Review: Learning from Frank Furness: Louis Sullivan in 1873; Furness in Space: The Architect and Design Dialogues on the Late Nineteenth-Century Country House; Frank Furness: Making a Modern Library—From Gentleman’s Library to Machine for Learning; Frank Furness: Working on the Railroads; Building a Masterpiece: Frank Furness’ Factory for Art; and Face and Form: The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness

Abstract

Learning from Frank Furness: Louis Sullivan in 1873 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 6 October 2012–30 December 2012 Furness in Space: The Architect and Design Dialogues on the Late Nineteenth-Century Country House Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 14 October 2012–21 December 2012 Frank Furness: Making a Modern Library—From Gentleman’s Library to Machine for Learning Kroiz Gallery, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 5 October 2012–18 January 2013 Frank Furness: Working on the Railroads Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia 17 September 2012–19 April 2013 Building a Masterpiece: Frank Furness’ Factory for Art Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 29 September 2012–30 December 2012 Face and Form: The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Philadelphia 30 November 2012–19 January 2013 To mark the centennial of Frank Furness’s death, a number of educational and cultural institutions in and around Philadelphia collaborated on Furness 2012 , a series of exhibitions, a symposium, and a website that sought to place the architect, and by extension the city, securely within the modernist narrative. A quirky individual, Furness (1839–1912) wrestled with nearly every major building type of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Banks, railroad stations, libraries, educational and medical institutions, clubhouses, places of worship, urban townhouses, and country estates all bear his unmistakable stamp. Among his American contemporaries, only H. H. Richardson equaled Furness in both range and creativity. Why is Furness not better appreciated outside his native Philadelphia? That is the question Furness 2012 attempted to answer, and, in large part, it succeeded. Furness was born into a prominent and accomplished Philadelphia family in 1839, just as the city was transforming itself from a cultural capital into an industrial metropolis. He exhibited a temperamental personality, even at a young age, and he was slow in settling on a career path. A three-year placement in the Philadelphia office of the Scottish emigre architect John Fraser eventually led to a longer and more pivotal stay in the experimental New York atelier of Richard Morris Hunt, who had just returned to the United States from his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Meritorious service in the Union cavalry during the Civil War interrupted Furness’s studies permanently and marked his life indelibly. Not long after his discharge, Furness began working again with Hunt in New York, this time as an assistant, but the lure of his native city soon proved irresistible. By 1866 he had returned to Philadelphia and formed Fraser, Furness & Hewitt, in partnership with his former employer and a former assistant …