Charles Bulfinch

American architect

• Born: August 8, 1763
• Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
• Died: April 4, 1844
• Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts

One of the first American architects to have used drawings extensively for the construction of buildings, Bulfinch exercised a wide influence on the architecture of the early national period of American history, especially in his native New England.

Early Life

The son of Thomas and Susan Apthorp Bulfinch, well-to-do and socially prominent Bostonians, Charles Bulfinch was born at the family home. He became one of the first American architects to complete a college education when he was graduated from Harvard in 1781, though not in architecture. His interest in architecture appears to have been awakened in 1785-1787, during a leisurely tour of England and the Continent.

In Paris, where Bulfinch lingered for a time, Thomas Jefferson, the American ambassador to the French court, took a friendly interest in him. It was at Jefferson’s suggestion that Bulfinch continued his travels through southern France and Italy. After spending three weeks in Rome studying the city’s ancient monuments, Bulfinch revisited Paris and London on his homeward journey. Upon his return to Boston, he took a position in the accounting office of a local merchant. In his spare time, he studied architectural works and, as did other gentleman-architects of the day, dabbled in design and construction.

Soon after his return from Europe, Bulfinch pointed toward his future dedication to architecture as a profession by submitting plans for a new Massachusetts statehouse, a project that eluded him until 1795, when he was chosen to design the building. Though he designed other important buildings during these early years, he continued to be only casually involved with architecture until he went bankrupt in 1796. On November 20, 1788, he married his cousin Hannah Apthorp, by whom he would have eleven children, including the author Thomas Bulfinch . In the spring of 1789, he visited Philadelphia and New York; his observations on this tour proved to be as influential in forming his style as those he had made while abroad.

Like most other early American architects, Bulfinch was self-taught. Nevertheless, he did not wish to design buildings simply by adapting various elements of architecture chosen from books. As did later architects, he tried to understand buildings, their materials and functions, and the methods by which they were built. He was concerned about how buildings related to their surroundings, about the connections between buildings and streets, walks, parks, other structures in the vicinity, and the city as a whole.

It has been said that between about 1790 and 1825, Bulfinch practically rebuilt Boston, transforming it from a provincial town with few buildings and meandering streets into a tasteful city of well-designed buildings set amid trees, plantings, and parks. One reason for his success was the excellence of his buildings. Another was his involvement in the affairs of Boston through his civic work. He would come to understand thoroughly the city and its needs by serving as a member, and chairman, of the board of selectmen.

Life’s Work

Though his later buildings are of the classical revival style, which came to be preferred by such architects as Benjamin Latrobe and Jefferson, Bulfinch’s early work was Georgian in character, by way of the brothers Adam (Robert, John, James, and William) in England. In 1788, the Hollis Street Church in Boston was constructed from his plans. Representing Bulfinch’s initial attempt at church design, it was followed by plans for churches in Taunton and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and during a later period, others in Boston. His classical interests were exhibited in his triumphal arch, built in 1789 in Boston for George Washington’s reception, and in his Beacon Hill Memorial Column, of Doric order, constructed in 1790-1791. More ambitious in scale than anything previously attempted in New England, the statehouse in Hartford, Connecticut, was begun from Bulfinch’s plans in 1793. The same year, he provided the plans for the Boston Theatre. Erected at the corner of Franklin and Federal streets, it burned in 1798 and was rebuilt by Bulfinch in the same year.

Bulfinch was elected to Boston’s board of selectmen in 1791; he would serve on the board, with only one break, for twenty-six years. He was active on the board committees that lighted Boston’s streets for the first time in 1792 and admitted both male and female children to the city’s public schools. For the last eighteen of these years, he chaired the board, a position similar to that of a mayor.

