Background
Isaiah Rogers was born in Marshfield, Massachussets, the son of Isaac and Hannah (Ford) Rogers. His father, a shipbuilder, was descended from John Rogers, an early settler of Marshfield.
architect Businessman inventor
Isaiah Rogers was born in Marshfield, Massachussets, the son of Isaac and Hannah (Ford) Rogers. His father, a shipbuilder, was descended from John Rogers, an early settler of Marshfield.
Isaiah was educated in the local schools.
His family wished him to be a farmer, but at the age of sixteen, much against their will, he left for Boston, where he apprenticed himself to a carpenter named Shaw.
When his apprenticeship was over, he went South and spent the years 1820 and 1821 in Mobile, Alabama. While there he won a competition for the first Mobile Theatre, a barn-like, undistinguished building, finished in 1824.
In 1822 he returned to Boston and entered the office of Solomon Willard. Willard later supplied granite for many of Rogers' buildings; in 1842 they took a five-year lease together on one of the Quincy quarries; and as a mark of his affection for the older man Rogers named his son after him.
Its corner stone was laid July 4, 1828, and it was opened in 1829.
Rogers' name first occurs in the Boston directory in 1826, and it was probably about this time that he started his own architectural practice. His first large commission was the Tremont Hotel in Boston, the first example of the luxurious, elaborately planned American hotel with extensive plumbing. Its corner stone was laid July 4, 1828, and it was opened in 1829. Probably as a result of his success in this building, Rogers was chosen architect of the new Astor House in New York, where he lived from 1834 to 1842.
The Astor House was somewhat similar in general style to the Tremont, but, much larger, it carried luxury and complicated mechanical equipment to a still higher level. Its corner stone was laid July 4, 1834, and it was opened in 1836.
His other New York work included the Bank of America (Wall and William Streets), 1835, the façade of which was later reconstructed as the entrance to Pine Lodge Park, Methuen, Massachussets; the very similar Merchants' Bank; the Lafayette Place Reformed Dutch Church, 1836; the Astor Place Opera House, later altered into the Mercantile Library and called Clinton Hall, 1847; and especially the Merchants' Exchange, 1836-1842. This lavish building, which was unprecedented at that time, in that it cost over a million dollars, had a great interior rotunda and a magnificent Ionic colonnade.
At about the same time Rogers designed the graceful and original Boston Merchants' Exchange.
Rogers was the father of the modern hotel. It was in his work that the combination of lavish public rooms, numerous bedrooms (some in suites), and elaborate mechanical equipment was first made. The list of his hotels includes the Bangor House, Bangor, Maine; the Exchange Hotel, Richmond, Virginia, 1841, an exquisite design; the Battle House, Mobile; the Charleston Hotel, Charleston, South Carolina, with its superb Corinthian frontispiece; the magnificent second St. Charles Hotel at New Orleans, approximately 1851; the second Galt House, Louisville, Kentucky, approximately 1865; the enormous Maxwell House, Nashville, Tennessee, begun in 1859, during the Civil War used for barracks, and not finally opened till 1869; and the famous Burnet House in Cincinnati, opened in 1850. It was probably to superintend the building of the Burnet House that Rogers moved to Cincinnati, where he lived thereafter. In that city he designed, among other work, St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church, a Romanesque building; the Longview Insane Asylum, with an interesting plan; and considerable alterations to the Ohio State Capitol.
In 1855 he designed the Egyptian Judah Touro memorial gate to the Jewish cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island.
He was associated at various times with Henry White-stone, with his son Solomon Willard Rogers, and with A. B. Mullett.
He was something of an inventor, and between 1841 and 1863 patented three improvements in iron bridge design and a burglar-proof safe.
From 1862 to 1865 (and nominally till 1868, the dates are confused and contradictory) he was supervising architect of the Treasury Department in Washington, being the first formal incumbent of this position. During his administration little important work was done, because of the Civil War, but he completed the west side of the Treasury Building, following the original design of Robert Mills.
Rogers was for years subject to acute heart attacks, and died as the result of one at the age of sixty-eight.
Once the ideas of the Greek Revival are accepted, Rogers can be appreciated as one of the greatest of the designers of his time.
The austerity of the Tremont and Astor House exteriors, the recessed vestibule and superb rotunda of the New York Merchants' Exchange, the interesting diagonal towers of St. John's Church, Cincinnati, all show an imaginative mind, an appreciation of true classic dignity, and a thoroughly trained taste. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he succeeded in keeping his classicism alive during his later life, refusing to accept the ugliness of contemporary fashion.
Quotes from others about the person
The Illustrated London News called Burnet House constructed by Rogers in Cincinnati, opened in 1850, the best hotel in the world (Williamson, post, p. 100).
Rogers was married at twenty-three to Emily W. Tobey, of Portland, Maine; they had at least two children.
As a mark of his affection for Solomon Willard Rogers named his son after him.