The term "American Renaissance," first published in 1880, denotes a period of some 40 years in American cultural life when the architectural and artistic legacy of the Italian Renaissance (roughly 1400-1580) was dominant.
The United States was becoming a world power, its population changing from rural to urban. Growing confident, but still unsure of its cultural status among nations, America saw the 15th-century revival of "Classical" architecture and art, and its inventiveness, erudition and vigor, as the model best suited to its own aspirations. Moreover, the United States had been born in the 18th century when Classical architecture flourished, and the young country's public architecture (and much private) was often designed in some variation of the Classical forms of Greece and Rome. Late 19th-century America found an affinity with the larger-than-life buildings -- and personalities -- of the Renaissance.
Renaissance Classicism shaped the curriculum at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris. Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to study architecture there, from 1846 to 1855; he later trained architects in his New York studio according to Ecole principles. Hunt's student, William Robert Ware, established the first U.S. school of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1865. Parisian training methods were followed there and at architecture schools at the University of Pennsylvania (1868) and Columbia University (1881).
Wealthy "merchant princes" subsidized American Renaissance "palaces" for both individuals and for the public, and supported the Renaissance ideal of the partnership of architects and artists. Hunt's various Vanderbilt houses (1877-95) in New York, Newport, R.I., and North Carolina; McKim, Mead & White's Villard Houses (1882-86) in New York; the Library of Congress (1886-92); McKim, Mead & White's Boston Public Library (1887-95); and temporarily, but most conspicuously, Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition (1893), are some of the better known projects that united architects, interior decorators, painters and muralists, glass artists, sculptors and landscape designers.
The exhibition catalog for "The American Renaissance 1876-1917," held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1979, stated:
"It was the artistic community that elevated the sights of the period, that informed the young culture that it was not some rough frontier society, rich in national resources, but primitive in other respects. ... It proclaimed that a new society based on science, industry, commerce, rational order, democracy, and the great energy of the people had been forged and was the legitimate heir to the concept of the Renaissance."
The Allegheny Observatory
An observatory, designed by Pittsburgh architects Barr & Moser, was built in Allegheny City (now Pittsburgh's North Side) in 1860. In 1867, the observatory was given to the Western University of Pennsylvania, then located in downtown Pittsburgh, and Samuel P. Langley was appointed first director. In 1882, the university moved to Allegheny City. Langley was succeeded by James E. Keeler in 1891 and land was purchased in 1894 at the summit of Riverview Park for a new observatory.
The Architect
"Western Pennsylvania thirty years ago had just awakened to what architecture meant through the building of H.H. Richardson's Court House, and the artistic spark thus kindled was nursed by the young men who came to Pittsburgh at this time, enthusiastic, well-grounded by scholastic training and broadened by foreign travel and study. Among these was Thorsten E. Billquist."
Pittsburgh Chapter, American Institute of Architects
Feb. 20, 1923
Thorsten E. Billquist (1867-1923) was born in Sweden, where he attended the University of Gothenburg. He arrived in the United States in 1887 and appeared in Pittsburgh in 1893, but little else is known about this six-year period. He is said to have worked on the Boston Public Library for McKim, Mead & White, the firm most closely identified with the American Renaissance.
In Pittsburgh, Billquist became a draftsman with Longfellow, Alden & Harlow. Alexander Longfellow and Frank Alden, like Charles McKim and Stanford White, had served their architectural apprenticeships in the office of H.H. Richardson. Alfred Harlow, however, apprenticed with McKim, Mead & White and may also have worked on the Boston Public Library.
Billquist worked with Longfellow, Alden & Harlow through 1894, while the firm was erecting the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and Carnegie libraries in Braddock and Homestead. He spent 1895 in the office of W. Ross Proctor, an early graduate of Columbia University's Beaux-Arts-derived curriculum. After working as a freelance draftsman in 1896, Billquist established his own firm in 1897.
Progress on a new observatory was delayed by the Spanish-American War, Keeler's resignation, and the search for his successor. On June 3, 1899, a new weekly magazine, Allegheny, announced in a front-page story: "The plans for the new structure are almost completed, and in a short time the competing architects will place their various designs in the hands of the observatory committee. Nearly six months have been spent in working out the details of the new structure. This important part of the work has been in the hands of eminent astronomers ... The design of the new structure will be an L-shaped building, instead of T-shaped, as at first proposed, the former being better adapted to the contour of the ground."
Keeler's successor, F.L.O. Wadsworth, and John A. Brashear, chairman of the observatory committee and one of America's most distinguished astronomers, oversaw the creation of the new building.
Brashear wrote in his autobiography: "Professor Keeler's original plans were modified and made more complete by Professor Wadsworth ... The plans were given out for competitive architectural designs for the new building, and among the architects who submitted designs, T.E. Billquist was chosen."
The architect's plans were displayed at the Pittsburgh Architectural Club exhibition in June 1900. Four months later, on Oct. 20, 1900, the cornerstone of the observatory was laid and construction began.
The observatory is a scientific acropolis -- a tan brick and white terra cotta hilltop temple whose Classical forms and decoration symbolize the unity of art and science. The L-shaped building consists of a library, lecture hall, classrooms, laboratories, offices and three hemispherical domed telescope enclosures. Two were reserved for research; one for use by schools and the general public.
