Leopold Eidlitz

was still suburban. ( [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFDC1731F933A25752C0A96E948260 Chrisopher Gray, "Streetscapes: West-Park Presbyterian; An 1890 West Side Church Fighting Landmark Status", "New York Times", January 10, 1988] : accessed August 16, 2008).]

Eidlitz was born in Prague to Abraham and Judith Eidlitz. He received his early technical training at the Prague Realschule and then continued his education at the Vienna Technical University where he enrolled in its short-lived business school, not its engineering or architecture curricula. Eidlitz left Vienna for the United States in 1843.

On his first arrival in New York, Eidlitz spent three formative years in the office of Richard Upjohn, whose project for Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street, was under way. 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, perhaps influenced by the rector Dr. Stephen Tyng, was responsible for the exterior, mixing Gothic and Romanesque, [Removal of the Gothic stone spires (1889) leaves the church more decidely Romanesque; Romanesque was still an unfamiliar architectural vocabulary; the design was described as being in the "Byzantine or Early Christian style of architecture." (Kathleen Curran, "19th Century AD", "The Art Bulletin" December 1999 [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0422/is_4_81/ai_58926050/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1 on-line text] ).] and Eidlitz for the plain, evangelical interior and the original openwork spires. [Kathleen Curran, "The Romanesque Revival" 2003:267ff.] The Low-church Episcopal congregation was so satisfied with the design they rebuilt the church after a disastrous fire in 1865 [ [http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GRP/GRP012.htm Illustration of the church following the fire] .] following the same design.

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

Although he has been called America's first Jewish architect, Eidlitz was married by an Episcopal priest and was at some pains to conceal his Jewish parentage. [ Kathryn E. Holliday, "Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age." New York: W. W. Norton, 2008] He was a founding member of the American Institute of Architects in 1857. In 1859, he joined the Century Association. He was author of numerous articles published in such journals as "The Crayon" and the "American Architect and Building News" and published a major book "The Nature and Function of Art, More Especially of Architecture" (1881) which proposed an organic theory of architecture that wedded German notions of art and science to American transcendentalist concerns.

His brother Marc Eidlitz was the founder of a major construction firm in New York that built the St. Regis Hotel, amongst many others. His son, Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz, was also an architect.

References

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

External links

* [http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature134.htm ArchNewsNow ] at www.archnewsnow.com Restoration of Assembly Chamber at the New York State Capitol.

* [http://archrecord.construction.com/inTheCause/onTheState/eidlitz-1.asp 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).