User:JPRiley/Chamberlin

William E. Chamberlin (1856-1911) was an American architect practicing in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. His brief practice was mostly confined to residential architecture, but the major civic commission he undertook, the Cambridge English High School (built 1889-1892) proved to be highly influential in the design of schools.

Life and career
William Everett Chamberlin was born June 23, 1856 in Burlington, Massachusetts to Daniel U. and Ann Maria (Stimson) Chamberlin. He was educated in the Cambridge public schools and the Chauncy Hall School in Boston. He then attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1877. During his degree he was associated with Sturgis & Brigham in Boston, but upon graduation went to New York, and was employed as a draftsman by the firm of McKim, Mead & Bigelow. Looking to further their education, in May, 1879 he and another employee of the firm, Edmund R. Willson, travelled to Paris and were admitted to the Ecole des Beaux Arts, both entering the atelier of Joseph Auguste Émile Vaudremer.

In 1884, Chamberlin established an architectural practice in Boston. In 1885 he was joined in partnership by William M. Whidden. In 1887 Chamberlin & Whidden won a competition to design the new Portland Library in Portland, Oregon, where Whidden had worked for McKim, Mead & White. When this project moved forward in 1889, Whidden moved to Portland to supervise construction. At this time William D. Austin was admitted to the partnership, and the firm was briefly known as Chamberlin, Whidden & Austin. In 1889 the partnership with Whidden was dissolved, and Whidden formed a new partnership, Whidden & Lewis, with Ion Lewis. Chamberlin and Austin continued their partnership until Chamberlin's retirement in 1892. Austin formed a new partnership with Frederick W. Stickney, Stickney & Austin, with offices in Lowell and Boston.

Chamberlin had retired from full-time practice, but continued to work on a small scale from his home in Cambridge. He was the designer of a number of substantial projects into the first decade of the twentieth century, but execution of the work was usually entrusted to an associated architect. By the time of his death, August 6, 1911, he had been completely retired for several years.

Personal life
For much of his career, Chamberlin was hampered by his disablility. He began to have difficulties with his spine during the early 1880s, when he was in Paris. For the last twenty years of his life he was unable to walk and was in a wheelchair full-time. It was this difficulty that led him to retire from active practice in 1892.

Chamberlin married Emily D. Abbot in 1891.

Legacy
Chamberlin's design for the Cambridge English High School proved to be very influential, and spawned many buildings of similar design. Chamberlin & Austin had produced a symmetrically-massed building, with a high central pavilion connected by hyphens to lower matching pavilions, all in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The design was praised by school administrators and architects alike, including the Boston architect Julius A. Schweinfurth, who found it timeless:

""There will be heard little, if any, difference of opinion among people whose opinion is of concerning the charming building. It is difficult to imagine a school more dignified, simple, and yet showing to the world that here is real architecture, simply obtained, without the hideous gymnastic efforts so apparent on most all architecture of the day. Its exterior shows what the interior is—the various rooms and the large assembly hall in the upper story and in the rear; its plan awaits the additional rooms which it shall require for future growth. This is a typical school building of the better class, and should be kept for reference and comparison by those who have to decide upon such matters at the request of their fellow citizens or townsmen. What makes it beautiful? Its form, fine proportion of masses, its fenestration so skilfully [sic] grouped, its splendidly proportioned wall surfaces and roofs, its color, the careful restraint in all its detail. It is founded on simple, classic models, on a standard type devoid of all passing idiosyncrasies or fads. Hence it will not go out of fashion but be as interesting fifty years from now.""

- Julius A. Schweinfurth, 1896.

The Boston architect Edmund M. Wheelwright, an acknowledged expert in the field of school architecture, found that its plan and elevation were worthy of close study by school architects:

""The architect to whom the designing of a schoolhouse is entrusted should accept the limitations imposed by the practical conditions of the problem. He should not seek to be "original" or to gain the semblance of a structure, however beautiful in its own time and for its own needs, which does not meet the requirements of an American schoolhouse. He may well be content to express in fitting architectural form the already well-developed schoolhouse plan. He will find profit by the study of the Cambridge High School. This building was, in my opinion, the first American schoolhouse which was designed in a truly artistic spirit; for here is found, with proper accentuation, good proportion, and refined detail, no sacrifice of the practical requirements which fitted the structure to its purpose.""

- Edmund M. Wheelwright, 1898.

One of the first was the Lowell High School (Frederick W. Stickney, 1890), by Austin's later partner. In his role as City Architect of Boston from 1891 to 1895, Wheelwright had a major role in the popularization of the plan of the Cambridge English High School. He utilized it the design of many smaller and larger schools in Boston, most notably in the Louis Agassiz School (1892), Brighton High School (1894) and the Gilbert Stuart School (1895). Many schools in New England and elsewhere were built along these lines, some closer copies than others. One, York High School (B. F. Willis, 1897) in York, Pennsylvania, was a near-identical copy. A more distant example was the Kansas City Manual Training High School (Hackney & Smith, 1896) in Kansas City, Missouri. In the first two decades of the twentieth century buildings along these lines continued to be built, though they no longer remained committed to Chamberlin's Second Renaissance Revival detailing, instead utilizing Beaux Arts or Colonial motifs. These include the Leominster High School (Frost, Briggs & Chamberlain, 1904) in Massachusetts and the Woonsocket High School (Walter F. Fontaine, 1913) in Rhode Island, one of the latest examples.

At his death, the Boston Society of Architects endowed an annual prize named in honor of Chamberlin, given as an award in an annual competition among fifth-year architecture students in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was first awarded in 1913.

Henry Mather Greene, later of Greene & Greene, briefly worked for Chamberlin & Austin in 1891-92.