George B. Post

George Browne Post
File:George Browne Post.jpg
6th President of the American Institute of Architects
In office 1896–1898
Preceded by	Daniel H. Burnham
Succeeded by	Henry Van Brunt
Personal details
Born	(1837-12-15)December 15, 1837 Manhattan, New York
Died	November 28, 1913(1913-11-28) (aged 75) Bernardsville, New Jersey
Spouse	Alice Matilda Stone ​ ​ (after 1863)​
Children	5
Parent(s)	Joel Browne Post Abby Mauran Church

George Browne Post (December 15, 1837 – November 28, 1913) was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition. Many of his most characteristic projects were for commercial buildings where new requirements pushed the traditional boundaries of design. Many have been demolished, since their central locations in New York and other cities made them vulnerable to rebuilding in the twentieth century. Some of his lost buildings were regarded as landmarks of their era. He was active from 1869 almost until his death in 1913. His sons, who had been taken into the firm in 1904, continued as George B. Post and Sons through 1930.

Post's eight-story Equitable Life Assurance Society (1868–70), was the first office building designed to use elevators; Post himself leased the upper floors when contemporaries predicted they could not be rented. His Western Union Telegraph Building (1872–75) at Dey Street in Lower Manhattan, was the first office building to rise as high as ten stories, a forerunner of skyscrapers to come. When it was erected in "Newspaper Row" facing City Hall Park, Post's twenty-story New York World Building (1889–90) was the tallest building in New York City.

Early career

Post was born on December 15, 1837 in Manhattan, New York to Joel Browne Post and Abby Mauran Church. After graduating from New York University in 1858 with a degree in civil engineering, Post became a student of Richard Morris Hunt from 1858 to 1860. In 1860, he formed a partnership with a fellow student in Hunt's office, Charles D. Gambrill, with a brief hiatus for service in the Civil War. Post served as the sixth president of the American Institute of Architects from 1896 to 1899.

Among the prominent private houses by Post were the French chateau for Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1879–82) that once stood at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street (that was photographed by Albert Levy while being built), and the palazzo that faced it across the street, for Collis P. Huntington (1889–94). In Newport, Rhode Island he built for the president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, C.C. Baldwin, "Chateau-Nooga" or the Baldwin Cottage (1879–80), a polychromatic exercise in the "Quaint Style" with bargeboards and half-timbering; John La Farge provided stained glass panels. He also designed more staid public and semi-public structures including the New York Stock Exchange Building, the Bronx Borough Hall and the Wisconsin State Capitol.

In 1893, Post was named to the architectural staff of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois by Burnham and Root, where he designed the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building.

American Renaissance

A true member of the American Renaissance, Post engaged notable artists and artisans to add decorative sculpture and murals to his architectural designs. Among those who worked with Post were the sculptor Karl Bitter and painter Elihu Vedder. Post was a founding member of the National Arts Club, serving as president from 1898 to 1905. In 1905, his two sons were taken into the partnership, and they continued to lead the firm after Post's death, notably as the designers of many Statler Hotels in cities across the United States. From that time forward, the firm carried on under the stewardship of Post's grandson, Edward Everett Post (1904–2006) until the late twentieth century.

Legacy

Post trained architect Arthur Bates Jennings.

Sarah Bradford Landau's publication George B. Post, Architect: Picturesque Designer and Determined Realist (1998) inspired a retrospective exhibition in 1998–99 to revisit Post's work at the Society. In 2014, curator, architect George Ranalli presented an exhibition of Post's drawings and photographs of the design of the City College of New York's main campus buildings, on loan from the New York Historical Society.

He received the AIA Gold Medal in 1911. His extensive archive is in the collection at the New-York Historical Society.

Personal life

He married Alice Matilda Stone (1840-1909) on October 14, 1863. They had five children: George Browne, Jr., William Stone, Allison Wright, James Otis and Alice Winifred.

