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Richard Upjohn (1802-1878) was an English-born American architect whose expressive vocabulary of Gothic design helped to make this style popular in the mid-19th century.

Richard Upjohn was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset-shire, on Jan. 22, 1802. At the age of 27 he went to America with his wife and son. Upjohn became a skilled cabinetmaker before entering the profession of architecture, which explains his penchant for precise, meticulous architectural decoration. Detailed Gothic buildings probably gave him more pleasure to design and construct than the currently popular Greek revival style, whose proportions he could approve but whose paucity of decoration was to him absurd.

Trinity Church set the tone for numerous other Gothic churches throughout America, and it helped Upjohn get a large number of commissions which placed him at the top of his profession. His other notable churches are the Church of the Ascension, New York City (1840-1841); Christ Church, Brooklyn (1841-1842); Grace Church, Providence, R.I. (1847-1848); Grace Church, Utica, N.Y. (1856-1860); St. Peter’s, Albany, N.Y. (1859-1860); Central Congregational Church, Boston, Mass. (1865-1867); and St. Thomas’s, New York City (1868-1870)—all designed in variations of the Gothic theme.

Upjohn’s public and commercial buildings were generally done in an Italianate style with semicircular, arched windows and doors. They are monotonous in the repetition of motifs and lack compensating decoration.

Sporadic attempts to form an association of professional architects were made for 2 decades before Upjohn and 12 other New York architects organized as the American Institute of Architects in 1857, with Upjohn as first president. The list of members soon included all the best architects of the era, and the institute is still central to all professional activity in the country.

Rural Architecture (1852) is Upjohn’s only complete book, though many drawings and photographic views of his buildings appeared in contemporary magazines. He died in Garrison, N.Y., on Aug. 16, 1878. His most important pupil was his son Richard M. Upjohn.

The English physician Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) emphasized, in practicing medicine, careful observation and experience and earned the title “English Hippocrates.”

Born in Winford Eagle, Dorset, the fifth son of a wealthy country gentleman, Thomas Sydenham entered Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1642. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the civil war, during which the Sydenhams fought for the parliamentarians. He returned to Oxford in 1647, receiving his bachelor degree the following year. In 1651 he rejoined the army, after which he stayed at Oxford until 1663, when he was married and opened his London practice.

With only 18 months of formal medical education, consisting of a mixture of classics, anatomical dissections, and formal disputations, Sydenham found little use in theoretical learning, and experimental science seemed just as useless to him. He was convinced that only the careful observation of diseases at the bedside could lead to medical progress, and he spent all his efforts on detailed clinical observations. Despite his objection to theory and his insistence on a purely empirical medicine, he accepted the traditional concept that diseases resulted from disturbances of the bodily humors. He revived the Hippocratic notion that the seasons and atmospheric conditions played an equally important role, but he differed from Hippocrates in the emphasis he placed on the recognition of specific diseases. He believed that the detailed study of the natural history of any disease would eventually indicate what specific medication should be used for its treatment. Recognizing that Peruvian bark (crude quinine) was the only specific he knew, he prescribed it for malaria, which was the most prevalent fever in the London of his time.At a time when most physicians were deeply concerned with theoretical questions, with systematization and attempts to relate medicine to experimental physics or chemistry, Sydenham’s empiricism and emphasis on clinical
description did not make him popular among his medical colleagues.

Some of Sydenham’s writings became classics, like his description of gout (1683), which he suffered from for years and which ultimately led to his death. He differentiated scarlet fever from measles. His description of hysteria, which is frequently mentioned for its accuracy, included other conditions as well. The prevalence of smallpox led him to the conclusion that it was a physiological process which everyone had to go through. Because of his accurate portrayal of St. Vitus’s dance, this disease became known as Sydenham’s chorea. In therapy he insisted on simple prescriptions and measures, a fact which may have contributed to his great success as a practitioner.

