Louis Comfort Tiffany

Yale University – Chittenden Hall // 1889

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As Yale’s 1842 Old Library was outgrown by larger class sizes and a growing college library collection, overseers began planning for a new library annex which could support the programming. Architect J. Cleaveland Cady was commissioned to design the Chittenden Memorial Library, this underappreciated structure, which is today hemmed into a cramped space in the yard between a later addition (Linsly Hall) and McClennan Hall. The Chittenden Memorial Library was a gift to the college by U.S. Representative Simeon Baldwin Chittenden in memory of his only daughter, Mary Chittenden Lusk (1840-1871) nearly two decades following her untimely death. The handsome Richardsonian Romanesque style library building also retains its original stained glass window titled, “Education” by Louis Tiffany which today is in the building’s former reading room, now a large classroom. When the library moved to a new building in the 1930s, Chittenden Memorial Library became Chittenden Hall and is classroom space.

Mount Vernon Congregational Church // 1892 & 1984

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The Mount Vernon Congregation Church was founded in 1842 and originally was located in Ashburton Place on Beacon Hill (which I featured previously). As its members moved to the Back Bay, the congregation decided to build a new church in the western portion of the neighborhood. They hired architect C. Howard Walker to design the new church building, with stained glass windows by John LaFarge and Louis Comfort Tiffany added as memorials to several members of the congregation over subsequent years. As originally designed, the church had a 45-foot high steeple on top of its 85-foot square tower, but over the years it became structurally unsound, and it was removed just before the Hurricane of 1938, which toppled many steeples all over the region. In 1970, the church merged with the Old South Church in the Back Bay. In 1977, developers proposed to remodel the church building into retail and office space. The proposal was approved by the Boston Redevelopment Authority in January of 1978. Before work could commence, a fire destroyed much of the church building leaving a shell of Roxbury Puddingstone walls and the tower, the developer pulled its funding and the building’s future was uncertain. One year later, architect Graham Gund purchased the building. Gund was familiar with adaptive reuse projects, like his restoration of the Middlesex County Courthouse in Cambridge for his own office in Cambridge in the 1970s. Gund redesigned the building into 43 condominium units called Church Court. What are your thoughts on the architecture?

First Parish Church of Brookline // 1893

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Dedicated in 1893, the First Parish Church of Brookline is the fourth to house the congregation that began as The Church of Christ here in 1717. Earlier iterations of the church were located here, at the geographic center of the new town which separated from Boston. Before this handsome stone church was constructed, the third home to the congregation was constructed in 1848 in the Gothic Revival style designed by architect Edward C. Cabot. The church purchased the former Brookline Town Hall in 1890, and sought to enlarge their church building, deciding to construct a new house of worship and expand, later connecting to the former Town Hall. The congregation hired the firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the successors to H. H. Richardson, whose architectural influence is readily apparent in the Romanesque arches and heavy massing of the building. The church has a collection of some of the most stunning stained glass windows in the region, many of which are designed and signed by Louis C. Tiffany.