Benjamin's books should prove an invaluable resource for all lovers of the Greek Revival - builders, owners, preservationists, historians, and architects alike. Thomas Gordon Smith is chairman of the school of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame. His books include Classical Architecture: Rule and Invention and a newly illustrated edition of Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture/
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( This book revolutionized 19th-century American architec...)
This book revolutionized 19th-century American architecture and changed forever the type of building that was done in our country.
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( The superbly illustrated and detailed handbook that pop...)
The superbly illustrated and detailed handbook that popularized the use of classic Greek architectural style in America in the early and middle 1800s. 271 illustrations.
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(Excerpt from The Rudiments of Architecture: Being a Treat...)
Excerpt from The Rudiments of Architecture: Being a Treatise on Practical Geometry, on Grecian and Roman Mouldings; Shewing the Best Method of Drawing Their Curves, With Remarks on the Effect of Both A line, or a circle, is tangential, or a tangent to a cir cle, or other curve, when it touches it without cutting, when both are produced, as 10. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Asher Benjamin was born on June 15, 1773, in Greenfield, Massachussets.
Benjamin received his early training from a local builder in the Connecticut River Valley.
It is likely that Greenfield was Benjamin’s home during his early professional life, as much of his work was in places easily accessible from there, and as his first book, The Country Builder's Assistant (1797), was published near-by in Deerfield. A second edition, enlarged, was printed in Boston, but sold especially by Alexander Thomas, in Worcester, in 1798, which may indicate a residence there as well. It is certain that Benjamin lived for sometime in Windsor, Vermont, as records show that he owned a house there for two years, and designed at least two houses, the Hatch and Jones houses, as well as the Old South Congregational Meeting House, which resembles much of the work published in his various books.
Benjamin also evidently worked in various places in the Connecticut Valley prior to 1803, when he appears in the Boston directory. During this period we find him striving for another outlet for his desire to popularize architecture in America, for several times in 1802 there appeared in the Windsor local paper an advertisement by Benjamin proposing the start of a school of architecture. In Boston he appears to have prospered, as he owned two houses at the time of his death and left one to each of his daughters, Sarah Smith Benjamin and Elizabeth Augusta Bliss. There is evidence that he fulfilled at least to some extent his ambition to teach architecture, for Robert Henry Eddy of Boston writing in 1872 for the Historical and Genealogical Societystates that he "studied architecture with the late Asher Benjamin, architect. " This was probably prior to 1833. Benjamin died in Springfield, Massachussets, on July 26, 1845.
Besides the buildings mentioned above, Benjamin has been credited with the design of the Carew House, Springfield; the Hollister House, Greenfield; the Alexander House, Springfield; the Colton House, Agawam (1806); the West Church, Boston; the First Congregational Church, Bennington, Vermont (1806), similar to plate 33 of The Country Builder's Assistant; the First Parish Church, Bedford, Massachussets, exactly like plate 39 of The American Builder's Companion; and the old Congregational Church of Northampton, burned many years ago, but shown on a Bartlett drawing published in 1839, and illustrated by figure 212 in The American Spirit in Architecture, by Talbot Faulkner Hamlin, being volume XIII, 1926, of The Pageant of America.
It was, however, even more as author than as architect that Benjamin was important. Through his books "late colonial" details and designs were broadcast throughout New England, as English ideas had been broadcast by English books in colonial times, and there is scarcely a village which in moulding profiles, cornice details, church spire, or farmhouse does not reflect his influence. How much of the designs he published were original with him is not known; certainly he copied widely and eagerly. Aymar Embury, who published in 1917 a reprint of some of his work, notes a cornice type common in Litchfield, Connecticut, long before the date of the book, and Fiske Kimball states that Benjamin "codified Bulfinch's innovations. " Yet original or not, Benjamin's plates formed a collection harmonious and almost always in perfect taste.
Asher Benjamin has been listed as a notable architect, author by Marquis Who's Who.
(Excerpt from The Rudiments of Architecture: Being a Treat...)
( Asher Benjamin (1773-1845) published the first American...)
( The superbly illustrated and detailed handbook that pop...)
( This book revolutionized 19th-century American architec...)
Asher Benjamin was twice married; first to Achsah Hitchcock, November 30, 1797, and second to Nancy Bryant, on July 24, 1805.
