Leopold Eidlitz was a prominent New York architect best known for his work on the New York State Capitol

New York State Capitol

The New York State Capitol is the capitol building of the U.S. state of New York. Housing the New York State Legislature, it is located in the state capital city Albany, on State Street in Capitol Park. The building, completed in 1899 at a cost of $25 million , was the most expensive government...

 (Albany, New York, 1876–1881), as well as "Iranistan

Iranistan

Iranistan was a Moorish Revival mansion in Bridgeport, Connecticut that was commissioned by P. T. Barnum in 1848. It was designed by the Austrian-American architect Leopold Eidlitz. At this "beautiful country seat" Barnum played host to such famous contemporaries as Matthew Arnold, George Custer,...

" (1848), P. T. Barnum

P. T. Barnum

Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman, scam artist and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus....

's house in Bridgeport, Connecticut

Bridgeport, Connecticut

Bridgeport is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. Located in Fairfield County, the city had an estimated population of 144,229 at the 2010 United States Census and is the core of the Greater Bridgeport area...

; St. Peter's Church, on Westchester Avenue at St. Peter's Avenue in the Bronx

The Bronx

The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...

 (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

Tweed Courthouse

The building is composed of a central section with two projecting wings, with an addition in the center on the south facade. The entry portico on the main Chambers Street facade rises three and a half stories from a low granite curb, supported by four Corinthian columns...

 (1876–81); and the Park Presbyterian Chapel on West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

Life and career

Eidlitz was born in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 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

Realschule

The Realschule is a type of secondary school in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia , Denmark , Sweden , Hungary and in the Russian Empire .-History:The Realschule was an outgrowth of the rationalism and empiricism of the seventeenth and...

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

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 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

Richard Upjohn

Richard Upjohn was an English-born architect who emigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to such popularity in the United States. Upjohn also did extensive work in and helped to popularize the...

. He likely participated in his project of constructing Trinity Church

Trinity Church, New York

Trinity Church at 79 Broadway, Lower Manhattan, is a historic, active parish church in the Episcopal Diocese of New York...

 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

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 with Friedrich von Gärtner

Friedrich von Gärtner

Friedrich von Gärtner was a German architect.Gärtner and Leo von Klenze are the most well known architects of Bavaria during the reign of Ludwig I. His architecture was generally in the Romanesque style and much to the king's taste...

. One of their several joint commissions in New York and Connecticut was for St George's Episcopal Church

St. George's Episcopal Church (Manhattan)

St. George's Episcopal Church is a historic church located at 209 East 16th Street at Rutherford Place, on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan, New York City. Called "one of the first and most significant examples of Early Romanesque Revival church architecture in America", the church exterior was...

 (1846–49), still standing on the west side of Stuyvesant Square

Stuyvesant Square

__notoc__Stuyvesant Square is a park in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located between 15th Street and 17th Street and Rutherford Place and Nathan D. Perlman Place, formerly Livingston Place. Second Avenue divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the...

. 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

Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...

, in the re-design of the New York State Capitol

New York State Capitol

The New York State Capitol is the capitol building of the U.S. state of New York. Housing the New York State Legislature, it is located in the state capital city Albany, on State Street in Capitol Park. The building, completed in 1899 at a cost of $25 million , was the most expensive government...

 in Albany

Albany, New York

Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

. In 1875, Eidlitz, Richardson, and Olmsted proposed changes to the capitol, which was already under construction to designs by Thomas Fuller

Thomas Fuller (architect)

Thomas Fuller was a Canadian architect.He was born in Bath, Somerset , where he trained as an architect. Living in Bath and London he did a number of projects. In 1845 he left for Antigua, where he spent two years working on a new cathedral before emigrating to Canada in 1857...

. 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

American Institute of Architects

The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...

 in 1857. In 1859, he joined the Century Association

Century Association

__notoc__The Century Association is a private club in New York City. It evolved out of an earlier organization – the Sketch Club, founded in 1829 by editor and poet William Cullen Bryant and his friends – and was established in 1847 by Bryant and others as a club to promote interest in...

.

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

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...

 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

John Adams

John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...

 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

Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz

Cyrus Lazelle Warner Eidlitz was a New York architect best known for designing One Times Square, the former New York Times Building on Times Square.-Early life and education:Cyrus Lazelle Warner Eidlitz was born in New York...

, 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

One Times Square

One Times Square is a 25 story, 395 foot high skyscraper at 42nd Street and Broadway in Times Square....

 (1903-05).

His brother Marc Eidlitz

Marc Eidlitz

Marc Eidlitz was a builder active in New York City, where he was prominent in the construction industry, in partnership with his son....

 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

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

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.

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).