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Minard Lafever

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Occupation
  
Architect

Name
  
Minard Lafever

Role
  
Architect


Minard Lafever image2findagravecomphotos250photos201216291

Born
  
August 1798

Died
  
September 26, 1854, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States

Books
  
The Modern Builder's Guide, The beauties of modern architecture

Buildings
  
Old Whaler's Church, St. Ann's and the Holy Trinity Church

People also search for
  
Asher Benjamin, Chester Hills, Charles Babcock

Structures
  
St Ann's and the Holy Trini, Old Whaler's Church, 1838 Peter Augustus Jay House, Old Dutch Church, Merchant's House Museum

Minard Lafever (1798–1854) was an American architect of churches and houses in the United States in the early nineteenth century.

Contents

Minard Lafever Minard Lafever MODERN BUILDERS GUIDE New york Design and Villas

Life and career

Minard Lafever httpss3uswest2amazonawscomfindagravepr

Lafever began life as a carpenter around 1820. At this period in the United States there were no professional schools of architecture and few who claimed the title architect. Most structures were designed and put up by builders, and architects and builders were trained by working under master builders.

In 1829 Lafever published The Young Builders' General Instructor, followed by Modern Builders' Guide in 1833, The Beauties of Modern Architecture in 1835 and The Architectural Instructor in 1850. His pattern books were influential in spreading his Greek Revival style.

Four of his buildings which were subsequently designated National Historic Landmarks are:

  • First Presbyterian Church (Sag Harbor) (tall steeple destroyed in a hurricane)
  • St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church
  • Old Merchant's House
  • Sailors' Snug Harbor
  • Other notable buildings include:

  • Benjamin Huntting House, now the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum
  • Church of the Holy Apostles (New York, New York) listed on the National Register of Historic Places
  • Strong Place Baptist Church, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (1851–52)
  • One of his most successful acolytes was John F. Rague who designed and built the 1837 Old Capitol of Illinois and the 1840 Territorial Capitol of Iowa.

    Pattern books

    Lafever wrote five pattern books that were influential in spreading his Greek Revival style, most notably "The Modern Builder's Guide" (1833) and "The Beauties of Modern Architecture" (1835). The Greek Revival Government Street Presbyterian Church in Mobile, Alabama is a National Historic Landmark that was designed using many of the latter book's detailed guidelines. Interestingly, that church's tall steeple, like the steeple of Lafever's First Presbyterian Church in Sag Harbor, was destroyed in a hurricane.

    Other historic structures built using Lafever's designs include Rose Hill Mansion, a National Historic Landmark in western New York, which was built in the style of a two story Greek temple with Ionic columns in 1837. Two mansions in the Boston Post Road Historic District— the 1838 Peter Augustus Jay House and Lounsberry— were built using Lafever's designs, and greatly resemble illustrated plates found within Lafever's books. Rose Glen, an antebellum plantation house near Sevierville, Tennessee, was modeled after Lafever's "Design for a Country Villa," which appeared as the frontispiece in both The Modern Builder's Guide and The Beauties of Modern Architecture.

    Lafever did not confine himself to a single style. His St. James' Church, New York on James Street near Madison Street in Manhattan (1837) is Greek Revival as is his building for Sailors' Snug Harbor, his First Presbyterian Church (Sag Harbor) (1844) is Egyptian Revival, his brownstone St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church at Montague and Clinton Streets in Brooklyn Heights (1847) is Gothic Revival and his Church of the Holy Apostles at Ninth Avenue and 28th Street in Manhattan (1848–1854) is Romanesque/Italianate.

    His last commission was the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, which opened in 1854. The Packer building is in Tudor Gothic style, with 30 schoolrooms, and a two-story-high chapel on the third floor. It has two towers of different size, and the “off-center arrangement of two large peaked gables, give the school the exterior appearance of picturesque irregularity common to the Gothic revival.” However, the interior is compact and symmetrical, with long crossed hallways dividing the building into quadrants.

    Architectural historian Andrew Dolkart calls Lafever’s Packard building one of the earliest and most sophisticated evocations of English-inspired Collegiate Gothic, creating the educational atmosphere of Oxford and Cambridge.

    A list of his churches, extant and not, and a well-researched biography is included in a 2006 nomination for First Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Kingston.

    Books by Minard Lafever

  • The Young Builder's General Instructor,1829
  • The Modern Builder's Guide,1833
  • The Beauties of Modern Architecture, 1835
  • The Modern Practice of Staircase and Handrail Construction,1838
  • The Architectural Instructor,1856
  • References

    Minard Lafever Wikipedia