Albert Randolph Ross, Architect

Albert Randolph Ross (October 26, 1868 – October 27, 1948) was an American architect, known primarily for designing libraries, especially those funded by Andrew Carnegie. His father, John W. Ross, was an architect based in Davenport, Iowa, and the architect of its city hall.

Education and career

Albert Randolph Ross was born in 1868 in Westfield, Massachusetts, a son of architect John W. Ross. In 1874, the father relocated his practice to Davenport, Iowa, where Albert Ross graduated from high school in 1884.[1]

After working from 1884 to 1887 as a draftsman in his father's office, Ross moved to New York where he studied sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He worked for a year for architect Charles Day Swan in Buffalo, New York, and beginning in 1891 through 1897, for the architecture firm McKim, Mead and White in New York.[1][2] In 1898, he formed a partnership under the name of Ackerman & Ross with architect William S. Ackerman, a partnership they dissolved in 1901.[2]

In 1927, when he was awarded a $10,000 prize in a competition to design a new courthouse for Milwaukee out of 33 who submitted proposals,[3] he told the Milwaukee Journal why he settled on a traditional design:[4]

When I went into the competition I considered whether to design a building in the modern and experimental trend for a great public courthouse. I made modern sketches, but in my opinion they fell flat for this purpose. They were not typical and expressive of public work, so I turned to that type established by our forefathers.... I have no quarrel with trends in modern architecture. I take a fling at it myself. But it simply won't do for public buildings. It violates the dictates of a definite style built up through one hundred and fifty years of our history. A departure into modernism would not be suitable for a courthouse. We must be trained slowly to things violently new. The public's money cannot rightly be used to force experiments down its throat.

Principal architectural works

Ackerman & Ross

Albert Randolph Ross

Personal life

In 1901, Ross married Susan Husted, from Brookline, Massachusetts.[1] From 1901 until 1948 his main residence was in New York City, but he also maintained a summer residence on Negro Island, near Boothbay Harbor, Maine,[2] where he died on October 27, 1948.[2]

Media related to Albert Randolph Ross at Wikimedia Commons

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 John William Leonard, Albert Nelson Marquis (1906). Who's who in America, Volume 4: Albert Randolph Ross.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Columbus in Photographs: Albert Randolph Ross". Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2011-05-05.
  3. "Architect Here Wins $10,000 Prize" (PDF). New York Times. August 4, 1927. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
  4. Wright, Frank Lloyd (1943). Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography. Duell ,Sloan and Pearce. p. 358. ISBN 9780764932434.
  5. Evening Times-Republican, March 4, 1902, page 5.
  6. "Library History". Port Jervis Free Public Library. Archived from the original on 2011-09-14. Retrieved 2011-10-04.
  7. Needham Free Public Library, accessed February 11, 2015
  8. Old Town Public Library, accessed February 11, 2015
  9. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  10. The Courier-News (Bridgewater, New Jersey), May 4, 1905, page 2: "The work of engraving two tablets...at the new courthouse is in progress. The tablet on the right will read 'Union County Courthouse Commenced February 1903; Completed April 1905...Architects, Ackerman & Ross..."
  11. Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York), June 24, 1905, page 3.
  12. Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut), July 6, 1905, page 10.
  13. Draper Hall, M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany
  14. Former Carnegie Library, Denver
  15. The Architectural Forum (June 1917, plates 80-81).
  16. Wisconsin, a Guide to the Badger State. Wisconsin Library Association. 1941. p. 252. ISBN 9781623760489.
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