When I stepped out of the back entrance to the Omni William Penn Hotel on the first morning of my visit to Pittsburgh, I was confronted only a couple of hundred yards down the street by one of the masterpieces of American architecture by one of its master architects, the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail (1883-88).
Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886) was responsible for a catalogue of memorable buildings, many of them so immediately recognisable that their distinctive style is named after him – Richardsonian Romanesque.
Though he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris he didn’t simply recreate the neoclassical Beaux-Arts style in the USA; he distilled elements of European architecture based on the solidity of medieval Romanesque – solid, rusticated masonry, sturdy round arches (including Syrian arches which rise directly from the ground), dormer windows (including Japanese-derived eyelid dormers), extended eaves and tall towers with capped roofs.
He claimed he could design anything “from a cathedral to a chicken coop” but he’s best remembered for houses, public libraries, railway stations and grand public buildings.
Richardson himself believed that the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail was his greatest achievement.
The courthouse stands four storeys high with a five-storey tower punctuating the main façade. An internal courtyard provides light to the interior as well as a cool space with a fountain away from the street.
The jail is connected with the courthouse across a road by a close imitation of the Bridge of Sighs at the Doge’s Palace in Venice.
Richardson’s influence on American architecture is unmistakable, whether in his own designs, like the Glessner House in Chicago, or in those of his followers such as Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) and, at a further remove, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) in such Prairie-style houses as the Robie House, also in Chicago.
Few architects have a style named after them.
