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James Monroe Hewlett

Born August 1,1868-Died September 18, 1941

James Monroe Hewlett was an architect, muralist, set designer, decorative artist, creator of pageants, and, on occasion, art class instructor—he was all of these and more. The term “polymath” has been used to describe Monroe. He wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, and was free with his critiques of art and architecture. He even gave a radio speech from Rome as the director of the American Academy there from 1932 to 1935.

James Monroe Hewlett or Monroe, as he preferred to be called, was born at Rock Hall in the town of Lawrence, N.Y. on August 1, 1867. That house, built in 1768 by Josiah Martin, is now a museum. The Hewletts were an old Long Island family. In 1894, Monroe married Anna Willets of Brooklyn. The Hewletts wintered at 77 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn and moved to Lawrence in the summer. For his growing family Monroe designed and had built a large brick and frame house on Rock Hall property. Monroe’s sister, Louise Hewlett Patterson, eventually lived in that house, which was called Martin’s Lane, until her death in 1967.

Monroe studied architecture at the Columbia School of Mines under Professor William Robert Ware, the founder of the Columbia School of Architecture, which began as a department of the School of Mines. Following his graduation in 1890, he spent several years in Paris studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and the atelier of Pierre Victor Galland, the decorative painter.

He began his career as a draftsman and apprentice in the offices of McKim, Mead and White. In 1895 he founded, with Austin Lord and Washington Hull, the firm of Lord, Hewlett and Hull. Between 1901 and 1910 this firm was involved in the building of a 121-room mansion (147 according to one account) on Fifth Avenue for Montana’s Senator William A. Clark. The house was much maligned for its opulence and has since been torn down. Some of the indisputably tasteful mansions designed by the firm are described in two books: New Jersey Country Houses, The Somerset Hills, by John K. Turpin and W. Barry Thomson, and Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects, 1860-1940, by Robert B. Mackay, Anthony K. Baker and Carol A. Traynor.

The firm also designed buildings for the Somerset Hills Club and the Rockaway Hunting Club, as well as many public buildings of note for other institutions, such as the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, The Brooklyn Hospital, St. Jude’s Hospital in Brooklyn, the Smith College Libraries, the Westchester County Courthouse, and New York’s Second Battalion Armory. The firm was highly praised in a November 1909 article in The New York Times for its design of a new facade for the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York when the church was at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue. In collaboration with various sculptors, the firm also designed memorials, among them the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in Philadelphia (a pair of pylons flanking the Benjamin Franklin Parkway) and the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial at the entrance to Albany’s Washington Park (also known as the Veterans Monument). It turns out, however, that architecture was not Monroe’s first love. In a 1924 article by John Kimberly Mumford (“Who’s Who in New York...No. 41”) he is quoted as saying he took up architecture as the only artistic endeavor regarded as respectable at the time: “If I’d followed my inclinations I should have gone in definitely for decorative painting.” Even though Lord and Hewlett shared credit as architects with Pell and Corbett for the design of the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, it was Monroe who was able to employ his color sense in designing the facade of this building. An early experiment in polychromy, it was a sophisticated example of the way that the colors of marble, brick and terra cotta can be used, and elicited high praise in the July 15, 1909, issue of Architecture: “The color of the brick is delightful, the method of using terra cotta in the columns, the capital, the belt courses, is the best of modern times; one is tempted to say the best of all time.” The Mumford article was particularly written in praise of Monroe as a model Digressionist.

The Digressionists, founded by Monroe and fellow architects Grosvenor Atterbury and Charles Ewing in 1906, consisted of a group of well-known architects and artists whose mission was to create something artistic outside of their usual purview, to be unveiled and evaluated at their annual convocation. The winner, chosen by three judges, was presented with a medallion engraved with the Digressionists’ symbol, a flying fish, and an image of the Acropolis beneath curling waves. Mumford’s premise was that since Monroe had served as president both of the Architectural League of New York, between 1919 and 1921, and later, from 1921 to 1926, of the Society of Mural Painters, he was the epitome of a Digressionist.

An article by Francis S. Swales, “Draftsmanship and Architecture as Exemplified by the Work of J. Monroe Hewlett” (Pencil Point, March 1928), describes what the author considered to be the beginning of mural painting as a regular profession: “Upon Mr. Hewlett’s return from Paris he found Mr. McKim working away at the difficult task of trying to get the spirit of mural decoration into the system of the painters engaged upon the World’s Fair Buildings at Chicago.” The Fair, a visionary feat with many “firsts,” opened in 1893. It took almost 20 years for Monroe to start painting murals as a business proposition. He had a studio at 163 Clymer Street in Brooklyn, and was often assisted by either Charles Gulbrandson or Charles Basing and Arthur T. Hewlett, one of his brothers.

