Category Archives: Research

New version of catalog — Brighton Pier progress

By Editor | Published: 06.14.2010
The list (pdf) is up to about 685 projects, including those of related firms. The firm’s records describe one 1897 project simply as “Brighton Pier.” This is now being interpreted to refer not to a pier in Brighton but to a project for the Brighton Pier & Navigation Co., the ferry operator and builder of [...]
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New version of catalog — Southern projects added

By Editor | Published: 06.01.2010
The list (pdf) includes more of Lorenzo Wheeler’s work in Atlanta and around the South.
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W.L. Vandewirt of Oyster Bay

By Editor | Published: 05.31.2010
Before the house at Sagamore Hill, Lamb & Rich designed a frame house and stable in Oyster Bay for “Mr. W.L. Vandewirt.”[1] This name appears nowhere else and is very likely a misspelling, possibly an egregious one (the American Architect turned Talbot J. Taylor into “Albert J. Talbot”). It seems possible that Roosevelt heard about [...]
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Who was Lorenzo B. Wheeler?

By Editor | Published: 05.01.2010
What did he look like? What did the “B.” stand for? The mystery man deserves his own book. He is probably more interesting to historians of modern architecture and Victorian America than either Hugh Lamb or Charles Rich. Wheeler grew up in Danbury and moved to Newark in the 1870s. The best obituary claims that [...]
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New version of catalog — Henderson Place updated

By Editor | Published: 04.25.2010
The list (pdf) now numbers the houses of Henderson Place correctly. View Larger Map Henderson Place The big project for John C. Henderson is always confusing, partly because eight of its houses have been demolished and others have been combined. Still, it is not clear that the historic district nomination got it right when it [...]
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Researching the architectural history of New York

By Editor | Published: 11.17.2009
While the Office for Metropolitan History has — fabulously — made Manhattan new building application information available through a database covering the years from 1900 to 1986, the building permits of the nineteenth century represent a larger project that is yet to be undertaken. It turns out that the Internet Archive is hosting scanned and [...]
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A footnote

By Editor | Published: 08.20.2009
Posts have become even less frequent because of a research trip to Manhattan and New Jersey… —- Reid Buckley (of those Buckleys) tries to describe* Lamb & Rich’s clock tower in Sharon, Connecticut: [T]he clock is referred to always as a structure in “Gothic” style, with its granite blocks quarried nearby in Sharon, its red [...]
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Pseudonyms in William I. Russell’s autobiography

By Editor | Published: 05.07.2009
One of the main sources of information on the early days of the Romantic suburb of Short Hills, New Jersey is William Ingraham Russell’s gossipy book The Romance and Tragedy of a Widely Known Business Man of New York . It appears to have been self-published in at least three editions through 1913 as Russell [...]
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