Report To The Honorable Rolla Wells, Mayor Of The City Of Saint Louis...
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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Report To The Honorable Rolla Wells, Mayor Of The City Of Saint Louis
Saint Louis (Mo.). Public buildings commission, John Lawrence Mauran
Architecture; Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings; Architecture / Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings; Public buildings; Saint Louis (Mo.)
John Lawrence Mauran was born on November 19, 1866 at Providence, Rhode Island. He was the fifth child and third son of Frank Mauran by his second wife, Mary Louise Nichols. The earliest known Mauran, Giovanni, born about 1550, lived at Villefranche, just east of Nice, then a part of Savoy. Joseph Carlo Mauran, John's great-grandfather, had been impressed as cabin-boy on an English man-of-war in 1760, when he was twelve years of age. Two years later he escaped, off the Connecticut shore, and eventually settled in Barrington, R. I. He commanded Rhode Island vessels during the Revolution and subsequently engaged in the West Indies trade; his two sons, Carlo and Joshua, were leading merchants of Providence.
Education
John received his primary and secondary schooling in Providence. In 1885 he began his professional education in Boston at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here he received training in design under the Frenchman, Eugene Létang, in construction under Frank E. Kidder, and in architectural theory under Henry Van Brunt, all excellent teachers. No doubt he felt the impact, too, of H. H. Richardson's newly finished Trinity Church and of Charles F. McKim's great Public Library, then under construction a few blocks away. Following his graduation in 1889, Mauran, like most young American architects, spent a year in European travel and study.
Career
In 1892 he became connected with the Chicago branch of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, able inheritors of Richardson's nationwide practice. Here he gained valuable experience as assistant general superintendent, chiefly on the large Public Library and the palatial Art Institute in Renaissance style. This auspicious association with work of the highest quality was potent in forming his own high professional standards. He was fortunate, too, to be in Chicago during the year of preparation for that epoch-making tour de force of neoclassicism, the World's Columbian Exposition. In 1893 he was promoted to be manager of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge's new St. Louis office, and as such was in responsible charge of important commissions there, chiefly for large residences and mercantile structures, of which the monumental, classic St. Louis Union Trust building was the most notable. Here, three years later, he was joined by his subsequent partners, Edward Gordon Garden and Ernest John Russell, who had served their apprenticeships in the Boston and Chicago branches. In 1897 Mauran was made St. Louis partner of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, but, deciding to settle permanently in St. Louis, he organized in 1900 his own firm, Mauran, Russell & Garden. Having well-disciplined talents, the new partners built up a large and varied business. Mercantile commissions continued, and they designed many new public libraries made possible by Carnegie funds. In 1908 Garden retired and three years later Mauran and Russell were joined by a new partner, William DeForrest Crowell. In 1929 Oscar Mullgardt was admitted to the firm. During the postwar boom decade it carried out many large commissions. Among the most important were the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, the Bank of Commerce, the Mid-West Terminals, the Southwestern Bell Telephone building, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat building, the Missouri Pacific building, the Galvez Hotel at Galveston, Tex. , the Rice Hotel at Houston, Tex. , the United States Court and Custom House, St. Louis, the Police Headquarters building, the St. Louis Children's Hospital, the Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital, the Cabanne branch of the Public Library, the St. Louis Country Club, the Pilgrim Congregational Church, the Second Baptist Church, and the First Church of Christ, Scientist. While these buildings adhere to the prevailing stylistic eclecticism of the day, they show careful and competent planning and a methodical attention to detail compatible with the high professional standards on which Mauran always insisted. Within the firm, Mauran's duties were primarily executive, but he was always an important influence in matters of design. In 1925 he was appointed president of the Memorial Plaza Commission created to design the large group of buildings comprising St. Louis's imposing civic center. Along with his architectural duties he served as a member of the corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1925 - 29), of the executive committee of the St. Louis Community Council (1924 - 29), and of the Missouri state committee of the Republican party (1926 - 29). In 1930 his broad experience in architecture and city planning led President Hoover to appoint him for a second time to the National Commission of Fine Arts in charge of developing Washington, D. C. He died suddenly, in his sixty-seventh year, at Peterboro, N. H. , near his summer home at Dublin, of peritonitis following an emergency operation for appendicitis.
Achievements
From the very first, Mauran, true to New England tradition, played an active rôle in professional and public affairs. He served as president of the St. Louis chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1902-04; as chairman of the public buildings commission, 1904; member of the public library board, 1906-33; director of the Mercantile Library, 1906-33 (president 1908 - 09); member of the board of control, St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts, 1906-10; president of trustees of the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian), 1900-20; and Republican presidential elector, 1908. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him a member of the Fine Arts Commission for Washington, D. C. He was president of the St. Louis Grand Opera Committee, 1910-12. In 1915 he headed the "Made in St. Louis" Carnival. He served the Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital as director, 1909-33, and was on the boards of other philanthropic institutions. During the First World War, he not only guided the American Institute of Architects as president, 1916-18, but also contributed able executive direction as a member of the committee on contracts of the Council of National Defense, as secretary of the commission on contracts for the construction division of the United States army, as a member of the military intelligence branch of the army, and as a member of the subcommittee on industrial safety of the War Industries Board. In several capacities he also served the American Red Cross. He was also a president of the Memorial Plaza Commission.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
Personality
Mauran is described as a gracious, kind man, with a keen sense of humor. His interests were broad, as affiliations with the Academy of Science of St. Louis, the American Civic Association, the American Forestry Association, and the Missouri Historical Society prove. His warmth and personal charm won the respect of all with whom he came into contact. His enjoyment of living is evidenced by membership in a long list of social clubs.
Connections
On November 18, 1896, he married Isabel Chapman, whose New England family had come to St. Louis two generations earlier. He had two daughters, Isabel Lawrence and Elizabeth Chapman.