Many examples of Monroe’s murals are to be found in New York City and environs. They are reminiscent of illustrations in the style of N. C. Wyeth. The former Bank of New York and Trust Company building at 48 Wall Street, which now houses the Museum of American Finance and is part of the New York Heritage Trail, has eight murals, painted in 1929, on the walls of what had been the main banking room. Their theme is the commercial and industrial development of New York. The National Newark Building, which originally housed the National Newark and Essex Bank, has ten murals. Done in 1930, they depict manufacturing in New Jersey. Around 1927, Monroe returned to the Brooklyn Masonic Temple and painted huge murals symbolizing the development of Freemasonry on the walls of the four meeting rooms, which were described in the June 1927 issue of The American Magazine of Art. Unfortunately, they have sustained serious water damage.

It is not easy to gain access to some of the locations of Monroe’s murals such as the Bronx County Courthouse, which is normally off-limits to the general public. On its walls are four of his murals, executed in 1934, depicting historical moments in the Bronx. An article in the September 2, 1974, issue of The New York Times deals with the restoration of these murals. Evidently, they were painted under the auspices of the Works Project Administration’s Federal Arts Project, and the artists were paid $20 a week. Since each mural was 15 by 36 feet, they must have kept the artists busy for a long time.

The beautiful Sky Mural at Grand Central Station, which opened in January 1913, has been credited variously to the firm of Hewlett and Basing and to the French portraitist Paul-César Helleu. Many articles that appeared at the time give credit to Hewlett and Basing. And, of course, there is family lore, according to which Hewlett was the creator of the great mural. The likeliest attribution is that provided by John Belle and Maxinne Rhea Leighton in Grand Central: Gateway to a Million Lives, published in 2000. They say the design on the ceiling was conceived by Helleu and created by J. Monroe Hewlett and Charles Basing.

Monroe also designed murals outside of New York City. Among his many projects were murals for the Providence National Bank in 1930, for Willard Straight Hall at Cornell in 1924, for the Rockland County Courthouse, and for the Elihu Root Auditorium at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC. There are stunning designs by Monroe on the ceiling of the entrance corridor of the Carnegie Mellon University of Fine Arts (formerly the Carnegie Institute of Technology) in Pittsburgh, at the end of which is a painting of his friend Henry Hornbostel’s New York Connecting Bridge at Hell Gate. (Hornbostel won the design competition for the Pitt campus in 1909.) Monroe must have painted another version of the Hell Gate Bridge for Hornbostel, which was donated to the Museum of the City of New York by Hornbostel’s sons Caleb and Lloyd. Monroe also designed the drop curtain and the mural panels at Carnegie Mellon University’s Kresge Theater. All of this is described and illustrated in Walter Kidney’s 2002 book Henry Hornbostel: An Architect’s Master Touch. (One of Monroe’s brothers, Charles Russell Hewlett, was serving as the first dean of the department of fine arts at the Carnegie Institute when he died there in 1913 at the age of 41.)

Fewer tangible reminders remain of Monroe’s designs for pageants and theatrical productions. His work on pageants was not limited to the Beaux-Arts Balls. According to his obituary in the October 20, 1941, Nassau Daily Star-Review, “When the United States entered the World war, Mr. Hewlett was asked to work with other artists on designs for spectacular scenes amid which delegations from foreign nations were to be greeted in New York city. The most celebrated result of this collaboration was Avenue of the Allies, on Fifth avenue, reaching from Madison square to 59th street.” This celebration occurred in May 1917, but the flag display was used several times during the war to support Liberty Loan Drives. Many are familiar with its depiction by the artist Childe Hassam, featuring the colorful flags of many nations flying on Fifth Avenue.

In 1923, the American Institute of Architects awarded Henry Bacon the AIA Gold Medal Award for his design of the Lincoln Memorial. Monroe, together with the architect Howard Greenley, designed the huge pageant, which took place around the reflecting pool in front of the memorial. In 1970, the AIAGold Medal was awarded to Monroe’s son-in-law and fellow polymath, R. Buckminster Fuller, who was married to his oldest child, Anne.

