Dempwolf in Boston

I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference in Boston. While there, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the hotel in which I was staying was located near two important buildings with a connection to John August Dempwolf, York’s most prominent and prolific architect. Dempwolf’s firm practiced from their offices in Centre (Continental) Square in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the early 1870s, young J.A. Dempwolf left York and relocated to New York City, studying architecture at night at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences. After he graduated in 1873, Dempwolf did not return to York; rather, he moved to Boston where he found employment as superintendent for construction of the new Cathedral of the Holy Cross, a massive stone Gothic Revival church that took over nine years to construct. This church, recognized today as the largest in New England, still stands, and is pictured below.

Dempwolf was not the architect for this project. That commission was given to Patrick Keely, an architect based in New York City. But the experience as superintendent was certainly valuable for the young Dempwolf, who was able to study the design of a nationally-prominent architect while learning the real-world relationship between design and construction.
When Dempwolf arrived in Boston, the newly constructed Trinity Church was already making waves in the architectural world. Located several blocks from the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, the year-old ecclesiastical building had a profound effect on the architecture that followed. Henry Hobson Richardson was a Louisiana-born architect who attended Harvard then studied at the famed Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, only the second American to do so. After returning from France, Richardson established an architectural practice in New York, later relocating to Boston. With the design of Trinity Church in the Copley Square area, Richardson took the Romanesque Revival style that was popular at the time and employed heavy, rough-cut stone and large arches to create a variant of the style with picturesque massing and imposing rooflines. This unique approach to Romanesque architecture became his signature (the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh is another prominent example) and inspired a generation of architects, who began to emulate his approach. So important and influential was Trinity Church that the American Institute of Architects selected it as one of the Ten Most Important Buildings in the United States. The building undoubtedly influenced Dempwolf, who would dabble in the style after returning to York.

Perhaps the best example of Dempwolf’s use of the style can be found at Centre Presbyterian Church in New Park. Westminster Presbyterian Church on North Queen Street in York also shows the Richardson influence, though the arches have a hint of a point, not the true rounded Romanesque style. Other Dempwolf-designed buildings exhibit a hybrid of the more common brick Romanesque Revival Style with the heavy approach favored by Richardson. Some examples include Gettysburg College’s Glatfelter Hall, Stevens School on West Philadelphia Street in York, and even York Central Market. Some architectural historians refer to this hybrid as Victorian Romanesque – buildings that combine multiple materials (like brick and stone) and feature polychromatic tones, as opposed to the more uniform Romanesque Revival and Richardson Romanesque buildings. As anyone who has studied historic American architecture can tell you, the authors of the popular style guides do not agree on how to identify the many H.H. Richardson-inspired buildings. What one author identifies as Richardson Romanesque (or Richardsonian, as it is sometimes called), another might term Victorian Romanesque or simply Romanesque Revival (or even Late Romanesque Revival) – these round-arched buildings are all branches on the same tree.
Dempwolf designed many notable buildings in the Romanesque style. The demolished York Collegiate Institute and Calvary Church are prominent examples, as are his work at the Harrisburg State Hospital, additional buildings on the campus of Gettysburg College, and Valentine Hall at the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg.
If you are interested in learning more about Dempwolf’s application of the Romanesque style, check out architect Mark Shermeyer’s 1982 master’s thesis, “The Dempwolf Public Schools,” as well as the research paper, “York’s Architecture and the Dempwolf Influence” (author unknown). Both can be found at the library of Historic York, Inc. as well as the Library and Archives of the York County Heritage Trust.