Introduction

In 1966, as a fledgling architect in my first year back in New York from school in New Haven, I reviled Mott Schmidt's Susan Wagner Wing at Gracie Mansion. I did not know who Mott Schmidt was; in fact, at first I only knew of the Wagner Wing from what I read about it in the New York Times, where Ada Louis Huxtable had dismissed a preliminary scheme by other architects for possessing "all the charm and suitability of a suburban garage;" and gone on to praise Schmidt's subsequent redesign "for its scholarly and appropriate good taste"' I reviled it, I now know, on a priori prejudice masquerading as principle, not on the facts of the case, not on its inherent qualities as architecture.

Schmidt's Wagner Wing was opened in September 1966. I continued to revile it, but only until I visited it-saw it in use, saw it for what it was and not for some abstract theory about what it might have been, or worse still, for what it ought to have been. Though physically large, here was no self-important monument to a singular moment, no idiosyncratic personal vision, no self-conscious statement about the "spirit of our times." Here was a well crafted, functionally planned building artistically deferential to the modest mansion it served. Here was something that addressed the needs of the user and the culture of the place, giving pleasure rather than provocation. Amazingly, this modest effort was, for me, in its own way, as challenging as any building on the contemporary scene--more so in many ways. The Wagner Wing, so anomalous in a period when most architects insisted that to serve the present one must break with the past, helped bring my deficiencies as a beginning architect into focus and, as well, called my attention to the deficiencies that were built in to so much I had been taught to believe in architecture school. Looking at what Schmidt could accomplish with such style in a language then deemed "dead" by most architects, I began to see new possibilities. The Wagner Wing was, for me at that moment, something of a revelation. It cautioned me that the architect must think with his eyes and his brains, must sympathize and not merely theorize.

Early in his career, Mott Schmidt found his niche in architecture, mastering the language of American Georgian Classicism. He became an architect catering to a monied crowd who liked what he did because it so perfectly coincided with their own views. A niche, I feel obliged to point out, is not a rut. A niche is a place carved out of a wall in which one can take shelter from the elements yet be among them. An embracing semi-circle of space, a niche not only permits, but practically demands, that its inhabitants be part of the world as they gaze out at its goings on.

From his comfortable niche, Mott Schmidt watched as architectural time passed his world by. He let it. He knew what he could do, and it appears that he was among the lucky ones to survive not only the change of taste from traditionalism to modernism that ripped apart the architectural profession in the 1920s and 1930s, but also to survive the economic depression that left most architects, no matter their stylistic preference, unemployed. Schmidt seemed almost always to find some like-minded patron to let him do what he knew how to do best: lovely, Georgian inspired houses, some in town, but most often after 1930, in the back country of New York's suburban counties.

Maybe Schmidt may not have thought himself completely lucky in his success. He had loyal clients and fine opportunities to build, though he did not have the admiration of the profession as a whole, nor of the artistic cognoscenti, both of whom by the late 1930s found his approach "old hat." But while he may have eventually come to enjoy the status that became his as the "last of the Georgians;" I suspect for a very long time he probably felt neglected, even "out of it," to use a term of our day. One thing is for sure: architectural time has a funny way of sometimes standing still, sometimes run-ning down, even more remarkably, sometimes reversing itself.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, just as the clock of modernism became very still indeed, the post-modernist clock began to tick away, bringing with it a renewed appreciation not only of traditional form but also of the work of the last, lost generation of architects who had stuck by traditionalism through the years of modernism's hegemony. The capacity to see, freshly, something old or passed--by, "used up" or dead, to invent new work out of old themes, is one of the joys of art. Changes in taste and the revivals of methods and styles deemed outmoded are among the most remarkable aspects of creativity. By the late 1970s the work of Schmidt and that of a dozen or so masters of tradition in his generation, including Frank J. Forster (1886-1948), Gordon B. Kaufmann (1888- 1949), Harrie T. Lindeberg (1881?-1959), Wallace Neff (1895-1982), John Staub (1892-1981), and Paul Williams (1894-1980) was being admired, even emulated. Sadly, the revival of traditionalism came just a bit too late for Schmidt and most of his generation to really enjoy. He died in 1977.

Mott Schmidt was every inch an artist and a professional. Neither trail blazer, nor copybook classicist, he took up established architectural language and made buildings with it that were honest to their clients and appropriate to their places. In an era rebounding in self-important monuments to self-important egos, Mott Schmidt's legacy seems more valuable than ever before. The fineness of his craft and the keenness of his eye have left us with gifts of brick and mortar that seem to get better and better with each passing day. I thank him for what he taught me, and commend his work to all who would free themselves from the pressure of artistic prejudice and embrace what they themselves know and feel.

From the 1880s until the eve of World War II a large group of American architects flourished through the specialized practice of residential design for America's wealthy business and professional leaders. Following principles of academic or creative eclecticism, these architects helped to define the ideal of gracious, elegant living in America by adapting a range of historical house models to accommodate modern urban and country life. Mott B. Schmidt (1889-1977) was one of the last American masters of traditional domestic architecture, practicing in New York from 1912 until the 1970s. His clients included many of the city's society figures and business elite. Yet, because he eschewed publicity throughout his career, Schmidt's excellent architecture has received too little attention. This website is intended to offer a sampling of his work in the form of an architectural monograph of the type prevalent during his own time, as a tribute to a long and distinguished career.

Schmidt's preferred style was a restrained and, one could say, abstract version of American Georgian. One of several "colonial revival" idioms which were used in town and country houses beginning in the 1880s, the red brick and white trimmed Georgian vocabulary attained its greatest popularity during Schmidt's peak creative period. During the 1920s, domestic architecture for the wealthy took a turn toward classic simplicity - clients with money wished to show less, without betraying a lack of taste or desire for elegance. Privacy, restraint and graceful domestic comfort replaced the ostentatiousness associated with turn-of-the-century houses of the plutocracy. The Georgian style, with its emphasis on planarity enlivened by the slightest detail, was a perfect vehicle for this. And, though critics like Russell Whitehead found the style "staid and decorous;' it had a wide appeal among patrons for its associations with the orderly virtues of eighteenth-century Anglo-colonial society. Architects such as Schmidt and his contemporary, William Lawrence Bottomley (1883-1951), made substantial careers out of their ability to design houses which seemed to connect directly with the traditions of American and English classical architecture. Informed by both an increased scholarly knowledge of early American precedents and a familiarity with the groundbreaking Georgian work of such architects as Charles Platt (1861-1933) and John Russell Pope (1874-1937), the 1920s eclectic architect could be more exacting and sophisticated in his use of the idiom. Mott Schmidt was one of the most skilled exponents of the style.

Schmidt's career followed the shifting contours of twentieth century social history and economics, beginning with the Jazz Age and the era of the last tycoons. Most of his clients were drawn from the second and third generations of America's post-Civil War capitalist oligarchy. His patrons in the twenties rode the sophisticated wave of taste that was sustained by the euphoria of a freewheeling market. When the crash came, Schmidt weathered the Depression with a few loyal patrons. His work remained conservative and solid. Rather than embracing Modernism, as some of his contemporaries did, he 'remained committed to classical and traditional principles. After the Second World War he became known as one of the last American traditionalists, and produced work for a smaller group of wealthy clients who continued to favor historical models for their houses. A closer look at the three major phases of his career and the work produced in each demonstrates both his personal integrity as a classical architect and the way in which his patrons came to value his authoritative and subtle handling of the Georgian style.