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Parker, Thomas & Rice

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The Frederick Lothrop Ames Jr. estate (1905) in Easton, Massachusetts, designed in the Colonial Revival style
The Savings Bank of Baltimore Building (1907) in Baltimore, designed in the Neoclassical style
The Sidney L. Christie Federal Building (1910) in Huntington, West Virginia, designed in the Neoclassical style
The Ellen Dexter Sharpe house (1912) in Providence, Rhode Island, designed in the Tudor Revival style
The Harvard Club of Boston (1913), designed in the Colonial Revival style
Gilman Hall (1915) of Johns Hopkins University, designed in the Colonial Revival style
Stephens Hall (1915) of Towson University, designed in the Jacobethan style
The headquarters of The Hartford (1921), designed in the Neoclassical style
The George F. Schrafft house (1924) in Newton Centre, designed in the Colonial Revival style
The Monumental Life Insurance Company Building (1926) in Baltimore, designed in the Neoclassical style
The United Shoe Machinery Corporation Building (1930) in Boston, designed in the Art Deco style

Parker, Thomas & Rice, known as Parker & Thomas before 1907, was an American architectural firm formed in 1900 by partners J. Harleston Parker and Douglas H. Thomas Jr. and later expanded to include Arthur W. Rice. It operated out of dual offices in Boston and Baltimore and was dissolved in 1933.

History

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The firm of Parker & Thomas was formed in Boston and Baltimore in 1900 by architects J. Harleston Parker and Douglas H. Thomas Jr., two young graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Beaux-Arts de Paris. Parker and Thomas came from established Boston and Baltimore families and each managed the office in his home city. Early successes came in 1903 and 1906, respectively, when the firm won competitions to design the Sidney L. Christie Federal Building (1910, NRHP-listed) in Huntington, West Virginia, and to plan the new campus of Johns Hopkins University, Thomas's undergraduate alma mater. Planning and construction lagged and the only building the firm designed for the university was the monumental Gilman Hall (1915), not completed until shortly after Thomas's death.[1]: 454–455, 594 

In Boston during this time the firm designed the Tennis and Racquet Club (1904) in the Back Bay and country houses for Frederick Lothrop Ames Jr. (1905) in Easton and for Frederick Ayer (1907, demolished) in Beverly. In 1907 the partnership was reorganized as Parker, Thomas & Rice to include Arthur W. Rice, an older architect who was the surviving partner of the Boston firm of Peters & Rice.[1]: 505  During the next few years the work of the Boston office included the Harvard Club of Boston (1913) in the Back Bay and the Essex County Club (1914) in Manchester-by-the-Sea, social clubs for the Boston Brahmin elite. In June 1915 Thomas died after accidentally driving his car into a ditch.[1]: 594  To make up for this loss, Parker and Rice invited Robert E. Lee Taylor, a Norfolk, Virginia, architect and fellow MIT graduate to lead the Baltimore office.[2]: 258  During the next twelve year period, the most important work completed in Boston was the John Hancock Building (1922);[3]: 157  in Baltimore, the Forest Park High School (1924, demolished).[4] In 1924 the Hancock Building was awarded the second Harleston Parker Medal, which Parker had endowed in 1921, by the Boston Society of Architects.[5]

In 1927 the partnership was reorganized, separating the Boston and Baltimore offices after 27 years. Parker and Rice continued the Boston office under the old name while Taylor and D. K. Este Fisher, a partner since 1924, continued the Baltimore office as the independent firm of Taylor & Fisher.[6][7] The major work of the firm's final years was the United Shoe Machinery Corporation Building (1930, NRHP-listed), a notable example of Art Deco architecture which was then the tallest privately-owned building in Boston.[3]: 68–69  Parker died in May 1930 as the United Shoe building was underway;[1]: 454–455  Rice retired in 1933 and died in January 1938.[1]: 505 

Legacy

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In 1913, critic Herbert Croly described the partners of Parker, Thomas & Rice as being notable in their application of Beaux-Arts architectural principles to their work, principally in the Colonial Revival style. Their work was contrasted with contemporary architecture firms such as Carrère & Hastings which maintained the bombastic style of the Beaux-Arts in addition to its principles of planning and was summed up as being simply in "persistent good taste."[8]

