Biographical Dictionary of Cincinnati Architects, 1788-1940
Author: Walter E. Langsam
Contemporary photographs: Alice Weston
Historical photographs:
Editors: Susannah Sachdeva and Sue Ann Painter
Publisher: Architectural Foundation of
Jallade, Louis E. (Eugene)
(Montreal, Quebec, 1876/1877-1957)
Brought to the U.S. in 1877; educated in New York and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1901-1903), as a student of the well-known French architect Victor Laloux; partner of Joel D. Barber (1876-1951) in New York at the turn of the century; associated with the Boston firm of Allen & Collins, in charge of construction of the Union Theological Seminary in New York; then practiced on own in New York after 1906 (as Jallade, Lindsay & Warren, 1920-1921), with a wide typological and geographical range.
Jallade designed the Mariemont (Oh.) Community Memorial Church (1923-1925), one of the finest and most prominent buildings in Mrs. Mary Emery's planned suburb; said (by Parks) to have won 2nd prize in a national competition for small churches. Jallade also designed an earlier project for Mrs. Emery in the East.
NYCOPAR (1840-1900), 44;
NYCOPAR (1900-1940), 40;
Marquis, III (1951-1960), 44;
Parks (1967);
Painter, AIC (2006), 171, 178.
Louis E. Jallade
Mariemont Chapel, 1923-1927
Mariemont
Charles Livingwood, who directed the design and construction of Mary Emery’s “new town” of Mariemont, requested a church based upon English Norman models. Local craftsman Otto Kadon supervised the expert stonemasonry. The church was nondenominational and intended to be more of a symbol of the community than of religion.
Jekyll, Gertrude
(1843-1932)
Great English turn-of-the-century landscape gardener and associate of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Jekyll designed only three projects for gardens in the United States. The first plans were made in 1914 for Grace (Seely) and Glendenning Groesbeck of “Elmhurst,“ Hyde Park, Cincinnati, who had visited Miss Jekyll in England. Rather uncharacteristically, it was a grandiose scheme of formal Italianate terraces, spilling down a steep hillside in Clermont Co., just east of Cincinnati. Probably for practical reasons of site stability and cost, the Jekyll project was not realized, although Mrs. Groesbeck designed her own, much-admired gardens surrounding a house erected on a less steep nearby site; the remains of that garden, which was surely influenced by Jekyll's philosophy of gardening, are now part of "Wildwood," a Presbyterian camp/ministry center, and may be restored.
The second Jekyll garden design (1926) in America was for Stanley Resor in Greenwich, Conn.; the Resor family have long been prominent in Cincinnati, and significant architectural clients. It is probably no coincidence that Glendenning Groesbeck was president of the Resor Co. The third Jekyll American design [1927] was for the "Glebe House," an Episcopal historic shrine in Woodbury, Conn., recently recreated on the site.
Langsam (1997), 7;
March 1995 Seminar at Cincinnati Historical Society.
Jenney, William LeBaron
(Fairhaven, near New Bedford, Mass., 1832-1907)
Jenney was educated in engineering at the Lawrence Scientific School, Cambridge, Mass., and at the Ecole centrale des arts et manufactures (not the Ecole des Beaux-Arts), Paris. After further study in Europe he returned to the U.S. and was active in the Union Army during the Civil War, initially serving at Cairo, Ill. (at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers). He opened an office in Chicago in 1866, and later practiced as Jenney, Schermerhorn & Bogart; after a period on his own he formed a partnership with William H. Mundie, 1891-1903. "Jenney & Rolofson" are listed as architects in the 1861 Cincinnati directory.
No direct connection between Cincinnati and this important Chicago architect, who played a major role in the development of the modern steel-framed skyscraper, is known, although a Cincinnati attorney named Herbert Jenney (1839-1904) was the son of William Procter Jenney and Eliza LeBaron Gibbs.
In any case, Gerald R. Larson (see Zukowsky’s book), has hypothesized that Cincinnati architect James W. McLaughlin's second Shillito's Department Store, Race St. between Shillito-Rikes Place and Seventh (1877-1878), had an impact both visually and structurally on Jenney's ground-breaking First Leiter Building (1879), usually considered the first building of the Chicago School. McLaughlin's exterior, a plan and details showing the construction technique were published in the American Architect & Building News in 1877.
The Shillito's building (now lofts at Shillito Place) still stands on Race between Shillito-Rikes Place and Seventh St., although all but the south-side have been drastically altered (in "Mayan" Deco, according to George F. Roth, who was associated in the renovation design for the firm Potter, Tyler & Martin) and the original facade treatment has been almost painted out. Arn Bortz, the Towne principal who directed the renovation, uncovered and restored the wonderful sky-lit atrium.
Withey (1956, 1970), 324;
Wodehouse (1976), I, 100-101;
Macmillan Encylopedia, II (1982), 494-96 (by Carl W. Condit);
Painter, AIC (2006), 97, 150;
Zukowsky (1987), 48-49;
Langsam (1997), 61;
Van Vynckt (1993), I, 437-39, (by George M. Cohen).
Johnson, Philip C. (Cortelyou)
(Cleveland, Oh., 1906-2005)
Perhaps the most renowned among long-lived late 20th-century architects, Philip Johnson was "a man for all seasons," who not only led the van in codifying and classicizing International Modern architecture in America, but also gave Post-Modernism the high sign with his AT&T (Sony) building.
Soon after getting his belated professional degree in architecture at Harvard University (1943), Johnson took Cincinnatian Landis Gores as his partner, who worked with him 1945-1951, including the years when the firm designed Johnson's own Glass House in New Canaan (where Gores established his own firm in 1952). Gores was associated with Johnson on his first residential commission (aside from his own wartime house in Cambridge, Mass.), the Eugene and Margaret Withrow Farny House in Sagaponack, Long Island (1946-1947), built for members of two prominent Cincinnati families.
One of Johnson's least-known and most unusual residential designs was the James A.D. Geier House in Indian Hill (1965), which is set half-underground in a bank beside an artificial lake. From the road, the only indication of the house is a series of rusty steel cylindrical drums rising out of a meadow. A descending ramp in a V-cleft leads to a slate wall, through which is glimpsed a mini-lagoon in the center of the U-shaped troglodytic plan.
Macmillan Encyclopedia, II (1982), 499-501 (by John Jacobus);
R.G. Wilson (1984), 218-19 (by Robert A.M. Stern);
Langsam (1997), 5, 125, 127-28, 140-41, 145, 148, 151;
Sullebarger, Merkel, AIC (2006), 198, 227, 273;
Van Vynckt, ed. (1993), I, 440-43, (by Franz Schulze);
Jenkins and Mohney (2004).
Jolasse, John
Advertised in the Cincinnati City Directory 1839-1940 as an "Architect & Draughtsman," but was also listed as a German-born architect living at the residence of S. Palmer, no doubt the architect Seneca Palmer; Goss (1912) states that Jolasse "is credited with some of the best plans sent out by Palmer." Delineated a superb view of Cincinnati from Northern Kentucky, surrounded by vignettes of public, institutional, and commercial buildings in the Greek and Gothic Revival styles, a foldout in the 1840 Shaffer’s Directory.
Ford (1881), (entry by Rattermann);
Goss (1912);