His personal friend and fellow physician John Locke applied Sydenham’s empiric medical ideas to philosophy. Succeeding generations of physicians found Sydenham’s emphasis on bedside observation most useful and proclaimed him the “English Hippocrates.” His emphasis on the study of the natural history of diseases and of all the factors surrounding their occurrence gave great impetus to the subsequent development of epidemiology.

George Bridport was born in London on March 22, 1783, and baptized on April 20, 1793, at Saint Marylebone, Middlesex, London, the same church where his parents Mary Morgan and George Bridport were married in 1781. (1) Information about his early training is sketchy, as he was not registered as an apprentice in painting, decorative painting, glazing, or drafting, nor was he a member of any London guild company. (2) In 1806 he described himself as an architect when he submitted a now-lost “design for decorating ceilings” to the Royal Academy of Art. (3) Latrobe’s accounts for work he performed in London between 1792 and 1795 list the painters, glaziers, carvers, upholsterers, wallpaperers, ornamental plasterers, and other decorative craftsmen he employed, but do not mention any craftsmen with the surname Bridport, or any of the artists Latrobe later suggested as Bridport’s mentors. (4)

The earliest evidence of Bridport’s work as a decorative painter is his trade card (illustrated on p. 78), which was dated to 1807 by Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818), whose immense collection of trade cards at the British Museum offers considerable insight into the work of London artists and artisans contemporary with Bridport. The front of the card proudly announces Bridport’s residence on Cavendish Street, a posh area in northwest London near Saint Marylebone’s Church. The back of the card details the range of materials he decorated and styles in which he professed proficiency: “DRAWING ROOMS/Decorated in the French, Egyptian, Turkish,/Indian, Chinese & Gothic Styles./Transparent Window Blinds/in the above various ways./Ensuite with the Rooms./Temporary Rooms Painted/for Balls. HOUSE PAINTING.”

By 1808 Bridport had brought his talents to the United States. In February of that year Latrobe wrote from Washington, D. C., where he was working on the Capitol, to his brothers-in-law in Philadelphia: “Bridport, whom you sent me, and whom I employed for a month is lost…. Pray hunt him out for me.” (5) Latrobe had intended to have the ceiling of the Hall (or House) of Representatives painted by the fall of 1807, when the Congressional session opened in its new home, but he was unable to procure a suitable painter until he met Bridport and deemed him exactly the quality of painter required for the Michaelangelean job. According to Latrobe, Bridport worked on scaffolding in “equatorial weather,” and the sound of “his groans have reached me” in Philadelphia. (6) But the results were admired immediately. Latrobe commented that the House “Members will think [the ceiling in their chamber] too fine.” (7) In preparation for the work, he had introduced Bridport to Samuel Wetherill, Philadelphia’s premier paint supplier, stating, “I beg especially to introduce him to your attentions as the present transaction may probably be the commencement of considerable transactions with him in the line of your business.” (8)

In August 1808 Latrobe wrote to Bridport, “I want you to have done at Washington about the 1st of October, Mr. [William] Waln’s house [in Philadelphia] then wants you.” (9) In 1809 Bridport was again in Washington to paint the ceremonial oval drawing room for the President’s House and to outfit an elegant temporary Senate Chamber (see illustration on this page). Latrobe wrote in 1809 to Joseph Norris, the president of the Bank of Pennsylvania, about Bridport’s flair for painting the types of decorative work that Latrobe had designed for the ceiling of the bank: “Mr. Bridport … knows exactly what ought to be done. He understands his business well. [He] is a very excellent artist, by profession what is in England called, a decorative Architect and having been brought up under the famous Dixon … he is besides a sober reasonable man of business.” (10)

Latrobe’s reference to Dixon may suggest Bridport’s training, possibly referring to either Robert Dixon (1780-1815), a landscape painter and architectural draftsman, or to Cornelius Dixon (w. 1771-1794), a decorative painter who worked primarily in theatrical set design. (11)