Josiah Cleaveland Cady (January 1837 – April 17, 1919) was an American architect known for his Romanesque Revival designs. He was also a founder of the American Institute of Architects.
Cady started his career as a draftsman for Town & Davis in New York City. He opened his Manhattan practice, J. Cleaveland Cady, Architect, in 1864. The firm became J. C. Cady & Company in 1882 and Cady, Berg & See in 1890. Cady's work was diverse, including residences, churches, colleges, libraries, museums, and railroad depots. His first major project was designing the Brooklyn Art Association's Brooklyn Academy of Design in 1869, with architect Henry M. Cougdon.
Cady designed the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Opera House, and fifteen buildings at Yale University. Although much of his work centered around New York and New England, he was also the main architectural advisor for Berea College in Kentucky. Cady's designs include one National Historic Landmark and twelve buildings that are individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Early life
Cady was born in Providence, Rhode Island in January 1837, to Lydia Smith Platner and Josiah Cady, a deacon who was president of the Rhode Island State Anti-Slavery Society. Josiah Cady died in 1853. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut for one year in 1857, and took additional classes in 1860. However, he did not officially graduate.
Career
Cady worked as a draftsman for Town & Davis in New York City. He also published a paper on opera houses in the AIA journal. He advertised that he could provide designs and plans for churches, cottages, public buildings, residences, schools, stores, and warehouses.
In 1871, Milton See (1854–1920) joined his practice, followed by Louis DeCoppet Berg (1856–1945) in 1873.
In 1880, Cady designed an elegant Old English double house at 1826 Massachusetts Avenue in the Northwest neighborhood of the District of Columbia for sisters Mrs. Katherine Miller and Mrs. Charlotte E. Hopkins. The Hopkins-Miller House was named after their husbands, Colonel Hopkins and Lieutenant Miller. The double house had the appearance of a single large mansion from the outside. It faced Pacific Circle (later Dupont Circle).
In 1882, Cady formed the firm J. C. Cady & Company. When Cady died, he left his share of the business to Gregory.
In 1920, Alexander Dana Noyes wrote, "In his professional career, J. Cleveland Cady was perhaps the embodiment of the effort of American architecture, fifty years ago, to find itself while cutting loose from the false and meretricious standards of the Second Empire."
Honors
Trinity College presented Cady with an honorary M.A. in 1880, followed by an honorary LL.D. in 1905. Opening in 1872, the Brooklyn Academy of Design included exhibition space and studios for artists. Architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler said that Cady's Brooklyn Academy of Design was one of the few successful examples of secular Gothic design.
Peabody Museum
Cady designed the original Peabody Museum of Natural History to house Yale University's mineral collection, fossils, and exhibits on zoology and geology. However, only a portion of Cady's design was ever constructed. This brownstone in Richardson Romanesque style has a Roman arch, a three-story tower, and stained-glass windows. This was likely the first time Cady used Richardson Romanesque style and is a restrained attempt because he wanted to blend the library into its rural background. To get this contract, the firm won a design contest, gaining the advantage because of its functional design, fireproof materials, and low construction costs.
Cady said the Metropolitan Opera House had "a simple dignity that will not be tiresome or uninteresting as the years go by". Although its yellow brick and terracotta exterior was not particularly noteworthy, the Historic American Buildings Survey noted, "its interior placed it among the great opera houses of the world". Cady's original auditorium was destroyed by a fire on August 27, 1892; it was rebuilt by the architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings and was used until 1966. The opera house was razed in January 1967.
American Museum of Natural History
Cady, Berg & See designed the main building of the American Museum of Natural History (1899) in New York City. Joan Kelly Benard says, "the 77th Street façade has been hailed as one of the finest examples of Romanesque Revival architecture in New York City."
Trinity College
At Trinity College, Cady designed Saint Anthony Hall (1878), a chapter house for the Fraternity of Delta Psi (St. Anthony Hall).
