Architecture and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Boston: Harvard's H. Langford Warren

H. Langford Warren (1857-1917) was an important link in the chain of individuals who contributed to the architectural practice, theories of design, and the teaching of architectural history in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Best known in the Boston area, Warren first worked under the renowned architect Henry Hobson Richardson before establishing his own practice. Friends and colleagues during this period included Charles Eliot Norton, the noted art historian, and Harvard's Charles Herbert Moore, a leading Ruskinian painter. Hired by Harvard University in 1893, Warren developed its architectural curriculum. In 1897 he helped found Boston's Society of Arts and Crafts. At the time of his death in 1917, Warren was Dean of the School of Architecture at Harvard and President of the Society of Arts and Crafts.

At the turn of the century, Warren's philosophical vision offered a conservative and ethnocentric perspective attractive to many Bostonians and to a significant segment of Americans nationwide. According to this view, English culture was the basis of American culture. Through his work at Harvard and in the Arts and Crafts movement, he articulated and promoted an aesthetic guided by an attachment to the past, and he encouraged his students at Harvard to revive and reinterpret English and Anglo-American models. Another characteristic of Warren's aesthetic was "restraint," a quality generally attributed to the region's Puritan settlers. "Restraint" also meant a rejection of both the lavish ornamentation of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the more original styles such as Art Nouveau that were emerging at the turn of the century.

Following the ideals of John Ruskin, William Morris, and later leaders of the English Arts and Crafts movement, Warren and his architect-colleagues promoted a close collaboration with the craftsmen who enhanced their buildings. The resulting building designs represent a significant contribution to the development of American Arts and Crafts architecture, complementing the proto-modern work of designers such as Frank Lloyd Wright. In fact, Arts and Crafts architecture in North America was extremely diverse. Meister examines the greater complexity of this architecture by exploring the eclectic historicism of Warren, a key figure in the movement that was centered in Boston.