Christopher Grant La Farge was an American architect. He was co-founder of the New York-based architectural firm "Heins & LaFarge".
Background
Christopher Grant La Farge, known as C. Grant La Farge, was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest of nine children (four boys and five girls) of John La Farge, the distinguished painter and designer of stained glass, and Margaret Mason (Perry) La Farge. Two of his brothers also attained distinction, John as a Jesuit priest and man of letters, Bancel as a painter and, following his father's interest, as a designer of stained glass windows, some of them for his brother Grant's churches. Reared in an artistic household, young Grant La Farge began to draw at an early age. At fourteen he was already helping his father by making tracings and putting on colors.
Education
He attended Newport public schools. His technical turn of mind, however, and a trip to Spain, where he was much impressed by the cathedrals, persuaded him to become an architect rather than an artist, and he began his studies toward that end in 1880 with a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Career
In 1886, after two years as an architectural assistant to his father, La Farge formed a partnership with an M. I. T. classmate, George Lewis Heins, with whom, until the latter's death in 1907, he executed most of his best-known commissions. Foremost among these were the initial designs for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, but there were others, among them the church and parsonage of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in New York; St. Matthew's, Washington; Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Providence; the Roman Catholic Chapel, West Point; Houghton Memorial Chapel at Wellesley College; and St. Patrick's Church, Philadelphia.
Among the firm's secular works were the original subway stations for New York's Interborough Rapid Transit system (1900 - 04), the new United States Naval Hospital, Brooklyn, and the buildings for the New York Zoological Park, of which La Farge was one of the founders. The great Cathedral of St. John the Divine was begun in 1892. Only the apse, however, was built according to the original Romanesque designs of Heins & La Farge.
After the death of Heins, certain of the cathedral authorities, who had been urging a return to the more traditional Gothic, declared the original contract at an end and turned the commission over to the architectural firm of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, who prepared new designs in that style. The loss of the commission was a deep and disheartening blow to La Farge and largely cut short his creative career.
In later years La Farge was a member of several architectural partnerships, including La Farge & Morris (1910 - 1915) and La Farge & Son (beginning in 1931). A close personal friend of Theodore Roosevelt, for whose Long Island home, Sagamore Hill, he designed a library (1905), he shared Roosevelt's interests in conservation and the West.
La Farge was deeply concerned with the welfare of the architectural profession and served as a fellow, director, and vice-president of the American Institute of Architects, trustee and secretary of the American Academy in Rome, and chairman of the advisory committees of the schools of architecture at Columbia University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
La Farge died at his home in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, after suffering from heart disease for two years. He was buried in St. Columban's Cemetery at Newport, in the La Farge family plot.
Achievements
Christopher Grant LaFarge was known for designing some of New York City's iconic buildings. Christopher and his partner George Lewis Heins were responsible for the original Romanesque-Byzantine east end and crossing of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, and for the original Astor Court buildings of the Bronx Zoo, which formed a complete ensemble reflecting the aesthetic of the City Beautiful movement. Their firm "Heins & LaFarge" provided the architecture and details for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the first precursor to the New York City Subway.
Membership
Fellow of the American Institute of Architects
Connections
In 1895 La Farge married Florence Bayard Lockwood, a niece of Senator Thomas F. Bayard. They had twin daughters--Florence, who died in infancy, and Margaret Grant--and three sons: Christopher Grant, who became an architect and later a novelist; Francis Willing; and Oliver, anthropologist and author.
