John Francis Rague was a mid-19th century architect who designed and built the 1837 Old Capitol of Illinois and the 1840 Territorial Capitol of Iowa.
Background
John Francis Rague was born March 24, 1799, in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, United States. He was the youngest of six children born to Hannah (Bonnel) Rague and Dr. John Rague, a surgeon. Rague's parents married in 1781 near the end of the Revolutionary War and relocated to New York City in 1804, where Dr. Rague died of war injuries. The family is thought to have lived among the merchants and middle-class residents of Lower Manhattan.
Career
During the 1820s, John Rague worked as a builder/carpenter. Sometime after 1828, it is thought he worked for Minard Lafever. Also a builder/carpenter, Lafever published the first in a series of architectural plan books in 1829, enabling him to enter the architectural profession. Lafever would become one of the country's leading designers in the Greek Revival style.
Professionally, 1836 proved a pivotal year John Rague was serving as a town trustee, and agitation to relocate the state's capital from Vandalia to Springfield was in the air. In 1834 Sangamon voters had sent Abraham Lincoln to the state legislature, and he pushed hard for the relocation. John Rague spotted his opportunity to become an architect but surmised that shop owning was unacceptable preparation. His mentor, Lafever, had grown in stature since Rague's departure, so John Rague resigned as a town trustee and moved to New York for an extended stay.
Upon his return, John Rague won the 1837 competition for the new Springfield capitol over Town and Davis, a leading eastern firm. Rague's Greek Revival design, completed between 1837 and 1853, was his first and among his best civic commissions. He was dismissed, however, as a supervising architect in 1841, along with the oversight commissioners, for financial irregularities.
Fresh from his success in Illinois, in 1839 John Rague secured the commission for the new Iowa territorial capitol in Iowa City, with another Greek Revival design. The blufftop chosen by Chauncey Swan and 12 acres of surrounding oak savanna promised a dramatic landscape setting and secured the building's position as a future landmark. With ceremonial pomp, the cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1840. Almost immediately, John Rague and the building committee parted ways, and he returned to Springfield, where he was still supervising the Illinois capitol's construction. Swan assumed supervision over the Iowa construction while John Rague continued to supply detailed plans. When legislators occupied the Iowa capitol in 1842, it was unfinished and remained so until 1855. Its west-facing portico was not completed until 1921.
Rague's work in Iowa in 1839-1840 presaged a longer residency in Dubuque by the 1850s. During the interim, John and Eliza lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His termination in Springfield prompted the move and proved a professional setback. His next significant commission was in 1850 when the University of Wisconsin approved plans for several campus buildings. A single design for a dormitory with a utilitarian plan and classical proportions was used in two identical buildings. Also that year, the Italianate Phoenix building in Milwaukee was constructed, marking both a change in Rague's style and a move away from institutional commissions.