Leopold Eidlitz - Biography

Leopold Eidlitz (10 March 1823, Prague, Bohemia — 1908, New York City) was a prominent New York architect best known for his work on the New York State Capitol (Albany, New York, 1876–1881), as well as "Iranistan" (1848), P. T. Barnum's house in Bridgeport, Connecticut; St. Peter's Church, on Westchester Avenue at St. Peter's Avenue in the Bronx (1853); the former Temple Emanu-El (New York, 1866–68, destroyed 1927); the Broadway Tabernacle (1859, demolished about 1907); the completion of the Tweed Courthouse (1876–81); and the Park Presbyterian Chapel on West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

Life and career

Eidlitz was born in Prague into a Jewish family; his parents were Abraham and Judith Eidlitz, and he had one brother Markus (later Marc) Eidlitz. He received his early technical training at the Prague Realschule and then continued his education at the Vienna Technical University. He enrolled in its short-lived business school, not its engineering or architecture curricula. Eidlitz emigrated from Vienna to the United States in 1843 and settled in New York. His brother Marc also emigrated to New York three years later.

Eidlitz spent three formative years in the office of Richard Upjohn. He likely participated in his project of constructing Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street, which was under way. He also worked with the architect Cyrus Lazelle Warner, whose office was a few doors from that of Upjohn's.

In 1846 Eidlitz formed a partnership with the German immigrant architect Karl (now Charles) Otto Blesch, who had trained in Munich with Friedrich von Gärtner. One of their several joint commissions in New York and Connecticut was for St George's Episcopal Church (1846–49), still standing on the west side of Stuyvesant Square. Blesch designed the exterior, mixing Gothic and Romanesque styles, and Eidlitz designed the plain interior and the original openwork spires. The Episcopal congregation was so satisfied with the design that they rebuilt the church after a disastrous fire in 1865 following the same design, under Eidlitz' supervision. By that time the design was also influenced by Dr. Stephen Tyng, a new pastor hired for what had become a changing urban congregation, in a neighborhood largely filled with immigrants. J.P. Morgan, still an influential parishioner, helped support many social services programs started by the church.

Eidlitz's reputation was marred by his involvement, with H. H. Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, in the re-design of the New York State Capitol in Albany. In 1875, Eidlitz, Richardson, and Olmsted proposed changes to the capitol, which was already under construction to designs by Thomas Fuller. In 1876 state officials dismissed Fuller and hired the trio, causing tremendous controversy. Eidlitz designed the capitol's Assembly Chamber and its now dismantled vault.

Eidlitz was a founding member of the American Institute of Architects in 1857. In 1859, he joined the Century Association.

Writing on architecture

Eidlitz wrote numerous articles published in such journals as The Crayon in the 1850s and the American Architect and Building News beginning in the 1870s. He published a major book The Nature and Function of Art, More Especially of Architecture (New York and London, 1881), which proposed an organic theory of architecture that wedded German notions of art and science to American transcendentalist concerns.

Marriage and family

Eidlitz married Harriet Amanda Lazelle Warner, whose architect father Eidlitz had worked with. Her mother was a descendant of the John Adams family of Massachusetts and Eidlitz helped secure his family's social place in America by this marriage. They had the Episcopal priest Stephen Tyng preside at their wedding. They had seven children, but the first died soon after birth.

Their eldest son, Cyrus Lazelle Warner Eidlitz, named after his maternal grandfather, also became an architect. He designed the St. George Memorial House, part of the complex of buildings associated with St. George's on Stuyvesant Square and went on to found the firm Eidlitz & McKenzie, designers of the original New York Times Building, One Times Square (1903-05).

His brother Marc Eidlitz was the founder of a major construction firm, Marc Eidlitz & Son Builders N.Y.C. in New York that built the St. Regis Hotel, amongst many others. Marc converted to Catholicism and kept close ties to the German immigrant community, becoming president of Germania Bank in 1888.

Eidlitz has been called America's first Jewish architect. In his early work, as at the Shaaray Tefila synagogue, Eidlitz identified himself as Jewish to clients (1846-48). Other evidence suggests he later hid his heritage: Tyng married Eidlitz and Warner. Eidlitz represented himself as simply German or Austrian and he Germanicized his parents' given names on American records. One of his daughters, Mari Imogene Eidlitz, was married in a Catholic ceremony in 1887 at St. Anne's Church in New York.

See also

• Eidlitz
• Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz
• Marc Eidlitz

Notes

Bibliography

• Holliday, Kathryn E. Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
• Schulyer, Mongomery, "A Great American Architect: Leopold Eidlitz," parts 1, 2, and 3. Architectural Record (September, October, and November 1908).
• Stern, Robert A. M.; Mellins, Thomas and Fishman, David. New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age. New York: Monacelli Press, 1999.

External links

• ArchNewsNow at www.archnewsnow.com Restoration of Assembly Chamber at the New York State Capitol.
• IN THE CAUSE OF ARCHITECTURE at archrecord.construction.com Online version of Leopold Eidlitz, "Competitions - On the Vicissitudes of Architecture," Architectural Record (October-December 1894).