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Joseph Morrill Wells (1853–1890) was an American architect, known for his contributions to the work of the noteworthy architecture firm of
McKim, Mead & White McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm based in New York City. The firm came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in ''fin de siècle'' New York. The firm's founding partners, Cha ...
. Wells is said to have admired the architects of the
Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( ) was a period in History of Italy, Italian history between the 14th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked t ...
, especially
Donato Bramante Donato Bramante (1444 – 11 April 1514), born as Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio and also known as Bramante Lazzari, was an Italian architect and painter. He introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rom ...
, and to have been an important influence in the firm's transition in the mid-1880s away from the romantic and picturesque, and toward the classical.


Early life and family

Joseph Morrill Wells was born in
Roxbury, Massachusetts Roxbury () is a Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Roxbury is a Municipal annexation in the United States, dissolved municipality and one of 23 official neighborhoods of Boston used by the city for ne ...
(now a part of Boston) on March 1, 1853, the son of Thomas Foster Wells (1822–1903), a shipping merchant and salvager of shipwrecks, and his wife, Sarah Morrill Wells (1828–1897).
Samuel Adams Samuel Adams (, 1722 – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, Political philosophy, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in Province of Massachusetts Bay, colonial Massachusetts, a le ...
, the Boston brewer and patriot, was a great-great-grandfather, and the poets Thomas Wells (1790–1861) and Anna Maria (Foster) Wells (1795–1868) were grandparents. Joseph Wells' brother,
Webster Wells Webster Wells (1851–1916) was an American mathematician known primarily for his authorship of mathematical textbooks. Early life and career Wells was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts (now a part of Boston) on September 4, 1851. His parents, Thom ...
(1851–1916), was a professor of mathematics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
and the author of numerous textbooks such as the ''Elementary Treatise on Logarithms'' (1878). By 1849, the year Thomas Foster Wells married Sarah Morrill, he was in partnership with John Emery Gowen, trading in West India goods and importing liquors and wine. In the 1850s, Wells and Gowen conducted marine salvage operations while selling deep-sea diving gear, doing business as "Wells & Gowen Submarine Armor." According to the writer of his obituary, Wells, in the years before the
Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
, established "a line of clipper packets between Boston and Australia, which the war put an end to." Wells's maritime ventures harken back to the days of his seafaring great-grandfathers: Captain Francis Wells, a wine merchant, shipper, and captain of the ''Hempstead Galley'', the ship on which he brought his family in 1723 from England to Boston; and Col. Joseph Foster, a Gloucester merchant active in the West Indies trade, and a notable participant in the Battle of Gloucester in August 1775. In 1860, Thomas and Sarah Wells lived at Roxbury with their four children, but by 1870, the family was living in New York City at 9 Horatio Street ("between West 4th and Hudson Streets"), where they remained until about 1873, and where Thomas Wells pursued his many business interests. One of these was the New York Metal and Chemical Manufacturing Co., incorporated in 1870 by Wells and others to convert scrap tin into iron, using Wells's patented methods. By 1874, the family was living in a house at 137 Highland Street near Roxbury, from which Thomas Wells commuted to his office at 3 Merchants Row in Boston, where he worked in real estate. In 1880, Thomas and Sarah Wells were living with their daughter Annie at Winchester, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb, where the father worked as a "trader in stocks," and where for a time he was president of the Granular Metal Co.