Employees of Parker & Thomas and Parker, Thomas & Rice included Henry Bailey Alden[1]: 13  and Franklin H. Hutchins.[1]: 313–314 

A number of their works are listed on the United States National Register of Historic Places.[9]

Architectural works

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Henry F. Withey and Elsie Rathburn Withey Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased) (Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company, 1956)
  2. ↑ "Taylor, Robert E[dward] Lee" in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography vol. 41 (New York: James T. White & Company, 1956)
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Richard M. Candee, Naomi Miller, Keith N. Morgan and Roger G. Reed, Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston, ed. Keith N. Morgan (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009)
  4. 1 2 American Contractor (July 22, 1922): 45.
  5. 1 2 "Parker Medal given to its donor's firm. Parker, Thomas & Rice wins architectural award," Boston Globe, May 7, 1924.
  6. ↑ "Personals" in American Architect and Building News (January 16, 1924): 20.
  7. ↑ "Announcements" in Architecture (April 1927): 224.
  8. ↑ Herbert D. Croly, "Notes on the work of Parker, Thomas & Rice of Boston and Baltimore" in Architectural Record (August 1913): 97-167.
  9. ↑ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  10. ↑ American Architect and Building News (March 8, 1902)
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 John Dorsey and James D. Dilts, A Guide to Baltimore Architecture, 3rd ed. (Centreville: Tidewater Publishers, 1997)
  12. ↑ James M. Goode, Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington's Destroyed Buildings (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979): 348.
  13. ↑ Richard C. Youngken, Ram Point National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (2015)
  14. ↑ Brickbuilder (February 1908)
  15. ↑ Carey L. Jones and Laura J. Kline with Betsy Friedberg, Bourne High School National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (2013)
  16. ↑ Fred B. Shoken, Heiser, Rosenfeld, and Strauss Buildings National Register of Historic Places Inventory–Nomination Form (1980)
  17. ↑ Brickbuilder (June 1906)
  18. ↑ "New B. and O. building," Baltimore Sun, January 26, 1905.
  19. ↑ Christopher Weeks, Finney Houses Historic District National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (1989)
  20. ↑ Manufacturers Record (October 20, 1904): 337.
  21. ↑ Architectural Record (July 1908)
  22. ↑ Gregory K. Clancey, Great Fire of 1911 Historic District National Register of Historic Places Inventory–Nomination Form (1984)
  23. ↑ School Board Journal (December 1907): 26.
  24. 1 2 Douglass Shand-Tucci, Built in Boston: City and Suburb, 1800–2000 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999)
  25. ↑ S. Allen Chambers, Buildings of West Virginia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)
  26. 1 2 Donlyn Lyndon, The City Observed: Boston. A Guide to the Architecture of the Hub (Random House, 1982)
  27. 1 2 William H. Jordy, Buildings of Rhode Island, ed. Ronald J. Onorato and William McKenzie Woodward (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)
  28. ↑ Architectural Forum (June 1918)
  29. ↑ Report of the Maryland State Normal School Building Commission, December 31, 1915 (1916)
  30. ↑ Engineering and Contracting (July 24, 1918): 96.
  31. ↑ Larry Millett, AIA Guide to St. Paul's Summit Avenue and Hill District (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009)
  32. ↑ American Contractor (May 8, 1920): 50.
  33. ↑ "Boston Chamber builds $6,000,000 structure" in Iron Trade Review (November 6, 1924): 1245.
  34. ↑ "Boston's exhibitions (1927)" in Architectural Record (June 1927): 537.
  35. ↑ "Real estate deals and building news; bids asked for erection of new home for insurance company," Baltimore Sun, October 8, 1925.
  36. ↑ Manufacturers Record (April 30, 1925): 121.
  37. ↑ Ann G. Giroux, Guilford (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2015)
  38. ↑ "Macomber plans to rebuild race plant destroyed by fire," New York Times, August 12, 1930.
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