He also designed the Jarvis Hall of Science (1899) at Trinity, a simple Romaneque-style building with laboratories and classrooms that was demolished in the 1960s. He also designed Chittenden Hall (1890) also known as Memorial Library. The Beaux-Arts style building is located at the southwest corner of 26th Street in New York City. He was also the uncle of William Goodell Frost, president of Berea College. Cady, along with landscape architect John Charles Olmsted, convinced Frost to select Colonial Revival style for the campus' architectural theme, rather than the obvious choice of rustic style for Appalachia.</blockquote>thumb|[[Boone Tavern, Berea College]]
thumb|[[Church of the Holy Communion (Norwood, New Jersey)|Church of the Holy Communion]]
thumb|Plantsville Congregational Church
thumb|Hampton Memorial ChurchCady designed Fairfield Hall (1873), also known as Ladies Hall, which was the first brick building on campus. Its eclectic design combines Italianate and Second Empire styles in a three-story structure. Cady designed the Colonial Revival style Boone Tavern in 1909 as a hotel for Berea College.
Around 1912, Frost asked his uncle to design a new teacher education building. Schuyler was complimentary of "the dignity and churchliness" of Cady's churches.
Cady used a traditional Byzantine church plan for the First Presbyterian Church (1889) in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and the Hampton Memorial Church (1886) at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. In 1881, those plans were modified at the request of Harriet Beecher Stowe for the Church of Our Saviour in Mandarin, Florida. The AICP criticized New York City and the architects for what they called "a pretentious brick structure", finding it too grand, too large, and too expensive for the bathhouse scheme they had in mind. This five-story House of Relief with its distinctive twin stairway was used for clinical and emergency services. In the February 1874 edition of The New–York Sketch–Book of Architecture, Cady shared a design for a Country-Home. Cady, Berg & See designed around fifteen residential projects in New York City including those at 57–65 East 90th Street in Manhattan which are now in the Carnegie Hill Historic District and 16 and 8–4 Pierrepont Street in the Brooklyn Heights Historic District.
Designed by Cady, the Romanesque Revival style Othniel C. Marsh House was built from 1875 to 1881 in New Haven. At the time, the Marsh House was different from the Queen Anne style that was popular in New Haven. He designed the Charles H. Farnam Residence at 28 Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven in 1884 for attorney Charles Henry Farnam.
Personal life
In 1859, Cady married Julia Bulkley, daughter of the pioneering dermatologist Dr. Henry D. Bulkley of New York. They had one daughter, Alice Cleaveland Cady, before Julia died in 1869 from an inflammation of the lungs. In a letter to her parents, his niece Lavinia Goodell wrote, "Poor Cleveland will feel the loss very deeply for he thought everything of her. The babe is only ten months old."
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|Alpine Community Church
|1867–1871
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|Alpine, New Jersey
|J. Cleaveland Cady, Architect
|NRHD
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|Demarest Station
|1872
|38 Park Street
|Demarest, New Jersey
|J. Cleaveland Cady, Architect
|NRHP
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|First Presbyterian Church of Oyster Bay
|1873
|60 East Main Street
|Oyster Bay, New York
|J. Cleaveland Cady, Architect
|NRHP
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|Barron Library
|1878
|582 Rahway Avenue
|Woodbridge Township, New Jersey
|J. Cleaveland Cady, Architect
|NRHP
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|Hampton University Memorial Church
|1886
|Hampton University
|Hampton, Virginia
|J. C. Cady & Company
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|First Roumanian-American Congregation
|1889–1893
|89–93 Rivington Street
| Manhattan, New York
|J. C. Cady & Company
|NRHP
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|First Presbyterian Church
|1889
|97 South Franklin Street
|Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
|J. C. Cady & Company
|NRHD
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|St. William's Catholic Church
|1890
|Long Point on Raquette Lake
|Long Lake, New York
|J. C. Cady & Company
|NRHP
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|St. George Tucker Hall
|1908–1909
|350 James Blair Drive
|Williamsburg, Virginia
|Cady & See
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|Boone Tavern
|1909
|100 Main Street
|Berea, Kentucky
|Cady & See
|NRHP
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