During the early 1790’s, Bulfinch began a reformation of New England’s architecture as he introduced the delicate detail of the Adam style. Many of his designs were built on or around Beacon Hill in Boston. It has been argued that their impact on the city was even stronger than that of his churches and public buildings because the houses and their settings established an atmosphere of beauty and charm long preserved in the Beacon Hill area. His first houses were for Joseph Coolidge, Sr. (1791-1792), and Joseph Barrell (1792-1793), both of which contained the first circular staircases in New England. The Barrell house in Somerville, Massachusetts, had an oval parlor projecting from the garden side beneath a semicircular portico with tall columns. Its layout was soon used in the Elias Hasket Derby mansion (1795-1799) in Salem, which was designed by Bulfinch, then modified and executed by Samuel McIntire.

Bulfinch joined with others during the mid-1790’s in planning a block of sixteen houses in Boston known as the Tontine Crescent. Work on this project was partially completed when trouble with England brought unsettled business conditions to Boston. During the ensuing financial crisis, Bulfinch’s partners withdrew, leaving him to assume the cost of completing the work. Losing both his own fortune and that of his wife, he was adjudged bankrupt in January of 1796. About the time of his bankruptcy, he resigned from the board of selectmen. Previously regarded as a scholar and gentleman of fortune but an amateur in architecture, Bulfinch was now faced with earning a livelihood. He turned his talent and full attention to the practice of architecture, with most successful results. In 1796, Bulfinch designed a house for the prominent and powerful Boston politician Harrison Gray Otis. He followed it with two others for Otis: the second in 1800, usually considered the finest of the three, and the third in 1805.

The Massachusetts statehouse (1795-1797) on Boston’s Beacon Hill represents the crowning achievement of Bulfinch’s early work. Though by the twentieth century it became only a part of a much larger complex—having been added onto a number of times—it has survived in good condition. A simple rectangular structure in plan and exterior, it is two stories high with a basement and a portico in front. The whole is crowned by a dome made of wooden planks, matched to fit tightly against one another. With its elegant proportions, the relationship of the dome to other elements, and its richly ornamented and spacious interiors, Bulfinch’s Massachusetts statehouse was immediately hailed as a masterpiece.

In 1799, Bulfinch was returned to the Boston board of selectmen, serving as its chairman until his departure for Washington in 1817. He soon found himself deeply involved in all the financial, commercial, and governmental affairs of the city. The time of his chairmanship marked the years of the great development of old Boston. Its form would be attributable largely to Bulfinch in his dual capacity as city official and architect. During this period, his architecture and civic work complemented each other.

In addition to designing theaters, hospitals, churches, schools, government buildings, markets, prisons, wharves, warehouses, multifamily houses, and numerous single-family dwellings, Bulfinch planned several portions of Boston. The neglected Common was turned into a park; three sides were fronted with fine buildings of uniform character: Park Street, in 1803-1804; Colonade Row on Tremont Street, in 1810-1812; and Beacon Street, from about 1800. Bulfinch laid out plans for the lands on Boston Neck, in South Boston, and on the site of the Mill Pond. He also inaugurated the development of Franklin Street and certain changes in the city’s street system.

Of Bulfinch’s five churches in Boston, four were built after 1800. It is said that he followed the schemes of Christopher Wren’s churches in London, paying great attention to the varieties of the type. Bulfinch designed the first Roman Catholic Church in Boston, the Church (later Cathedral) of the Holy Cross (1800-1803) at the corner of Franklin and Federal streets. Contemporary sources describe it as in the Italian Renaissance style. Completed in 1804, the New North Church (later St. Stephen’s Catholic Church) is the only surviving example of Bulfinch’s Boston churches. It has been much modified and is not considered one of his best designs. The Federal Street Church of 1809 represents Bulfinch’s first and only Gothic work.

The New South Church was completed in 1814. Generally considered Bulfinch’s most beautiful church, it was the first stone church erected in Boston since Bulfinch’s grandfather, Charles Apthorp, got Peter Harrison to design King’s Chapel. The distinctive features of the New South Church were an octagonal ground plan and a Doric portico of freestanding columns. One of the two surviving Bulfinch churches is the Church of Christ in Lancaster, Massachusetts, which was built in 1816. Its most prominent feature, the triple coeval arches in the portico, is an unexplained “improvement” by the master builder sent out from Boston to supervise the work.

