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Founders Charles A. Rich, Hugh Lamb | ||
Hugh Lamb and Charles Alonzo Rich were partners in the New York City architecture firm of Lamb & Rich. Their firm was established just after 1880 and operated to 1899.The firm was preceded by the firm of Lamb & Wheeler (1877–1881) and succeeded by the firms of Charles A. Rich, Architect (1899–1916), Rich & Mathesius (1916–1928), and Rich, Mathesius & Koyl (1928–1932).
Both were born about 1850 - Lamb was a native of Scotland; Rich was born in Beverly, Mass., and attended Dartmouth. Not much is known of their training, but various sources indicate that Lamb generally handled the firm's business side and Rich was the designer. Lamb died in 1903, and Rich in 1943.
One of their earliest commissions was Henderson Place, a tight-knit group of two dozen houses built in 1882 and located at 86th Street and East End Avenue in Manhattan. Additional buildings they designed include: Theodore Roosevelt's country house Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay Long Island (completed 1887), Mount Morris Bank in Harlem (1883), the Victorian Renaissance revival style Main Building at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (1887), the Queen Anne style Astral Apartments (commissioned by Charles Pratt-built 1885/86) at 184 Franklin St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (national register #82001178), the Frank Babbott house at 153 Lincoln Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the main building of Barnard College in Manhattan, the John M. Greene Hall at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and "Copshaholm," James Oliver's house in South Bend, Indiana. Most of the firm's projects were located within commuting distance of Manhattan, with a significant cluster in New Hampshire, especially at Dartmouth College.
The historian Vincent J. Scully Jr. singled out the vitality of their designs in his 1971 book, The Shingle Style and the Stick Style: Architectural Theory and Design From Richardson to the Origins of Wright (Yale University Press, 1971).