Guy Lowell
American
| Notable Position | Organization | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Red Cross Ambulance Service - WWI | 1917 | 1919 |
Lineage
- Father Edward Jackson Lowell
- Mother Mary Goodrich Lowell
| Notable Position | Organization | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Red Cross Ambulance Service - WWI | 1917 | 1919 |
| Y/M/D | Description | Association | Composition | Place | Locale | Food | Event |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y/M/D | Description | Association | Composition | Place | Locale | Food | Event |
| Architect | Old King's Highway Historic District | Barnstable | |||||
| Architect | Isabella Breckinridge House | York, ME | |||||
| Architect | Eegonos | Bar Harbor, ME | |||||
| Architect | Boscawen Public Library | Boscawen | |||||
| Architect | Planting Fields Arboretum | Town of Oyster Bay, NY | |||||
| Architect | Merrimack County Bank | Concord, NH | |||||
| 1898/05/17 | Henrietta Sargent, the daughter of Charles S Sargent of Brookline, marries Guy Lowell at St Paul's Church in Brookline. | Groom | Chapel Saint Paul's Church and Parish House | Brookline, MA | Marriage of Henrietta Sargent and Guy Lowell | ||
| 1899/06/00 | Having won the Prix Jean LeClair, Guy Lowell graduates from the Ecole des Beaux Arts. | Education | Palais des Etudes, Ecole des Beaux-Arts | Paris | |||
| 1903/00/00 | Designed by Guy Lowell, Spring Lawn is built for John Alexandre, replacing The Hive, which had been the home of Charles and Elizabeth Sedgwick and the site of Elizabeths prestigious school for girls. | Architect | Spring Lawn, Lenox | Lenox, MA | |||
| 1909/00/00 | Museum of Fine Arts Boston moves from Copley Square in their new building. | Architect | MFA Boston | Boston |
History
Guy Lowell was born in Boston into one of New England's most prominent families. He was educated in private schools and graduated from Harvard in 1892. He received his architectural degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and complemented his studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts (1895-1899). His classes included architectural history, design and landscape gardening. In 1900, he opened an architectural office in Boston.
Lowell became one of Boston's most distinguished architects. He received important institutional commissions and many opportunities to design country estates for the elite. He was responsible for the design of twenty-five buildings in the Colonial Revival style for Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He also designed Emerson Hall a new lecture hall and the President's house at Harvard University, Memorial Tower at Brown University, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His largest and most important building was the New York County Court House. Some of Lowell's residential clients included Frederick L Ames, Robert Gould Shaw II, Richard Sears and B F Goodrich.
Guy Lowell was also an important landscape designer. He wrote American Gardens (1902), an early publication on American landscape architecture. Lowell served as the advisory architect for the Boston Metropolitan Parks Commission. His expertise in the field was acknowledged by the elite, as Lowell was retained by Andrew Carnegie, J Pierpont Morgan and Morton F Plant to design gardens at their New York City residences.
Lowell's appreciation of Italian architecture would have begun at MIT and have been strongly reinforced at the Ecole. His admiration of Italy's vernacular tradition is apparent from his publications: Smaller Italian Villas and Farmhouses (1916) and More Small Italian Villas and Farmhouses (1920). As their titles suggest, these books are a collection of sketches and photographs of lesser known Italian villas supplemented by text which examines the importance of these obscure buildings.
In Smaller Italian Villas and Farmhouses, Lowell demonstrated the close relationship between the lesser known villas and well known villas by discussing the evolution of the building type from its beginnings in antiquity. Lowell held that the building type persisted through the ages because of its practicality and argued that American architects ought to look to Italy and her villas for design inspiration. He maintained that the villa should not be considered for its connection with princely life, but rather for its utilitarian nature as a farmhouse type which easily accommodated changing needs. In More Small Italian Villas and Farmhouses, Lowell described his trips through the Italian countryside in search of unknown villas. He compared villas in his survey with those of Palladio and Vasari. Although he traveled for the purpose of publishing these extensively illustrated books, he must have gained some knowledge and may have produced some sketches while he served the Red Cross in Italy during World War I. - NRHP Registration 11 December 1994
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