Peter B. Wight (1838–1925) was an American 19th-century architect from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

who worked there and in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Biography

Wight's career "flourished in the 1860s and early 1870s in New York, where he developed a decorative, historicist style that showed affinities to the work of European designers

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...

and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin." After the Chicago fire of 1871, Wight came to Chicago and developed his interest in modern technologies for fireproof construction, founding the Wight Fireproofing Co. by 1881. The firm "designed and manufactured hollow

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

tile Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, walls, edges, or ...

s—impervious to fire and non heat-conductive—for construction." Wight was raised in New York City (his family lived at 93 West 13th Street) and graduated in 1855 from the Free Academy (founded in 1848 and located on East 23rd Street at Lexington Avenue). He had associations with critic Russell Sturgis and was mentored by Thomas R. Jackson, through whom he came to admire the work of American architect Richard Upjohn and the writings of English social reformer and art critic

Peter Bonnett Wight Papers
Wyerson and Burnham Archives Art Accessed January 2010 Art Institute of Chicago Wight opened his own office in 1862 and produced designs for the "highly decorative and polychromatic" High Victorian Gothic

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the ...

. In 1863, he helped establish the

Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art The American Pre-Raphaelites was a movement of landscape painters in the United States during the mid-19th century. It was named for its connection to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and for the influence of John Ruskin on its members. Painter ...

. Following a decline in commissions in the early 1870s, he moved to Chicago where the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had created demand for architects to help with rebuilding. In Chicago he worked with Asher Carter and then William Drake. Wight designed commercial and residential buildings, as well as furniture and wallpaper in the Eastlake style. He retired to Pasadena, California in 1918 where he died in 1925.

Isaac G. Perry Isaac Gale Perry (1822–1904), was a prolific New York State architect and Real estate developer, builder. His works include New York State Inebriate Asylum, Monday Afternoon Club, Phelps Mansion and the First National Bank of Oxford. Lif ...

's work designing The New York State Inebriate Asylum may have been assisted by Peter Bonnett Wight (1838–1925), the head draftsman in Thomas R. Jackson's firm, but Wight's role in the project is not well documented. Russell Sturgis was associated with Wight from 1863 to 1868 and then practiced alone until 1880. George Keller (architect) worked at his firm in New York. Wight’s design for

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

's Street Hall incorporated both the School of the Fine Arts (the first such school on a U.S. college campus) and galleries for exhibiting art. The building's entrances from the college campus and Chapel Street reflected "the donor's wishes and symbolically uniting school and city."

Projects

Street Hall Street Hall is a historic building on Old Campus of Yale University. It housed the first collegiate art school in the United States, a gift from Augustus Russell Street, a native of New Haven and graduate of the Class of 1812, to Yale for the e ...

(1867), named for

Augustus Russell Street Augustus Russell Street (5 November 1792 – 12 June 1866) was a philanthropist who made significant donations to Yale University. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Titus Street (1758-1842), the founder of Streetsboro Township, Ohi ...

, a New Haven native and Yale graduate (Class of 1812),Art gallery's history is showcased in new exhibit
January 31, 2003 Volume 31, Number 16 Yale Bulletin and Calendar and Peter Bonnett Wight's only building at

* Manierre Building and

Lennox Building Lennox may refer to: Places *Lennox (district), Scotland * Lennox and Addington, electoral district in Ontario, Canada ** Lennox (electoral district), a former electoral district in Ontario (1867–1904) *Lennox County, Ontario, Canada * Lennox, ...

New York Mercantile Library The Center for Fiction, originally called the New York Mercantile Library, is a not-for-profit organization in New York City, with offices at 15 Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Prior to their move in early 2018, The Center for Ficti ...

(1869) Montague Street between Clinton and Court Streets,

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York (demolished)Wayne Andrew
Architecture in New York: a photographic history
page 66 *Interior of the

Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building (175 Broadway) The Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building, also known as the Weylin and 175 Broadway, is a former bank building at 175 Broadway in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. Constructed as the headquarters of the Williamsburgh ...

New York Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fi ...

23rd Street and Fourth Avenue New York City *Grant Park design considerations (lithograph drawing with Lorado Taft and writings 1915 and 1916) * Thomas P. Jacobs House (1867),

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

in a polychromatic Gothic style The Kentucky encyclopedia
By John E. Kleber

Bibliography

*''The Development of New Phases of the Fine Arts in 1884 America'' Chicago: Inland Architect Press 1884

Biography

Projects

Bibliography

See also

References

Further reading