Education and architectural career

Beginning in 1865 until about 1869, Joseph Wells attended the
West Newton English and Classical School West Newton English and Classical School, also known as the Allen School, was a model school in West Newton, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1854 by Nathaniel Topliff Allen (1823–1903), an educator and protege of Horace Mann ...
(aka the Allen School) in
West Newton, Massachusetts West Newton is one of the thirteen villages within the city of Newton in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. Among the oldest of the thirteen Newton villages, the West Newton Village Center is a National Register Historic Distric ...
, where he studied subjects such as art, music, dancing, and ethics, and where he was required to keep a daily journal (which he continued to keep for the rest of his life). In 1870, according to the census taken that year, he lived with his parents and siblings in New York City on Horatio Street, age 18, no occupation given. He worked in Boston for the architects
Peabody & Stearns Peabody & Stearns was a premier architectural firm in the Eastern United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, the firm consisted of Robert Swain Peabody (1845–1917) and John Goddard Stearns ...
from 1874 to 1875, and for the architect Clarence S. Luce from 1875 to 1878. In January 1877, the New York architect
Richard Morris Hunt Richard Morris Hunt (October 31, 1827 – July 31, 1895) was an American architect of the nineteenth century and an eminent figure in the history of architecture of the United States. He helped shape New York City with his designs for the 1902 ...
published a drawing signed by Wells, but this may have been a freelance commission. In 1879, Wells joined McKim, Mead & White and remained there until his death in 1890. Notwithstanding his many contributions to the firm's work, he was obscure in life and for a time thereafter (in 1908, the artist Will Low wrote that Wells's "practice was absorbed in that of the firm of architects where he was employed," and in 1913, the critic Royal Cortissoz called him "a man of genius unknown to the outer world and, indeed, no more familiar to many of the younger generation in his profession..."). His current reputation as having been an important member of the firm derives in part from the recollections of the architect
Harold Van Buren Magonigle Harold Van Buren Magonigle (1867–1935) was an American architect, artist, and author best known for his memorials. He achieved his greatest success as a designer of monuments, but his artistic practices included sculpture, painting, writing, ...
, who for a time worked alongside Wells, and recalled him in an article written in 1934. According to Magonigle, the architect Charles McKim once told him that he had "learned more from ellsthan from any other source." Magonigle claimed that it was Wells who "weaned" the architect
Stanford White Stanford White (November 9, 1853 – June 25, 1906) was an American architect and a partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts firms at the turn of the 20th century. White designed many houses ...
away from the "romantic and picturesque forms" he admired before he entered his classical phase in the mid-1880s. He credited Wells with the design (based on White's preliminary sketches) of the firm's
Villard Houses The Villard Houses are a set of former residences on Madison Avenue, between 50th Street (Manhattan), 50th and 51st Street (Manhattan), 51st streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States. Designed by ...
(1884), and the detailing of the facade of the
Century Association The Century Association is a private social, arts, and dining club in New York City, founded in 1847. Its clubhouse is located at 7 West 43rd Street near Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. It is primarily a club for men and women with distinctio ...
's New York clubhouse (1891). Earlier, in 1924, Magonigle made even greater claims for Wells, writing that "there was a moment of great promise in the history of American design when it looked as though the influence of the genius of Joseph Morrill Wells would direct American thought toward a virile and fruitful eclecticism that would lead in its turn toward an architecture we could fairly call our own...but Wells died in the very early nineties...the 893 ChicagoWorld's Fair came on and turned our minds toward Greece and Rome, and another Classic revival ensued...and so began the baneful use of precedent..." The historian
Henry-Russell Hitchcock Henry-Russell Hitchcock (June 3, 1903 – February 19, 1987) was an American architectural historian, and for many years a professor at Smith College and New York University. His writings helped to define the characteristics of modernist architec ...
, writing in 1972, claimed the opposite for Wells—that he rejected eclecticism and embraced the use of precedent (Hitchcock called it "direct inspiration"). He saw Wells's design for the Villard Houses not only as a harbinger of the shift to the classical and symmetrical, but also as part of a broader transition from European to American leadership in architectural design, writing that "a change in American architecture came...in the early eighties with the designing and building of the Villard houses in New York." According to Hitchcock, "the rejection of the English High Victorian and even of Shavian-manorial irregularity and picturesqueness is here at its extreme even at the very beginning. It was, moreover, almost immediately reflected in the planning of cKim, Mead & Whites H.A.C. Taylor house in Newport, a year or two later, in which there was a return to the formal Anglo-Palladian mode of the eighteenth century." Noting that the classical trend came several years later to England, Hitchcock opined that "this was the point where the tide turns, when American leadership, although not yet much followed, was beginning to be recognized abroad." Others took a more measured view of Wells's influence. Charles Baldwin, Stanford White's biographer, acknowledged Wells's having introduced the Renaissance to the firm with his facades for the
Villard Houses The Villard Houses are a set of former residences on Madison Avenue, between 50th Street (Manhattan), 50th and 51st Street (Manhattan), 51st streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States. Designed by ...
, but attributed White's shift to the classical more to his 1884 European honeymoon, writing, "...White's wedding trip through Europe opened his eyes. Returning, supported by Wells, he began to practice—and preach—Italian Renaissance as a style and a tradition better suited to American needs than any or all phases of Gothic, Romanesque, or...strictly classical architecture." William Mitchell Kendall, who became a partner in the firm in 1906, recalled Wells's role as having been subsidiary to those of the partners: "So far as I know his work was confined to the details of building. In that he was supreme. Nobody before or since has equalled him in the appropriateness and scale of his ornamentation: and this of course gave great character to the buildings he decorated. But the ensemble, and by implication, the kind of decoration, was invariably decided by a member of the firm." Nevertheless, there were instances where Wells had greater responsibility for the composition. William R. Mead, a partner more inclined to manage than design, collaborated with Wells on major projects in Kansas City and Omaha for the New York Life Insurance Company, projects that failed to interest McKim or White, and therefore gave Wells a significant say in the overall design. Years later, Mead wrote of Wells's status as first among equals among the firm's employees during its early days: "In 1879, shortly before the establishment of the firm, Joseph M. Wells came into our office...I suppose he had merely a good high school education, but he was one of the most learned young men in literature and art whom I have ever met, and a most original thinker...in his quiet, almost unsocial, way he immediately made an impression upon all of us, and became our intimate friend and associate, not only in our work but in our daily lives...I recall the times when we four were working together in the bonds of true fellowship." Wells's last assignment at McKim, Mead & White was to design the details for
Madison Square Garden Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as the Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh and Eighth Avenue (Manhattan), Eig ...
(completed in 1890), but illness kept him from the task.