The core of the building is a small rotunda, housing an opalescent glass window depicting the Greek muse of astronomy, Urania.
"Urania" -- The Muse of Astronomy
"Director Frank L.O. Wadsworth, of the observatory of the Western University of Pennsylvania, announced last evening the arrival of a stained glass window from New York as the gift of the Misses Smith, who have devoted a generous sum to the establishment of the observatory. Prof. Wadsworth says the window is to adorn the new structure of the observatory. It is pronounced one of the most artistic works of Miss Mary E. Tillinghast.
The window, which is 9x3 feet, shows Urania, almost lifelike, standing in an open porch. Her garb is of the ancient Grecian fashion; in one hand she holds a planet, the other being raised to the heavens. Beside her resting against a pedestal is a pair of compasses; on the pedestal is the lamp of knowledge, whose flames lighten the figure. She stands between two columns. Around one is a wreath of laurel.
Far behind her, in the moonlight, are the ruins of the Acropolis. Shining in the sky and placed relatively with astronomical precision are the moon, the evening star, planets of Pleiades. Under the figure is a delicately blended spectrum, typifying the work of the observatory."
This thorough description of the window in the observatory appeared in the Pittsburgh Post on July 3, 1903. The donors were a pair of well-to-do philanthropic siblings, Jennie Smith (1832-1911) and her younger sister, Matilda (1837-1909). When the university moved to Allegheny City, the Smith sisters became enthusiastic supporters.
Brashear remembered them as "two good women that lived on the avenue just beyond the Observatory, who from the very beginning of the work of the new institution, contributed liberally, not only of their means, but gave their personal interest to many of the details of architecture, ornamentation, and other things. A beautiful window on the northern side of the building, the Riefler precision clock, the beautiful marble finish of the main building, and many other such matters were due to their interest and generosity."
The artist was Mary Elizabeth Tillinghast (1845-1912) of New York City. Like many American artists of the period, she spent several years in Europe, visiting Italy and studying painting in Paris. One of her teachers, Emile-Auguste Carolus-Duran, also taught the most famous American painter of the era, John Singer Sargent.
In 1878 Tillinghast began a seven-year affiliation with New York artist John La Farge (1835-1910) -- painter, muralist, critic and inventor of a new process for making decorative glass windows. Tillinghast became an expert textile designer, served as manager of the firm, and learned the art of designing and making windows from La Farge.
La Farge patented his "opalescent" window glass in 1880, writing "The object of my invention is to obtain opalescent and iridescent effects in glass windows . . . softening the light, and, by reason of its unevenness of structure and formation [prevent] the direct passage of rays of light."
This new glass was known at the time as "American Glass." Historian Barbara Weinberg notes that La Farge developed it in order to "reconcile the color and brilliance of early glass with contemporary desires for naturalistic form ..., to permit depiction of rounded forms and convincing space." American Renaissance painters admired the three-dimensional realism introduced by Raphael and 15th-century Renaissance painters, and sought to emulate it -- in paintings and in glass windows.
Tillinghast's first major window, "Jacob's Dream," was installed in 1887 in Grace Episcopal Church, New York City. She worked from her Greenwich Village studio, primarily as a window designer, but she also designed furniture and, in one case, was architect, decorator, and glass artist for a private chapel. Her glass was exhibited and won gold medals at several World's Fairs.
In addition to church windows, she designed windows for residences, and for institutions, most notably "Urania" in Pittsburgh and "The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes" (1908) in the New York Historical Society.
La Farge and Tillinghast each designed a window in Pittsburgh, and both were installed in 1903. "Urania" and La Farge's "Fortune" in the Frick Building, designed by American Renaissance architect and planner D.H. Burnham of Chicago, each portray female figures framed by Classical columns -- art echoing the architectural character of the building.
On Oct. 20, 1900, Brashear spoke at the cornerstone laying of "this new temple of the skies." He said, "By this time a year hence we hope to see the completion of the building, although we can scarcely expect to have the instrumental equipment finished by that time."
A dozen years passed between the time of the cornerstone laying and the dedication and opening of the observatory on Aug. 28, 1912; it took that long to raise the needed funds and acquire equipment. The final cost exceeded $300,000.
Between 1900 and 1912, Western University of Pennsylvania changed its name to the University of Pittsburgh and moved its campus from Allegheny to Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. Billquist married and formed and dissolved a partnership (1905-09) with architect Edward B. Lee.
It was Lee who designed the observatory crypt where Keeler's ashes -- he died in 1900 -- and those of Mrs. Brashear, who died in 1910, were interred. The Smith sisters lived to see "Urania," but not the finished observatory. Tillinghast died four months later; she and Sarah Wyman Whitman, of Boston, are recognized today as the first pre-eminent women decorative glass window designers in America.
Brashear's ashes joined those of his wife in 1922. When Billquist died a year later, his fellow architects in Pittsburgh eulogized him as "one who helped raise the standards of the art of architecture, and we trust that an ever-broadening devotion to all that is enduringly best, both in art and in life, will most fittingly indicate our community's appreciation of the legacy he has left behind."
Albert M. Tannler is Historical Collections Director , Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, and a freelance writer for the Tribune-Review.
