Frank Furness
National Bank of the Republic, 1883. Frank Furness was one of the greatest architects of all time. Unfortunately many of his buildings have been demolished. Check his work out at wikipedia. If you’re ever in Philadelphia go to his Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts building or the library on Penn’s campus. Amazing.
“In 1883, architect Frank Furness, whose busy office once nurtured a young Louis Sullivan, had just completed the Undine Barge Club, the finest rowing clubhouse on Boathouse Row, a winding pearl string of boathouses along the Schuylkill River of Philadelphia. His precisely crafted stone building exhibited the crisp shadow definition, color, pattern, texture and bold ornament of his best work.
Ever the outdoorsman, Furness, fishing buddy of Teddy Roosevelt, was a natural choice for a rowing club design commission. Undine stands there now, sited just upriver from neighboring PennAC, the club of fabled rowers Jack Kelly, Sr. and Joe Burke.
Famously irascible, swearing a blue streak while drawing like an angel, Frank Furness once expressed a desire to gather all his clients from across his long-spanning, successful career in one room…and shoot ‘em!”
-via http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/, January 5, 2012
Frank Furness, Architect
This makes me like Frank Furness even more- who knew he used to fish with Teddy Roosevelt?
