Background

Richard Upjohn was the son of James Upjohn, surveyor and master in the grammar school, and of Elizabeth Plantagenet Dryden Michell, daughter of the rector of Holy Trinity Church, Shaftesbury.

Education

His parents had planned that he should enter one of the learned professions, but he insisted on becoming a draftsman and was accordingly apprenticed to a cabinetmaker.

Career

A master craftsman at twenty-two, Upjohn established his own business in Shaftesbury. He prospered, but, ambitious, headstrong, and incautious, he became entangled in grandiose schemes and was soon hopelessly in debt. During his early childhood, the Upjohn family had spent sometime in St. John's, Newfoundland, where James Upjohn had established a business. Now, refusing to let an uncle shoulder his debts, Richard set out for America with his wife and son, Richard Michell, and landed in New York on June 1, 1829.

In the fall of 1830 he finally settled in New Bedford, Massachussets, became a draftsman for Samuel Leonard, builder and sperm-oil merchant, and opened an evening school of drawing. Upon seeing some drawings for the Boston Custom House, he exclaimed, according to a family story, "If that is architecture, I am an architect, " and forthwith opened his office and advertised for work.

In February 1834 he moved to Boston, and for four years worked spasmodically for Alexander Parris. He also did considerable work of his own, including numerous Greek villas, and a Gothic iron fence for Boston Common. In 1837 he completed St. John's Church, Bangor, Me. , his first Gothic Church, and the first of much Maine work, which culminated in the large stone mansion for R. H. Gardiner at Gardiner, Me.

In the spring of 1839 he was chosen draftsman for repairs and alterations in Trinity Church, New York, and when a new building was decided upon he was retained officially as architect. In August he moved to New York. The new Trinity Church, begun in 1841 and consecrated in 1846, of unprecedented richness and purity of style, won immediate fame, equalling, if not surpassing, that of Grace Church, New York, by the younger James Renwick. From that time on, work flowed into Upjohn's office faster than he could handle it.

He designed not only Gothic churches, but houses and civil buildings as well. Many of his houses were in the Italian or "bracketed" styles, and the Trinity Building (1852), at the time New York's finest office building, was called Italian Renaissance. The long list of Upjohn's important work includes an "Italian villa" for Edward King, Newport; the alterations of the Van Rensselaer Manorhouse, Albany, N. Y. , in a kind of pseudo-Colonial; of the Van Buren house, Kinderhook, N. Y. ; and of the Pierrepont house, Brooklyn, N. Y. , all done between 1840 and 1850.

Other buildings, designed between 1840 and 1855, include the city hall and Taunton Academy, Taunton, Massachussets, and the much praised Corn Exchange Bank Building, New York; the Church of the Ascension, New York; Bowdoin College Chapel; the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn, a building of marked originality; Grace Church, Newark, N. J. ; St. James', New London, Connecticut; the Church of the Holy Communion, Twentieth Street and Sixth Avenue, New York; St. Paul's Church, Buffalo, N. Y. ; St. Mark's, Augusta, Me. ; St. Paul's, Brookline, Massachussets; and Grace Church, Utica, N. Y.

During the period of the growing influence of Richard Michell Upjohn upon the office work, the best works were the Central Congregational Church, Boston, Massachussets, and St. Thomas's, New York. Upjohn's favorite work, and in many ways his best, is Trinity Chapel, West Twenty-fifth Street, New York (1853), with unusual direct simplicity of design and unusual height. The delicate detail of the monument to unknown Revolutionary soldiers, Trinity Churchyard, is also an achievement rare for the time.

Upjohn's careful and sensitive use of the precedent of English Gothic was widely imitated but rarely equalled; his influence in the United States was in many ways similar to the influence in England of A. W. N. Pugin. Like most early Gothic Revival architects, Upjohn was more interested in effect than in structure and used lath-and-plaster vaults frequently, apparently without compunction. Yet in Trinity Chapel there is an honest use of materials everywhere, and in Upjohn's Rural Architecture (1852) the designs show a simple and functional use of wood.

Upjohn is important as the chief instrumentality in the founding of the American Institute of Architects, of which he was president from its beginning (1857) until his resignation in 1876. At the first meeting, in his office and at his invitation, the group took the name "New York Society of Architects, " but soon adopted the present name, and the new society became the successor to the short-lived American Institution of Architects, founded in 1837.

High ethical standards controlled his personal life. He refused to design the Arlington Street Unitarian Church, Boston, since it seemed to him an anti-Christian, because Unitarian, enterprise; his attitude in this probably caused the loss to him of the Harvard College Chapel, designs for which he had prepared the same year. He made it a practice to do at least one mission church a year free. His influence was spread indirectly by many architects who were trained in his office or worked for him, among them Leopold Eidlitz, Alpheus Morse, Charles Babcock (later professor of architecture at Cornell), Joseph C. Wells, and Charles Clinton, of Clinton and Russell. His great hobby was painting, and he brought back from a European trip in 1850 many landscapes of high merit. He was an honorary member of both the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Institute of Portuguese Architects. He died at Garrison, New York.

Achievements

• As president of the American Institute of Architects, Upjohn supported the highest possible professional standards. The foundations of the present competition code and the present standards of professional ethics were laid during his administration, and largely at his instigation. Richard became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He did extensive work in and helped to popularize the Italianate style. He also published his extremely influential book, "Upjohn's rural architecture: Designs, working drawings and specifications for a wooden church, and other rural structures", in 1852.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Nave at Trinity Church, New York, NY

    (Original hand-painted architectural plans and original ph...)

  • Upjohn's Rural Architecture (Da Capo Press series in architecture and decorative art)

Membership

Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects

Member of the Institute of Portuguese Architects

Interests

• Painting

Connections

On November 14, 1826, Upjohn married in London Elizabeth Parry, daughter of the Rev. John Parry of Denbigh, North Wales. They had a son, Richard Michell who was also a well-known architect and served as a partner in his continued architectural firm in New York.

Father:

James Upjohn

Mother:

Elizabeth Plantagenet Dryden Michell

Spouse:

Elizabeth Parry

Grandson:

Hobart Upjohn

Son:

Richard Michell

References

• Richard Upjohn: Architect and churchman (Da Capo Press series in architecture and decorative art, v. 15)