Henry Hobson Richardson

1838–1886 · American · 11 buildings on the wall

Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886) was an American architect best known for Richardsonian Romanesque, a highly personal style that adapted the Romanesque architecture of southern France. Born in Louisiana, he studied at Harvard and then, from 1860, at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. With Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright he is called one of "the recognized trinity of American architecture", and his Trinity Church in Boston (1872–1877) made his name across the country.

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When American architects named the ten best buildings in the country in 1885, half were his, among them Sever Hall at Harvard (1878) and the New York State Capitol in Albany. A series of small public libraries for New England towns defines his style: the Winn Memorial Library in Woburn (1879), the Ames Free Library in Easton (1883) and the Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy (1881), thought the best of them. The Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh (1888), one of the two buildings he liked best, was finished after his death by his assistants. Henry Hobson Richardson's buildings are studied for their massing and masonry, and for an American style that influenced Sullivan and Wright.

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