Henry Hobson Richardson, FAIA (September 29, 1838 – April 27, 1886) was an American architect, best known for his work in a style derived from Romanesque Revival that became known as Richardsonian Romanesque. Along with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, Richardson is one of "the recognized trinity of American architecture." and spent part of his childhood in New Orleans, where his family lived on Julia Row in a red brick house designed by the architect Alexander T. Wood. He was the great-grandson of inventor and philosopher Joseph Priestley, who is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen. Richardson developed a unique and highly personal idiom, adapting in particular the Romanesque of southern France. His early works, however, were not very remarkable. "There are few hints in the mediocre work of Richardson's early years of what was to come in his maturity, when, beginning with his competition-winning design ... for the Brattle Square Church in Boston, he adopted the Romanesque." which had a studio attached.

Richardson died in 1886 at age 47 of Bright's disease. "The things I want most to design are a grain elevator and the interior of a great river-steamboat." the Hubbard Memorial Library (Ludlow, Massachusetts), and Billings Memorial Library on the campus of the University of Vermont. More subtle than his churches, municipal buildings and libraries, they were an original response to this relatively new building type. Beginning with his first at Auburndale (1881, demolished 1960s), Richardson drew inspiration for these station buildings from Japanese architecture that he learned about from Edward S. Morse, a Harvard zoologist who began traveling to Japan in 1877, originally for biological specimens. Falling in love with Japan, upon his return that same year Morse began giving illustrated "magic lantern" public lectures on Japanese ceramics, temples, vernacular architecture, and culture.

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Further reading

  • Breisch, Kenneth A,. Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America: A Study in Typology, MIT Press, 1997
  • Floyd, Margaret Henderson, Henry Hobson Richardson: A Genius for Architecture, Monacelli Press, NY 1997
  • Hitchcock, Henry Russell, The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times, Museum of Modern Art, NY 1936; 2nd ed., Archon Books, Hamden CT 1961; rev. paperback ed., MIT Press, Cambridge MA and London 1966
  • Larson, Paul C., ed., with Susan Brown, The Spirit of H.H. Richardson on the Midland Prairies: Regional Transformations of an Architectural Style, University Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and Iowa State University Press, Ames 1988
  • Meister, Maureen, ed., H. H. Richardson: The Architect, His Peers, and Their Era, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1999
  • Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl, H.H. Richardson: Complete Architectural Works, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1984
  • Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl, and Andersen, Dennis A., Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and the Legacy of H. H. Richardson, University of Washington Press, Seattle 2003
  • O'Gorman, James F., Living Architecture: A Biography of H. H. Richardson, Simon & Schuster, NY 1997
  • O'Gorman, James F., H. H. Richardson: Architectural Forms for an American Society, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1987
  • O'Gorman, James F., H. H. Richardson and His Office: Selected Drawings, David R. Godine, Boston 1974
  • Roth, Leland M., A Concise History of American Architecture, Harper & Row publishers, NY, NY 1979
  • Shand-Tucci, Douglas, Built in Boston: City and Suburb, 1800 - 1950, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA 1988
  • Van Rensselaer, Mariana Griswold, Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works, Dover Publications, Inc. NY 1959 (Reprint of 1888 edition)
  • Van Trump, James D., "The Romanesque Revival in Pittsburgh," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 16, No. 3 (October 1957), pp.&nbsp;22–29
  • Wright, Mark, "H. H. Richardson's House for Reverend Browne, Rediscovered," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 68, No. 1 (March 2009), pp.&nbsp;74–99 https://www.sah.org/docs/default-source/preservation-advocacy/2019-percy-browne-house-jsah-article.pdf