Henry Hobson Richardson was born on September 29, 1838, in Priestly Plantation, in Louisiana, U.S. and died at the age of 47 on April 27, 1886, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Henry Hobson Richardson was the great grandson of the discoverer of oxygen, Joseph Priestly (O’Gorman, 9/30/2016). Because of his notable pedigree and his affable personality, he was admitted to Harvard University with ease in 1855. While in Harvard University he was not studying to become an architect, but throughout his enrollment in Harvard University, he decided that he wanted to become an architect. Due to the fact that there weren’t any formal architecture schools in the United States, Henry had to go abroad for formal training. Since he was fluent in French, from his Louisiana childhood, he decided to go to Paris to study in École des Beaux-Arts (the same school that Richard Morris Hunt Studied at), from 1860 until 1862. In 1862 he had to stop his enrolment in the school because when the civil war started his income was cut off so he could not pay for the school to enroll himself into the École des Beaux-Arts. So, he decided to work for the office of the French architect Théodore Labrouste until he came back home on October 1865 (O’Gorman, 9/30/2016). When he went back to America he was able to amass a large amount of success quickly because he was one of the best-trained architects and he knew …show more content…
The Richardsonian Romanesque buildings were always built with heavy stone work, because he wanted to give his designs a sense of permanence, so he used the heavy masonry stonework to give him the architectural characteristics he was aiming for. Moreover, the calculated configurations of proportions, massing, and masonry gave the Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture a visual weight to his buildings, it was as if the building was anchored to the earth. The Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture used to have designs of stressed, unusual, unique shapes that were sculpted into the structure. Wide round arches were a key feature of the Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture, they were used around doors and windows. In nature of the Richardsonian Romanesque style the arches were to always be a true semi-circle, it cannot be pointed or lobed or any other type of arch. The windows were sunken deeply into the masonry and they had only one large plane of glass for the whole