Bulfinch’s public buildings in Boston completed after 1800 include the almshouse (1799-1801); the admirable warehouses of India Wharf (1803-1807); the Boylston Hall and Market (1809), later occupied as the city’s first public library; the Suffolk County Court House (1810-1812); and the first and central unit of the Massachusetts General Hospital (1818-1823). Among the public buildings built outside Boston from Bulfinch’s plans, the best known are the state prison at Charlestown, Massachusetts (1804-1805), University Hall at Harvard (1813-1814), and the statehouse in Augusta, Maine (1829-1832). The private houses Bulfinch designed after 1800 were built mainly in Boston, typical examples being those at 85 Mount Vernon Street, 45 Beacon Street, and numbers 13, 15, and 17 on Chestnut Street.

In 1817, President James Monroe appointed Bulfinch to succeed Latrobe as architect in charge of rebuilding the United States Capitol , which had been burned by the British in 1814. Moving his family to Washington, Bulfinch remained in this position until 1830. Essentially, he was called upon to complete the wings and construct the central part along lines established by the Capitol’s earlier architects. Bulfinch joined the two wings with a central dome. His principal contribution was the detailed form of the western front, a portico with steps and terrace forming an approach to it. Though his dome was later replaced by a larger and grander one, the west front remains. In addition to completing the Capitol, Bulfinch designed a church in Washington and acted as a consultant for several other government buildings. Returning to Boston at the age of sixty-seven, he lived in retirement, with occasional visits elsewhere, until his death in 1844.

Significance

American architects during and before Bulfinch’s day generally fell into one of two groups: amateur gentleman-architects who pursued some other career while designing buildings as an avocation, or architect-builders who were more concerned with construction than design. Though he began as one of the former, Bulfinch soon became totally involved with architecture. Unlike the architect-builders who actually worked on their buildings, Bulfinch saw his role—much in the same vein as later professionals—as that of supervising construction to ensure the proper implementation of designs and quality of workmanship.

Bulfinch’s American practice of architecture combined his New England background with his European tastes. Appropriately, the site of his remains in Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery is marked by the Franklin Urn, which Bulfinch placed in front of the Tontine Crescent in 1795 as a symbol of his plans to remake Boston in the image of neoclassical London. Early in his career, Bulfinch’s city honored him for his architecture and his civic work, showing an appreciation which continued to grow. Over the years, his architecture came to belong not only to Boston and New England but also to the country as a whole.

Bibliography

Brown, Glenn. History of the United States Capitol. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1901-1904. Relates the story of Bulfinch’s long and sometimes frustrating assignment in Washington.

Bulfinch, Ellen Susan. The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1896. The major source for biographical information. Bulfinch’s granddaughter provides a good treatment of the forces that shaped his ultimate professional commitment.

Kimball, Fiske. Mr. Samuel McIntire, Carver: The Architect of Salem. Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1940. Details Bulfinch’s work for the Derby family of Salem.

Kirker, Harold. The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969. Concentrates on the works themselves. Bulfinch’s commissions are arranged chronologically; each is treated separately. One of the appendixes deals with “minor commissions and attributions.” Well illustrated.

Kirker, Harold, and James Kirker. Bulfinch’s Boston, 1787-1817. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Deals largely with the social and cultural history of Boston during the period. Bulfinch’s architectural work is subordinated to his public career.

Maurer, David. “Charles Bulfinch.” Classic American Homes 27, no. 3 (July, 2001): 94. Profile of Bulfinch, with information about his family, career, architectural training, and the neoclassical designs of his buildings.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921. Provides a good summary treatment of Bulfinch’s architecture as well as a picture of the Boston merchants who were his chief clients.

Place, Charles A. Charles Bulfinch: Architect and Citizen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925. A biographical treatment that focuses on Bulfinch as a citizen and Christian gentleman.

Shand-Tucci, Douglass. Built in Boston: City and Suburb, 1800-2000. Rev. and expanded ed. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Part 1 of this architectural history contains information about Bulfinch and other nineteenth century architects.