Raymond Hood

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(b Pawtucket, RI, 21 March 1881; d Stamford, CT, 15 Aug 1934). American architect. The son of a prosperous box manufacturer in Rhode Island, he had a strict, religious and inhibiting upbringing that took some years to outgrow. He was educated locally, taking a first degree at Brown University, Providence, RI, before proceeding in 1899 to the architecture school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. In 1901 he joined the office of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, where he absorbed from Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue a feeling for the Gothic tradition in American architecture, which was to be an important supplement to his grounding in Beaux-Arts Classicism. In 1904 he went to study in Paris, enrolling in the Atelier Duquesne at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He spent much of the next seven years in Paris or travelling in Europe, apart from an interlude in 1906-8 when he worked in Pittsburgh and New York for his friend Henry Hornbostel (1867-1961). During this period he developed into a sharp, confident, ambitious, worldly and entertaining young architect of much potential, but with a conventional Beaux-Arts approach to style and planning. His early projects are impressive chiefly for their balance of Gothic and classical vocabularies.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

American architect. Together with John Mead Howells he won the competition in 1922 to design the Chicago Tribune Tower, Chicago, IL. (built 1923–5), a high point of Beaux-Arts eclecticism with a Gothic superstructure (Hood had studied (1905–6 and 1908–10) in Paris). From 1924 he was in partnership with Frederick A. Godley (1886–1961) and Fouilhoux, and from 1931 with Fouilhoux only. The Tribune Building was followed by the American Radiator Company Building, NYC (1923–5— now the Bryant Park hotel, converted by David Chipperfield Architects (1998–2001) ) with a black exterior and gilded pinnacles and trims, and the Masonic Temple, Scranton, PA (1929), again Gothic. With Stanley Gordon Jeeves (c.1888–1964) he designed Ideal (now Palladium) House, at the corner of Argyll and Great Marlborough Streets, London (1929), a building completely clad in black Swedish granite with cast-bronze gilded and enamelled Art Deco detailing. The Daily News Building, NYC (1929–30—with Howells), was devoid of any historical references, and was a skyscraper with vertical window-strips set between continuous vertical solid strips, a design that was to be influential for the next three decades, notably at the Rockefeller Center, NYC (1931–4), for which he and his partner Fouilhoux acted as consultants. The McGraw-Hill Building, NYC (1930–2) (with Fouilhoux and others), combined bold horizontal bands with central vertical strips, paving the way for lighter cladding and the International style in skyscraper design.

Bibliography

• AA Files, vii (1984), 30–43
• AF, lxii (1935), 127–33
• J. Curl (2005)
• Hood (1931)
• Kilham (1974)
• Placzek (ed.) (1982)
• Schwartzmann (1962)
• Stern (1982)
• Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

The Tribune Tower in Chicago

News Building, NYC, rendering by Hugh Ferriss

Raymond Mathewson Hood (March 29, 1881 – August 14, 1934) was an early-mid twentieth century architect who worked in the Art Deco style. He was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, MIT, and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the latter institution he met John Mead Howells, with whom Hood later partnered. Hood frequently employed architectural sculptor Rene Paul Chambellan both to create sculpture for his building and to make plasticine models of his projects. He died at age 53 and was interred at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, NY.

Selected works

• Tribune Tower, Chicago, Illinois 1924
• American Radiator Building, also known as the American Standard Building, New York, New York 1924
• Ocean Forest Country Club, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina 1926-1927
• New York Daily News Building (the model for Superman's The Daily Planet), New York, New York 1929
• Masonic Temple, Scranton, Pennsylvania 1930
• Rockefeller Center, New York, New York, where Hood was a senior architect on a large design team. 1933-37
• McGraw-Hill Building, New York, New York 1931

References

The unmarked mountain laurel gravesite of Raymond Hood in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

* Walter H. Kilham (1973). Raymond Hood, Architect - Form Through Function in the American Skyscraper. Architectural Book Publishing Co Inc, New York.

• Einar Einarsson Kvaran. Architectural Sculpture of America. unpublished manuscript
• Contemporary American Architects: Raymond M. Hood (1931). Published by Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York. Trade publication featuring a large collection of photographs of Raymond Hood works.

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Name	Hood, Raymond
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Date of birth	March 29, 1881
Place of birth
Date of death	August 14, 1934
Place of death

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