Then there were set designs. Monroe first created set designs for Maude Adams, arguably the most popular actress of her day, best known for her performance as Peter Pan. According to Francis S. Swales, Hewlett’s architectural work took precedence until 1910, “but an opportunity arrived when Frohman staged Maude Adams in Chanticleer. Through the good-will of the painter John W. Alexander, then president of the National Academy of Design, Hewlett was brought into designing the scenery which he then painted on gauze.” (Charles Frohman was a famous producer and theater owner.) Monroe, Charles Basing and Arthur T. Hewlett were called on again to do the sets for Frohman’s 1912 production of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. Monroe is quoted by John Kimberly Mumford as having said, “I have always felt that scenery offered the ideal opportunity for an architect to do his experimenting.” Maude Adams gave him the opportunity to test his theories. She also spent many hours in the design studio wrestling with staging problems. The scenery in Chantecler (as Edmond Rostand’s play was properly titled), pictures of which can be found at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, is enchanting. All the actors, costumed as farmyard creatures, are proportionate to huge tree trunks and fences, and Miss Adams, portraying a rooster in the title role, is covered in beautiful plumage. Monroe and Charles Basing designed both the scenery and costumes for the 1916 production at the Metropolitan Opera of Iphigenie en Tauride. It seems that Otto Kahn, the financier and patron of the arts, was so impressed by the scenery for a Beaux-Arts Ball, that he wondered why the opera house couldn’t utilize that sort of thing. According to Mumford, the architect Christopher Grant LaFarge replied, “Well why don’t you?” And he did. It was not until 2008 that the Met presented Iphigenie again.

In 1920 Monroe designed the scenery for Eugene O’Neill’s first published full- length play, Beyond the Horizon, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The sets are out of character with everything else Monroe ever did—not monumental like his murals or grand like those for Iphigenie, not whimsical like the Adams plays, and certainly not pretty. The play was called a true American tragedy, and the sets were appropriate to the subject.

In early 1932, Monroe was appointed resident director of the American Academy in Rome. The appointment can only be viewed as a testament to the high esteem in which he was held by his fellow artists. Again, it was the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 that provided the impetus for the creation of a forum in which artists in many fields could collaborate. As Lucia and Alan Valentine put it in The American Academy in Rome 1894-1969, at the Fair, “A Renaissance tour de force was being re-created as architect, painter, sculptor, landscaper, and builder wrought together in the classical manner.” And, “No one was more profoundly affected than Charles McKim.” McKim’s vision was a school for American artists in Rome that would become as coveted a place as the well-established French Academy in Rome. In 1894, Austin Lord, Monroe’s partner, became its first director. Its beginning was shaky, with finances a major distraction, but by 1932 the Academy was a highly respected—and seemingly solvent—institution. Monroe was offered a very respectable salary of $7500 and an annual allowance of $500 for entertaining. Indeed, entertaining was a major function of the director. There are pictures of Monroe showing King Victor Emmanuel III and Benito Mussolini around the Academy. The ample salary is important to note—because soon it became not enough.

The archives of the American Academy are housed, on micro-fiche, at the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. By the early 1930s, because of the Depression, the Academy was in deep trouble. And so was Monroe. After his wife, Anna, died, he had married Estelle Rogers. At first they occupied the lovely Villa Aurelia. Then the dollar became deeply depressed against the lira. Dollar-based operating expenses went up and salaries were soon halved. Cost-cutting measures were instituted. Villa Aurelia was closed and the Hewletts moved to Villa Bellaci on the Academy grounds. Driving and travel had to be curtailed when the cost of gas became prohibitive. To make matters worse, some patrons who had subsidized the students and fellows withdrew their support. Monroe was chastised for borrowing money from an Academy fund—although permissible, it was deemed improper. The Valentines’ cryptic summary of the Hewletts’ brief sojourn in Italy sheds little light on the immediate circumstances of their departure: “In 1932 he began his appointment as director of the American Academy in Rome, but for reasons not wholly clear, he left in 1934 on leave from its trustees, on the agreement that he would not return to the Academy.” Fortuitously, an aunt of Estelle’s died, leaving her money. The overdraft was paid and Monroe was still at the academy to hand over the directorship to Chester Aldrich in 1935. Despite its auspicious beginnings, Monroe’s tenure as director of the American Academy proved to be a difficult time, hardly a fitting conclusion to his career.

By the time Monroe returned from Italy in 1935, he was 67. He may have chosen to retire, or at least to curtail his activities. Between the fall of 1935 and Monroe’s death in October 1941, he doesn’t appear to have accomplished much work either in architecture or in mural painting. Only the murals for the 400-seat auditorium at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, designed by Delano and Aldrich, were completed after his return, in 1938. Rendered in Monroe’s signature style, they depict a group of heroic figures—astronomers, geographers, and explorers—typifying the researchers of the institution. And, also in 1938, he designed at least one more Beaux-Arts Ball. Held at the institute’s East 44th Street building, it was a much reduced affair, a pale reflection of the galas at the Astor that J. Monroe Hewlett had created in its—and his—glory days.

James Monroe Hewlett died at Martin's Lane, his family home on September 18, 1941. He is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.