Frank Furness
Frank Furness (1839-1912) was Philadelphia's most original and influential architect, creating buildings of unprecedented boldness that shocked Victorian contemporaries and continue to provoke admiration and debate today. Over a career spanning four decades, Furness designed more than 600 buildings—banks, churches, libraries, residences, and commercial structures—developing a personal style that drew from diverse sources while remaining unmistakably his own. His masterworks, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Fisher Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania, rank among America's most important Victorian buildings. Though his reputation collapsed after his death as architectural fashion turned toward classicism, Furness has been recognized since the 1960s as a major figure whose work anticipated aspects of twentieth-century modernism.[1]
Early Life and Training
[edit | edit source]Frank Heyling Furness was born into one of Philadelphia's most distinguished intellectual families. His father, William Henry Furness, served as minister of the First Unitarian Church for over fifty years and was a prominent abolitionist; his brother Horace Howard Furness became America's foremost Shakespeare scholar. This cultivated environment exposed the young Furness to transcendentalist thought, reform movements, and the intellectual currents that shaped mid-nineteenth-century America. The family's commitment to moral seriousness and honest expression would inform Furness's architectural approach.[2]
Furness trained first with local architect John Fraser before entering the New York atelier of Richard Morris Hunt, who had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and introduced French academic methods to American architectural education. Under Hunt, Furness learned the Neo-Grec style—a robust version of classicism that emphasized geometric clarity and vigorous ornament. This training provided technical foundation and design vocabulary that Furness would transform into his distinctive approach.[1]
Civil War Service
[edit | edit source]The Civil War interrupted Furness's architectural career but profoundly shaped his character and outlook. He enlisted in 1861, serving with distinction in the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. At the Battle of Trevilian Station in June 1864, Furness led a desperate charge that rescued his regiment's colors, an action for which he received the Medal of Honor. The war's violence and his survival through near-death experiences left marks that some critics see reflected in his architecture's aggressive energy and sense of forces in tension. Furness returned to Philadelphia in 1864 a decorated hero, ready to pursue architecture with the intensity he had brought to combat.[2]
Partnership and Early Work
[edit | edit source]Furness established his practice in 1867, initially partnering with John Fraser and later with George Hewitt. The firm received commissions for houses, churches, and commercial buildings throughout the Philadelphia region. Early works showed Furness developing his mature vocabulary: bold forms, unconventional compositions, and ornament of aggressive character. The Rodef Shalom Synagogue (1869-70, demolished) announced Furness's presence with a design of remarkable originality. Residential commissions allowed experimentation with forms and details that would appear in later institutional work.[1]
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
[edit | edit source]The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1871-76), designed in partnership with George Hewitt, established Furness as an architect of major significance. The building's polychrome facade—brick, stone, and terra cotta in striking patterns—creates a composition of controlled energy. The oversized entrance, with its muscular columns and dense ornament, announces a building of ambition and intensity. Gothic, classical, and industrial motifs combine in ways that generate visual excitement from their very incongruity. The interior continues these themes, with elaborate iron stairs, richly decorated galleries, and spaces that prepare visitors for artistic encounter.[2]
The Academy brought Furness national attention and established his reputation for buildings of original character. Critics recognized the design's power while struggling to categorize its style. The building's influence extended through visitors who encountered Furness's work, including the young Louis Sullivan, who briefly worked in Furness's office and absorbed lessons that would shape Chicago School architecture. The Academy's survival and restoration ensure continued appreciation of Furness's early masterwork.[1]
Bank Buildings
[edit | edit source]Furness designed numerous bank buildings throughout Philadelphia, applying his distinctive approach to commercial functions. These buildings expressed institutional solidity through bold massing and quality materials while achieving memorable presence through Furness's characteristic ornament and composition. The Provident Life and Trust Company buildings showed particular inventiveness, their facades combining structural expression with decorative elaboration. Bank interiors featured equally distinctive treatment, with custom metalwork, carved ornament, and spatial drama appropriate to financial transactions.[2]
Many Furness banks have been demolished or altered beyond recognition, but survivors demonstrate his consistent vision across varied scales and sites. The compressed energy of Furness bank facades—their concentration of ornamental power within urban lot dimensions—created street presence that contemporary observers found either exciting or disturbing. These buildings served practical commercial purposes while advancing architectural ideas that extended beyond their functions.[1]
Fisher Fine Arts Library
[edit | edit source]The Fisher Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania (1888-91) represents Furness's mature achievement in institutional architecture. The building's massive red brick and terra cotta facades present an asymmetrical composition dominated by a great arched entrance and a soaring tower that serves as bookstack ventilator. The reading room, with its exposed iron structure, brick walls, and overhead lighting, creates an atmosphere of serious study. Furness expressed structure and mechanical systems openly, anticipating twentieth-century approaches to honest building design.[2]
The library has been called an early functionalist building, its forms following from programmatic requirements rather than stylistic preconceptions. The tower houses bookstacks in a manner that allows efficient retrieval while expressing this function externally. Yet Furness remained Victorian, decorating his functional forms with ornament that transforms utilitarian elements into objects of visual interest. The building's quality ensured its survival and restoration, allowing continued use for its original purpose while serving as document of Furness's mature work.[1]
Later Career and Decline
[edit | edit source]Furness's practice expanded through the 1880s and 1890s, with commissions for railroad stations, suburban houses, and institutional buildings. He designed stations for the Baltimore and Ohio, Reading, and Pennsylvania Railroads, bringing his distinctive approach to transportation architecture. Residential work continued in Philadelphia's suburbs, where Furness houses of varied scale served different clienteles. The firm handled multiple commissions simultaneously, with office staff executing designs that maintained Furness's character if not always his quality.[2]
By the early 1900s, changing taste reduced demand for Furness's work. Beaux-Arts classicism became the preferred style for major commissions, its refined elegance replacing Victorian vigor. Furness continued practicing until his death in 1912, but his final years brought few significant projects. His obituaries gave little indication that he would be remembered as a major figure, and the twentieth century's first decades saw continued decline in appreciation for his buildings.[1]
Legacy
[edit | edit source]Furness's reputation collapsed completely by the 1930s, when his buildings were considered ugly embarrassments. Many were demolished; others received unsympathetic alterations that removed original character. The Academy of the Fine Arts and Fisher Fine Arts Library survived through continued use, but even these landmarks received little appreciation. Furness seemed destined for the obscurity that claimed lesser Victorian architects.
Rediscovery began in the 1960s, led by historians who recognized Furness's significance. Robert Venturi championed Furness's work, finding in its complexity and contradiction values relevant to postmodern architectural theory. Scholarly attention documented surviving buildings and established Furness's place in American architectural history. Preservation efforts saved threatened buildings and restored others to original character. Today Furness is recognized as one of America's most important nineteenth-century architects, his buildings preserved as irreplaceable cultural resources.[2]