George Browne Post (December15, 1837 – November28, 1913), professionally known as George B. Post, was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition.[1]
Active from 1869 almost until his death, he was recognized as a master of several prominent contemporary American architectural genres, and instrumental in the birth of the skyscraper.[2]
Many of his most characteristic projects were for commercial buildings where new requirements pushed the traditional boundaries of design. Many of the buildings he designed have been demolished, since their central locations in New York and other cities made them vulnerable to rebuilding in the twentieth century. Some of his lost buildings were regarded as landmarks of their era. His sons, who had been taken into the firm in 1904, continued after his death as George B. Post and Sons until 1930.[3]
Early life and education
Post was born on December 15, 1837, in Manhattan, New York, to Joel Browne Post and Abby Mauran Church.[4] After graduating from New York University in 1858 with a degree in civil engineering, Post became a student of Richard Morris Hunt from 1858 to 1860. In 1860, he formed a partnership with a fellow student in Hunt's office, Charles D. Gambrill, with a brief hiatus for service in the Civil War.
In 1867, Post founded his own architectural firm which expanded in 1904 when two of his sons, J. Otis and William Stone joined him to form become George B. Post and Sons.[6][7]
Post designed many of the prominent private homes in various places, with many concentrated in New York City and Bernardsville, NJ. He also designed many prominent commercial and public buildings.
A true member of the American Renaissance, Post engaged notable artists and artisans to add decorative sculpture and murals to his architectural designs. Among those who worked with Post were the sculptor Karl Bitter and painter Elihu Vedder. Post was a founding member of the National Arts Club, serving as the club's inaugural president from 1898 to 1905. In 1905, his two sons were taken into the partnership, and they continued to lead the firm after Post's death, notably as the designers of many Statler Hotels in cities across the United States. From that time forward, the firm carried on under the stewardship of Post's grandson, Edward Everett Post (1904–2006) [9] until the late twentieth century.[citation needed]
Sarah Landau's publication George B. Post, Architect: Picturesque Designer and Determined Realist (1998) inspired a retrospective exhibition in 1998–99 to revisit Post's work at the Society. In 2014, curator, architect George Ranalli presented an exhibition of Post's drawings and photographs of the design of the City College of New York's main campus buildings, on loan from the New-York Historical Society.[10][11]
Post also designed many of the gilded-age mansions found in Bernardsville, NJ and was credited more than anyone with selling wealthy New Yorkers on the idea of establishing a country home in the Somerset Hills.[5] He designed Kenilwood—a grand home built in 1896–1897 as a wedding gift for his son—and an excellent residential example of Gothic Revival architecture in America. Kenilwood remained in the Post family until it was purchased by Mike Tyson in 1988.[5]
In 1894, Post, along with J. Herbert Ballantine, Robert L. Stevens, and Edward T. H. Talmadge each pledged $8,000 to purchase land in Bernardsville, New Jersey, to establish the Somerset Hills Country Club, which, after being built on the banks of Ravine Lake was relocated in 1917 to its present site[5] and includes a golf course designed by A.W. Tillinghast.[15]
Many of Post's design's were landmarks of the era. Post's Equitable Life Building (1868–70), was the first office building designed to use passenger elevators; Post himself leased the upper floors when contemporaries predicted they could not be rented.[16] His Western Union Telegraph Building (1872–75) at Dey Street in Lower Manhattan, was the first office building to rise as high as ten stories, a forerunner of skyscrapers to come. Post's twenty-story New York World Building (1889–90) was the tallest building in New York City when it was erected in "Newspaper Row" facing City Hall Park.
Personal life
Post married Alice Matilda Stone (1840–1909) on October 14, 1863. Together, they had five children: George Browne, Jr., William Stone, Allison Wright, James Otis and Alice Winifred.
Claremont, Bernardsville, New Jersey, 1907. George Post's home in the Somerset Hills. As of October 2020, for sale for $10 million.
Chickering Hall, New York City, c.1877. Built as the headquarters of the Chickering Piano Company, this four-story building faced in brick with brownstone and gray marble trim featured a 1,450-seat auditorium that hosted lectures by Thomas H. Huxley and Oscar Wilde and was the site of Alexander Graham Bell's first interstate telephone call to New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1877. Razed.[19]
New York Hospital (razed), 1877, notable for its use of large ground-level windows for better natural illumination of the interior.[20]
Library and Lyceum, Morristown, New Jersey. 1878, Razed.
Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, New York, 1878–1880, Romanesque revival building employing architectural terracotta, originally named Long Island Historical Society.
Post Building, New York City, 1880–81. A deep central recess provided light and air to the interiors, a feature that quickly became standard for large commercial structures.[20]
Mills Building, New York City, 1881–1883, called "the first modern office building", on a two-story base, the upper eight floors reached by ten elevators, it used architectural terracotta panels, which Post had helped to introduce to the United States, and eliminated the conventional mansard roofline. Razed.[19]
^"George B.Post and Sons". Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Case Western University. May 11, 2018. Retrieved September 29, 2018.
^ ab"George B. Post". Retrieved August 22, 2014. An architect, died November 28, 1913, at his summer home in Bernardsville, New Jersey. He was born December 15, 1837 in New York City. ...
^ abcdeSchleicher, William A.; Winter, Susan J. (1997). Images of America: In The Somerset Hills, The Landed Gentry. Dover, New Hampshire: Arcadia Publishing. pp. 8, 10, 11. ISBN0-7524-0899-2.
^Landau, Sarah Bradford (1998). George B. Post: Picturesque Designer and Determined Realist. New York, NY.: the Monacelli Press.
^Winston Weisman, "The Commercial Architecture of George B. Post" The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians31.3 (October 1972), pp. 176–203. Many details in this article are drawn from Weisman's sketch of Post's career.
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