William Halsey Wood (April 24, 1855 – March 13, 1897) was an American

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Early life

Wood was the youngest of four sons born to Daniel Halsey Wood and Hannah Lippincott Wood. Shortly after his birth in 1855, the family relocated from Dansville, New York to

Anglo-Catholic Anglo-Catholicism comprises beliefs and practices that emphasise the Catholic heritage and identity of the various Anglican churches. The term was coined in the early 19th century, although movements emphasising the Catholic nature of Anglica ...

congregation where the children were introduced to ritualist liturgy and William became a member of the choir, eventually serving as its director. Wood prepared for the architectural profession in a typical nineteenth-century pattern of practical experience and apprenticeship. During an unspecified time circa 1880, he is reported to have traveled to England and gained employment in the office of

George Frederick Bodley George Frederick Bodley (14 March 182721 October 1907) was an English Gothic Revival architect. He was a pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott, and worked in partnership with Thomas Garner for much of his career. He was one of the founders of Watt ...

, a leading figure in the

High-church The term ''high church'' refers to beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology that emphasize formality and resistance to modernisation. Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originat ...

movement within the

Anglican Communion The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Founded in 1867 in London, the communion has more than 85 million members within the Church of England and other ...

. The Bodley connection is consistent with Wood's youthful experience at the House of Prayer, and that, with other family connections to the

High Church The term ''high church'' refers to beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology that emphasize formality and resistance to modernisation. Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originate ...

party within Anglicanism, ultimately contributed to the character of Wood's own mature work. On November 19, 1889, Wood married Florence Hemsley, a Philadelphian and member of the Church of St. James the Less in that city, one of the most prominent Anglo-Catholic congregations in America. The Woods bore three children: Emily (1890), William Halsey, Jr. (1892), and Alexander (1894).

Career

From his practice in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.ecclesiastical designs principally for the Episcopal Church. The young architect's earliest documented commissions are an 1878 house for his older brother D. Smith Wood and the William Clark House of 1879, both in Newark. There followed a variety of residential work, from a modest duplex for speculative investment to large suburban homes and urban townhouses. Three of his suburban homes were featured in ''Artistic Country-Seats'' by G. W. Sheldon, an 1886 publication that included work by McKim, Mead & White,

Wilson Eyre Wilson Eyre, Jr. (October 30, 1858 – October 23, 1944) was an American architect, teacher and writer who practiced in the Philadelphia area. He is known for his deliberately informal and welcoming country houses, and for being an innovator in ...

and other notable turn-of-the-century designers. Wood's largest home, "

Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March ...

", was built in

Saratoga Springs, New York Saratoga Springs is a city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 28,491 at the 2020 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the area, which has made Saratoga a popular resort destination for over 2 ...

for New York financier and philanthropist

Spencer Trask Spencer Trask (September 18, 1844 – December 31, 1909) was an American financier, philanthropist, and venture capitalist. Beginning in the 1870s, Trask began investing and supporting entrepreneurs, including Thomas Edison's invention of the el ...

and his wife Katrina Trask; "

" continues in use today as the home of a working colony of artists and writers.

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie (, ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans i ...

was also his client; the initial 1889 portion of the

Carnegie Free Library of Braddock The Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock, Pennsylvania, is the first Carnegie Library in the United States. As such, the library was named a National Historic Landmark in 2012, following its listing on the National Register of Historic Places i ...

, Pennsylvania, the first of Carnegie's 1,679 public libraries in the US to open (1889) and the second to have been commissioned (1887), is Wood's design. It is believed that Wood met Carnegie through William Clark, also a Scottish immigrant. Wood's submission to the competition for Carnegie's larger library in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh's North Side), the first of his libraries in the United States to be commissioned (1886) and the second to open (1890), was very favorably received, but ultimately was not selected. While the architect's clients and projects varied widely, church clients formed the largest part of Wood's practice, especially for his own denomination. From 1885 until his death Wood designed more than forty churches and parish buildings, all but four of them for Episcopal congregations. The rural Church of St. John the Evangelist (1885), at Hunter/Tannersville, New York, for example, was designed for Wood's own family as a seasonal parish without resident clergy; Wood and his wife Florence Hemsley married there in 1889, with Wood's own brother Rev. Alonzo Lippincot Wood conducting the service and the bishop of Tennessee in attendance. The modest "Queen Anne" or "Eastlake" design, built of local granite boulders and wood-frame construction, expressed ecclesiological design principles promoted by the Oxford Movement. Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge

Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge

Wood's masterpiece in New Jersey, still a vital congregation, is the First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church on Military Park in Newark (1888). Though often seen as being heavily influenced by Richardson, the massive two-towered building is really a nod toward twentieth century expressionism, its abstract masses seeming to burst from their bases like missiles from silos. There is nothing like it anywhere in the United States—National Romantic churches in Scandinavia are its closest contemporary designs. Also unique is its domed interior, designed to allow full immersion baptisms to occur while no less than three choirs sang in lofts directly above the pool. Its pulpit was also specially equipped for long Sunday sermons; Wood designed a press box adjacent to the elaborately carved aerie so that reporters could follow the preacher and file stories on the sermons for their Monday editions. The entire interior is wood paneled, and the carving is among the most elaborate in any church of its time. Only Richardson's Trinity Church in Boston matches its design in quality and material splendor. At the opposite extreme, Wood entered and was one of four finalists in the competition for New York City's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, an unsuccessful proposal that would have been larger than any of its European counterparts. More typical examples of his work were for urban congregations in Newark, Passaic, Paterson and other communities in northeastern New Jersey and in New York City. One of these i
Christ Episcopal Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
The geographic range of Wood's client list was also wide, including commissions in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Missouri and Wyoming. His most distant commission was for

