In the summer of 1879, Thomas Wisedell formed a partnership with Francis Hatch Kimball, a successful architect working in Hartford, Connecticut who had recently received a contract to remodel the Madison Square Theatre in New York City. It appears as though the partnership may have been instigated by Kimball who saw Wisedell’s connections in New York as well as his exceptional skills as a designer of decorative details as a perfect fit for the project.
How the two men had come to know each other is not really a mystery Kimball had known Calvert Vaux and Frederick Clarke Withers since 1868 or 1869. In 1873, he was hired as the supervising architect for Trinity College in Hartford, and with that project he worked directly with Frederick Law Olmsted and George Kent Radford in laying out the grounds for their new campus designed by the London architect, William Burges. Also, Kimball had hired Robert Ellin’s firm for carving the stonework for the college.
Kimball was born in Kennebunk, Maine in 1845 and in 1859, at the age of 14, he moved to Haverhill, Mass. and began working as a carpenter for his brother in law, Josiah Littlefield. From September 1862 to May 1863, he served in the Navy being mustered aboard the on the U.S.S Dawn during the Civil War.
In 1866, Littlefield won the contract to construct Haverhill’s new train station for the Boston & Maine Railroad which had been designed by Bryant & Rogers of Boston. It was at that time that Francis Kimball was introduced to Louis P. Rogers and the following year, he moved in with the Rogers’ family who at the time was living in Malden, Massachusetts. For the next year, Kimball was trained as a draftsman and construction supervisor for Bryant & Rogers. At that time, this was Boston’s largest and busiest architectural firm principally focusing on office buildings and large public projects like libraries, hospitals, courthouses and state capitols. By that time, Rogers’ partner, Gridley J.F. Bryant was well known as a Francophile and his firm principally focused on the 2nd Empire and Neo-Grec styles emanating from Paris and it would be in those styles which Kimball received his earliest training as a designer.
Right: Charter Oak Life Insurance Company, 1868-70.
In the spring of 1868, Bryant & Rogers was asked to design an office building for the Charter Oak Life Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut. Louis Rogers was the designer of the building with Francis Kimball drawing many of the plans and details. In October 1868, as the Charter Oak Life building was in its earliest stages of construction, when both Gridley Bryant and Louis Rogers were in Hartford and were able to secure four more commissions, including a new office building for the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, a building whose design was partially credited to Francis Kimball. The decision was made that Bryant & Rogers would open a branch office in Hartford, not only to oversee construction of their various projects, but to also gain other commissions in that region. The following month, Francis Kimball moved to Hartford, and with the aid of Louis P. Rogers, Bryant & Rogers had established their new branch office and was in charge of overseeing construction of the two largest office building ever constructed in Connecticut up to that point.
By the summer of 1872, Bryant & Rogers Hartford office had completed at least thirteen projects in Hartford, Windsor and Middeltown, Connecticut. That year, Kimball left the firm to work for James Batterson, a prolific builder as well as the country’s largest granite dealer, owning massive quarries in Maine and Rhode Island. Though Kimball’s role was principally as a draftsman, at least one project was submitted under the name Batterson & Kimball, Architects.
In the spring of 1873, Kimball began his own independent practice when he was asked to design a set of row houses on Spring Street as well as a series of cottages for the New Saybrook Company who was then trying to create summer homes at Fenwick, Connecticut for wealthy clients in Hartford, Conn. and Springfield, Mass.
He soon gained a rather prestigious commission for new office building at the corner of Main and Asylum in Hartford. Though this appeared as one building, it was actually two separate buildings designed with unified marble facades and a continuous cornice line. The change in fenestration patterns revealed the two separate buildings.
It was while those projects were under construction when Kimball was hired by Trinity College. The college had recently sold their campus and grounds the the State of Connecticut and had chosen William Burges of London as the architect for their new campus. Trinity College was founded by Episcopalians who along with many of Hartford’s wealthiest citizens, especially the college president, as well and clergy in Hartford were ardent followers of the Oxford Movement. Also, two important British architects, Gervase Wheeler and Octavious Jordan, had previous established their architectural practice in Hartford. It was only natural that Trinity would turn to England to find its architect.
The appointment to Trinity College and having the opportunity to work alongside William Burges, one of the most important architects in England, would transform Kimball’s understanding of architecture and have an impact on his career over forty-five years.
To be continued….
Further Reading:
- Reed, Roger, Building Victorian Boston: The Architecture of Gridley J.F. Bryant (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007).
The Architecture of Thomas Wisedell 