Gurdon Randall's Remarkable Practice: Part 2

In 1855, Randall was commissioned by the First Ward Presbyterian Society to design a new church for their congregation. The modest brick structure still stands on Syracuse’s North Side. It has been stuccoed over and the main tower has been changed but the building still retains much of its original character, particularly on the interior, and is now the Westminster Presbyterian Church.

Old First Ward Presbyterian Church, now Westminster Presbyterian, Syracuse, N.Y.

With prosperity growing in Syracuse, Randall was also able to secure several residential commissions related to commercial work he had undertaken. Unfortunately the information about these projects is brief and doesn’t always mention the client or location.  According to newspaper accounts, Randall prepared drawings for the Patrick Lynch residence that once stood at the foot of James Street. Within a year of construction, the Washington Block was sold to Lynch, a one-time Salt Merchant and Banker. The home was a large Italianate mansion with a prominent central cupola and ornate window surrounds. It is better known locally as a one-time home to the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, now the Everson Museum. 

Patrick Lynch Residence, James Street, from W. W. Clayton's History of Syracuse. 

It isn’t completely clear why Randall left Syracuse as there seemed to be plenty of opportunity for growth in the city and in the surrounding region. One newspaper account indicates that Randall felt slighted because he was not chosen to design the new Wieting Block after the old one burned down in 1856. The new structure, at a prominent location on Clinton Square, was designed by architect Horatio Nelson White. A year later, Randall is living in Chicago.

Clinton Square in 1877 with H. N. White's Weiting Block at the right. 

The opportunity that Chicago had to offer was not without its challenges. Foremost was the professional competition that he would have faced. One local history account from 1868 sums it up best:  “On arriving, he found formidable competitors already located here, such men, for example, as Van Osdel, Carter, Burling, Boyington, and Wheelock, who, together with a number of others, were doing a thriving business. For a new comer to successfully cope with such an array of talent was not an easy matter.”

Perhaps because of this competition, Randall’s early success as an architect in his new home occurred outside of Chicago. Some of his earliest structures were residences and train depot in nearby Sycamore and DeKalb, Illinois. An excellent example of his work from this period is in a home he designed for Reverend F. N. Ewing at Decatur, Illinois. His homes of this period, with their assymetrical composition, mansard roofs and roofs with clipped gables, took cues from the suburban villas that were being championed by architects in his native New England and New York. 

Residence for F. N. Ewing, Decatur, Illinois ca 1865.

It wasn’t long before he was one of the leading architects in Chicago, cementing his position in the profession with seemingly countless significant public structures. One structure that epitomizes these years is the main building for Northwestern University. Construction on the building started in 1866 and took several years to complete. It is an assymetrical composition made of local limestone. The picturesque Gothic Revival structure still stands today and became a template of sorts for similar college campuses he designed in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Georgia, Minnesota, and Kansas.     

Main Hall, Northwestern University, 1866.

His success with grade and high schools as well as courthouses was similar. Within ten years of moving to Chicago, he completed over 100 such structures. The large number of total commissions is still unknown.

Morgan County Courthouse, Jacksonville, Illinois, 1868.

In the late spring of 1884, Gurdon Randall fell ill and made the decision to return to his home in Vermont. He left his firm in the charge of architect Normand Patton and made him a partner in his absence. Gurdon Randall died on September 20, 1884, never returning to Chicago. Patton would operate the firm and seamlessly continue work for a short time before taking on a new partner, Reynolds Fisher in 1885 and then Grant Miller in 1898. Patton’s firms and their subsequent successor partnerships would follow Randall’s example of artful design, dominating the world of public building design in small towns across the Midwest, leaving an impressive legacy of public schools, libraries, and college structures.

School House for a small Ohio Town, Randall & Patton ca 1884.

Gurdon Randall has a lasting legacy because of the vast reach of his work and their prominent place in the communities where he built. He also left a lasting legacy in the several books he published on the topics of school and courthouse design. No doubt, these were used by many architect of the day to inform designs of public structures. Finally, he left an almost unprecedented legacy in the firms that followed directly in his footsteps.  You would be hard pressed to find a town without one of their works.