Saint John's University, Shanghai St. John's University (SJU) was a Christian university in Shanghai. Founded in 1879 by American missionaries, it was one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China, often regarded as the Harvard of China. After the founding of th ...

, China. Two of these commissions were cathedrals: St. Mary's at Memphis, Tennessee and St. Matthew's at Laramie, Wyoming. With few significant deviations, these churches were " Gothic Revival" or " Richardsonian Romanesque" in style and adhered closely to liturgical design principles promoted by the High Church party and its publishing organs ''The New-York Ecclesiologist'' and, later, ''The Churchman''.

Assessment

In March 1897, Wood died from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

at the Philadelphia home of his father-in-law, Alexander Hemsley. He was buried in the churchyard of St. James-the-Less, a traditional Anglo-Catholic congregation in keeping with his own churchmanship. Wood died during an important transition in American architecture; a shift from the exuberance—some have said excesses—of nineteenth-century eclecticism to the functionally based perspectives of twentieth-century Modernism. Even during his own lifetime, Wood was seen as a participant in that process of transition. The next generation of architects and architectural critics, however, discounted his career as derivative, seeing only the historicist aspects of the architect's work, his reliance upon Medieval prototypes and imagery. Architect and preservationist

James Marston Fitch James Marston Fitch (1909–2000) was an architect and a Preservationist. In 1964, he was one of the founders of the Historic Preservation Program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He was a member ...

, for example, dismissed Wood and other Richardsonians altogether: "...some of them, like Halsey Wood’s grotesque mimicry of H. H. Richardson’s

Trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God th ...

, make one flinch at their awfulness". One of the first to re-appraise Wood in a more positive light was the early 20th century medievalist, Ralph Adams Cram, himself a competitor for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Writing ten years after Wood's death, Cram observed "...he thought Gothic as instinctively as the best thirteenth-century master-mason of them all", and that "religious architecture staggered under the blow" when Wood died at the age of 41. Almost three decades later, Cram's enthusiasm was unabated, writing "For my own part I think Halsey Wood was potentially one of the greatest architects of modern times". Another positive assessment came in 1936 from architectural critic and urban theorist

Lewis Mumford Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a w ...

, whose writings were instrumental in understanding the 1880s "as the seedbed of modern architecture". In "The Sky Line", his regular column in ''The New Yorker'', Mumford linked Wood with H. H. Richardson and others who had lain the groundwork for Modernism.

Selected works

* William Clark House, Newark, New Jersey (1873)
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge, New Jersey (Episcopal)
* Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hunter/Tannersville, New York (1885) * St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Chattanooga, Tennessee (1880s) * St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Washington, New Jersey (1886) * First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church, Newark, New Jersey (1888) * St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church (Anniston, Alabama) Anniston, Alabama (1888) *

(National Historic Landmark), Braddock, Pennsylvania (1888) * St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Kansas City, Missouri (1888) * Sixth (now St. Paul's Portuguese) Presbyterian Church, Newark, New Jersey (1888) * Wickliffe Presbyterian Church, Newark, New Jersey (1888; demolished)National Register of Historic Places, Record #375323. For information on the history of the congregation, see: http://www.oldnewark.com/churches/denoms/presbyterian/wickliffepres.htm. * St. Simon-by-the-Sea, Mantoloking, New Jersey (1888–1889; attributed) * St. John's College, Shanghai, China * St. Paul's Episcopal Church (now St. Agnes & St. Paul's), East Orange, New Jersey (1891) * Zion and St. Timothy's Episcopal Church, New York City (1891; destroyed by fire) * St. Matthew's Episcopal Cathedral, Laramie, Wyoming (1892-1896) * St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Paterson, New Jersey * St. Paul's Episcopal Church,

Owego, New York Owego is a town in Tioga County, New York, United States. The population was 18,728 at the 2020 census. The name is derived from the Iroquois word ''Ahwaga'', meaning "where the valley widens". Owego is in the southeastern corner of the cou ...

(1893–1894) * Saint John's Church (Episcopal), Passaic, New Jersey (1894) * Breslin Memorial Tower, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee * Trinity Episcopal Church, Northport, New York (1889) *

, Spencer and Katrina Trask residence, (National Historic Landmark) Saratoga Springs, New York * 108-112 Willow Street, Brooklyn, New York, for

* Church of the Good Shepherd (National Historic Landmark), Hazelwood, Pennsylvania (1891) * St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Memphis, Tennessee (1897–1898; completed posthumously) * Church of the Ascension, Oakland (Pittsburgh) Pennsylvania (1898)

References

External links