Frank Furness

Infobox Military Person
name=Frank H. Furness
born= birth date|1839|11|12
died= Death date and age|1912|6|27|1839|11|12


caption=
placeofbirth= Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
placeofdeath=
placeofburial= Laurel Hill Cemetery Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
allegiance= United States of America Union
branch= United States Army Union Army
rank=Captain
serviceyears=1861-1864
unit=6th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry
battles=American Civil War Battle of Trevilian Station
awards=Medal of Honor
laterwork= Architect

Frank Heyling Furness (1839–1912) was an acclaimed American architect. A student of Richard Morris Hunt, he was a major influence on his one-time draftsman Louis Sullivan. He was also a Medal of Honor recipient for his bravery during the Civil War. Designer of more than 600 buildings, by the end of his life, his bold assertive style was out of fashion, and many of his most significant works were demolished in the mid-20th century. Among his most important buildings are the University of Pennsylvania Library (now the Fisher Fine Arts Library) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, both in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Biography

Furness was born in Philadelphia on November 12, 1839. His father, William Henry Furness, was a prominent Unitarian minister and abolitionist, and his brother, Horace Howard Furness, was an outstanding Shakespeare scholar. Furness, however, did not attend a university and apparently did not travel to Europe. He is remembered for his eclectic, often idiosyncratically-scaled buildings and for his influence on Louis Sullivan and the acclaimed 20th theater designer William Harold Lee. Although much of Furness' architectural designs were uniquely his own creation, Gothic Revival was a prevailing theme throughout.

Furness began his architectural training in the office of John Fraser, Philadelphia, in the 1850s. He participated in the Beaux-Arts-inspired atelier of Richard Morris Hunt, New York, from 1859 to 1861 and again in 1865. During the Civil War, he served as Captain and commander of Company F, 6th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry ("Rush's Lancers"), receiving the Medal of Honor for his gallantry at the Battle of Trevilian Station, Virginia, on June 12, 1864—the only American architect to receive this honor.

worked briefly as a draftsman in Furness's office, and his use of decorative organic motifs can be traced, at least in part, to Furness.

During his career, Furness designed over four hundred buildings including banks, churches, synagogues, railway stations for the Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio railroads, and numerous stone mansions in Philadelphia and along Philadelphia's Main Line, as well as a handful of commissioned houses at the New Jersey seashore, Washington, D.C., New York state, and Chicago, Illinois.

Furness also designed custom interiors and furniture in collaboration with Philadelphia cabinetmaker Daniel Pabst. Examples are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Furness broke from dogmatic adherence to European trends. While McKim, Mead, and White were pushing a more neoclassical Beaux-Arts style of architecture, Furness juxtaposed styles and elements in a forceful manner. Girard Bank is an exception, and is more representative of McKim Mead & White's public and commercial buildings (that they finished it explains this). Furness's strong architectural will is also seen in the way he combined materials: stone, iron, terra cotta, and brick. These materials reflected the industrial-realist culture of Philadelphia, as opposed to New York the financial center or Boston the idealist town on a hill.

Furness's independence and modernist Victorian-Gothic style inspired later 20th century architects Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi. Their lives in Philadelphia often brought them inside Furness's Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts—built for the American Centennial—and his University of Pennsylvania Library.

Furness died on June 27, 1912, and is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1973, the Philadelphia Museum of Art presented the first retrospective exhibition of his works, curated by James F. O'Gorman, George E. Thomas and Hyman Myers.

Medal of Honor citation

Rank and organization: Captain, Company F, 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Place and date: At Trevilian Station, Va., June 12, 1864. Entered service at: Philadelphia, Pa. Birth:------. Date of issue: October 20, 1899.

Citation:

:Voluntarily carried a box of ammunition across an open space swept by the enemy's fire to the relief of an outpost whose ammunition had become almost exhausted, but which was thus enabled to hold its important position.Wittenberg, 2000.]

Architectural works

in "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture" wrote, not unadmiringly, of the National Bank of the Republic: "... it is an almost insane short story of a castle on a city street."

A fictional desk built by Furness was featured in the John Bellairs novel "The Mansion in the Mist".

Some buildings by Furness located in Philadelphia:
*Guarantee Trust and Safe Deposit Company, 1875 (demolished).
*Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1876.
*Centennial National Bank, 1876 (now the Paul Peck Center of Drexel University)
*Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion, 1875, demolished. [ [http://www.brynmawr.edu/iconog/uphp/AABN/lutheran/lutheran.html Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion] at Bryn Mawr College.]
*Provident Life & Trust Co., 1879 (demolished).
*National Bank of the Republic (later Philadelphia Clearing House), 1883 (demolished).
*First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 1885.
*Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Building (formerly University of Pennsylvania Library), 1890.
*Knowlton Mansion, 1881.
*Girard Bank headquarters (now the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia).

Buildings by Furness not in Philadelphia:
* [http://www.allhallowswyncote.org/buildings.html All Hallows Church] , 1897, Wyncote, Pennsylvania.
*The Emlen Physick Estate, 1879, Cape May, New Jersey.
*Fairholme Carriage House (now Jean and David W. Wallace Hall), 1874-1875, Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island. [ [http://hcap.artstor.org/cgi-bin/library?a=d&d=p1524 Jean and David W. Wallace Hall] at the Historic Campus Architecture Project]
*New Castle Library Society building, 1892, New Castle, Delaware.
*The Baldwin School (built as a hotel), 1890, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Three adjacent buildings in Wilmington, Delaware are reputed to be the largest grouping of Furness-designed railroad buildings:
*Pennsylvania Railroad (now Amtrak) French Street Station (Wilmington Station), 1908.
*Pennsylvania Building, 1905.
*Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Water Street Station, ca. 1887.

ee also

*List of Medal of Honor recipients
*

References

*Lewis, Michael J., "Frank Furness : Architecture and the Violent Mind," 2001.
*O'Gorman, James F., et al., "The Architecture of Frank Furness;" Philadelphia Museum of Art; 1973.
*Thayer, Preston, "The Railroad Designs of Frank Furness: Architecture and Corporate Imagery in the Late Nineteenth Century", University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Ph.D. dissertation), 1993.
*Thomas, George E., Jeffrey A. Cohen & Michael J. Lewis, "Frank Furness: The Complete Works;" Princeton Architectural Press, revised edition 1996.
*Venturi, Robert, "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture;" The Museum of Modern Art; 1966.
*cite web
accessdate=2007-05-12
url=http://www.rushslancers.com/furness.html
title=Captain Frank Furness: Brilliant Architect and Medal of Honor Winner
author=Eric J. Wittenberg
year=2000
work=The Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry, "Rush's Lancers"

Notes

External links

* [http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display_projects.cfm/25652 Project List - Furness, Evans & Co.] at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
* [http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/25653 Project List - Frank Furness] at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
*findagrave|3820 Retrieved on 2008-07-02

Persondata
NAME= Furness, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= United States Army Medal of Honor recipient
DATE OF BIRTH= 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH= Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH= 1912
PLACE OF DEATH=