Death

Wells died of pneumonia on February 2, 1890.New York City Municipal Death Records. He was buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery in
Medford, Massachusetts Medford is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 United States census, Medford's population was 59,659. It is home to Tufts University, which has its campus on both sides of the Medford and Somervill ...
, where Stanford White and the sculptor
Augustus Saint-Gaudens Augustus Saint-Gaudens (; March 1, 1848 – August 3, 1907) was an American sculpture, sculptor of the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin to an Iris ...
erected a tombstone in the form of a tall Greek
stele A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...
. The tombstone was removed in 2019, restored, and reinstalled in May 2020.


Further reading

* "Joseph Morrill Wells" (Obituary), ''Architecture and Building'', Vol XII, No. 7 (February 1890). * Frank E. Kidder. ''The Architect's and Builder's Pocket-Book'' (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1902). * Will Hicok Low. ''A Chronicle of Friendships, 1873–1900'' (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908), pp. 275–277. * Royal Cortissoz. ''Art and Common Sense'' (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), pp. 419–421. * Charles Moore. ''The Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim'' (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1929). * Lewis Mumford, ''The Brown Decades'' (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931), pp. 156, 161, 172. * Charles C. Baldwin. ''Stanford White'' (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1931). * Mosette Broderick and William C. Shopsin. ''The Villard Houses; Life Story of a Landmark'' (New York: Viking Press, 1980). * Leland M. Roth. ''McKim, Mead & White, Architects'' (New York: Harper & Row, 1983). * Samuel G. White. ''The Houses of McKim, Mead & White'' (New York: Rizzoli, 1998). * Samuel G. White and Elizabeth White. ''McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks'' (New York: Rizzoli, 2003). * Samuel G. White and Elizabeth White. ''Stanford White Architect'' (New York: Rizzoli, 2008). * Mosette Broderick. ''Triumvirate: McKim, Mead & White'' (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2010). * Samuel G. White. ''Stanford White in Detail'' (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2020).


See also

*
McKim, Mead & White McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm based in New York City. The firm came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in ''fin de siècle'' New York. The firm's founding partners, Cha ...
*
Augustus Saint-Gaudens Augustus Saint-Gaudens (; March 1, 1848 – August 3, 1907) was an American sculpture, sculptor of the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin to an Iris ...


Wells family

* Anna Maria Wells and Thomas Wells, poets, Joseph Wells's grandparents *
Webster Wells Webster Wells (1851–1916) was an American mathematician known primarily for his authorship of mathematical textbooks. Early life and career Wells was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts (now a part of Boston) on September 4, 1851. His parents, Thom ...
, mathematician, Joseph Wells's brother * Annie Renouf-Whelpley, artist; Joseph Wells’s first cousin *
Mai Wells Mai Wells (14 April 1863 – 1 August 1941), also billed as May Wells and Mae Wells, was an American actress whose career spanned eight decades. A prolific actress of the silent era, she worked with Charlie Chaplin, made at least two films wit ...
, silent film actress; Joseph Wells's first cousin *
John Witt Randall John Witt Randall (November 6, 1813 – January 25, 1892) was a minor poet and consulting zoologist to the United States Exploring Expedition but is best known for the collection of drawings and engravings that he bequeathed to Harvard Universit ...
, art collector, Joseph Wells’s first cousin once removed * Frederick Adams Wells, politician, Joseph Wells’s second cousin


References

19th-century American architects 1853 births 1890 deaths American neoclassical architects Peabody and Stearns people {{DEFAULTSORT:Wells, Joseph Morrill