Post died on November 28, 1913 in Bernardsville, New Jersey. He was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

Selected works by George B. Post

• High Bridge Reformed Church, High Bridge, New Jersey, 1869
• Bonner-Marquand Gymnasium, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (1869–1870), demolished in 1907.
• The original Williamsburgh Savings Bank, Brooklyn, New York, 1870-1875. Solidly classicizing and capped with a dome, "it might easily have been prepared in the nineties. Indeed it prefigures McKim's famous Columbia Library", Henry-Russell Hitchcock noted in his biography of H.H. Richardson.
• Troy Savings Bank, Troy, New York, 1875.
• Western Union Telegraph Building, New York City, 1875. Often dubbed "the first skyscraper in New York City, this 10-story headquarters for Western Union featured a clock tower. Demolished in 1914.
• Chickering Hall, New York City, c.1877. Built as the headquarters of the Chickering Piano Company, this four-story building faced in brick with brownstone and gray marble trim featured a 1,450-seat auditorium that hosted lectures by Thomas H. Huxley and Oscar Wilde and was the site of Alexander Graham Bell's first interstate telephone call to New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1877. Demolished.
• New York Hospital (razed), 1877, notable for its use of large ground-level windows for better natural illumination of the interior.
• Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, New York, 1878–1880, Romanesque revival building employing architectural terracotta, originally named Long Island Historical Society.
• Post Building, New York City, 1880-81. A deep central recess provided light and air to the interiors, a feature that quickly became standard for large commercial structures.
• Mills Building, New York City, 1881–1883, called "the first modern office building", on a two-story base, the upper eight floors reached by ten elevators, it used architectural terracotta panels, which Post had helped to introduce to the United States, and eliminated the conventional mansard roofline. Demolished.
• New York Produce Exchange (1881–84) at 2 Broadway faced Bowling Green. Its grand skylighted hall, based on French retail structures, cast daylight into the lower floors. It was demolished in 1958.
• Produce Exchange (razed), New York City, in a modified neo-Renaissance mode that clad an interior iron skeletal framing, 1881-1885, razed 1957
• Cornelius Vanderbilt Mansion, New York City, 1882, renovated and enlarged 1893. Co-designed with Richard Morris Hunt, this English Jacobethan Gothic red-brick and limestone chateau stood at the corner of East 57th Street and 5th Avenue and was one of the most opulent single-family homes of its time. It featured a lavishly scrolled cast-iron gate forged in Paris (now in Central Park), sculptural reliefs by Karl Bitter (now in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel), an ornate reddish-brown marble fireplace sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art). The mansion was demolished in 1927 for the construction of the Bergdorf Goodman department store.
• New York Cotton Exchange (razed), New York City, 1883–1885
• Mortimer Building (razed), New York City, 1885
• New York World Building, or Pulitzer Building, New York City, at the time of its completion the tallest building in the world, 1889-1890
• New York Times Building, 41 Park Row, New York City, 1888–89
• Union Trust Building (razed), 78-82 Broadway, New York City, 1889–1890
• four separate buildings for Prudential Headquarters, Newark, New Jersey, Romanesque, one for many years the largest in the state, built 1892-1911
• Manufacturer's and Liberal Arts Building, Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, 1893. Demolished after the exposition concluded.
• Erie County Savings Bank building, Buffalo, New York, 1893, in Romanesque Revival. Destroyed in 1968.
• Park Building, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1896, remodeled in the 1960s
• Bronx Borough Hall, Bronx, NY, 1897
• St. Paul Building, New York City, 1898
• New York Stock Exchange, New York City, 1901–1903
• City College of New York Campus, New York City, 1903–1907, in Gothic Revival style
• Old Montreal Stock Exchange Building, Montreal, Quebec, 1904, now housing the Centaur Theatre
• Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company, Newark, New Jersey, 1904-08 (razed)
• The Wisconsin State Capitol, Madison, Wisconsin, 1906
• Cleveland Trust Company Building, Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 1908
• Pontiac Hotel, Oswego, New York, 1912

References

• Landau, Sarah Bradford, George B. Post: Picturesque Designer and Determined Realist, the Monacelli Press, New York, 1998
• George B. Post at archINFORM

External links

Media related to George B. Post at Wikimedia Commons

• George B. Post at Find a Grave