Men's Building (Wilder Hall) for Oberlin College

There are some buildings that have been changed so much since their initial construction that it is often hard to fully appreciate their quality of design.  The Men's Building, known as Wilder Hall, at Oberlin College is such a building.  While the exterior of the building retains almost all of its remarkable Romanesque features, the interior bears almost no resemblance to what it once was. 

   

Near the end of his career, Joseph Silsbee was experiencing a storm of activity as he was working on various homes for friends and new clients, the earliest structures in Gary Indiana and planning for grounds and buildings for Oberlin College.  Though he had schemes for several buildings, Wilder Hall was the second and final structure that the college built to his plans.

The structure was designed as a dormitory, meeting and assembly space for men on campus.  In its early incarnations, it was called a "Y.M.C.A. building" and it is interesting to compare this with the Gary Y.M.C.A., built about a year later, to see how Silsbee adapted this type to another context.  The design that Silsbee presented to college trustees changed at least four times before a final one was chosen and  constructed.  An initial design was considered out of step with the look of the immediate college campus.  In order to compliment Warner Gymnasium by Chicago architect, Norman Patton (pictured below), a Romanesque style was chosen.  The primary design debate centered around the building's entrance.  Initially planned with a shallow portico with three arches above, a covered veranda was desired by the building committee.  Silsbee resisted the covering of the open piazza in the front of the building, noting that it would shut out light from the great hall on the first floor.  Another scheme included a modified covered entry with a large single recessed arch articulated above (pictured above).  The final scheme omitted the arch in favor of an austere squared cut-stone configuration above the main entry.

The building is detailed with massive stone walls, Romanesque arches and fine detailing like ornately carved column capitals and a bracketed eave.

Custom lighting that flanks the entry was designed for the building and was likely constructed by Winslow Brothers of Chicago. 

 

A woven checkerboard motif is used on the inside and outside of the buildings to accent engaged piers and stair raining balusters. 

Initially planed as a single large open room with fireplaces at each end, the current main hall is now subdivided into a series of small meeting spaces.  Off the main room, small alcoves were designed for more intimate gatherings.  Only one of these alcoves still exists.  Natural light would color the room in a gold hue as it passed through delicately detailed art glass transoms above each window. 

The main hall was once detailed with ornate columns and composite capitals and a beamed ceiling with egg and dart molding.  The ceiling is now completely covered and the columns stripped of all of their detail.  The intent of the space was to provide a large room that could accommodate several small informal groupings of students.  It had a stated social aim to foster camaraderie amongst the students much like Silsbee-designed club spaces did for their members.      

Silsbee donated a college seal that was made by close friend and college treasurer, James Severance's daughter, Julia.   This is located in a tympanum over the door to a main assembly hall, directly opposite the main entry.  The grand staircase that occupies this area has several remarkable features including a slow gradual rise of the railing from the first landing to the second and a gracefully curved balcony at the second floor that opens to this space.  Silsbee's son, Ralph, oversaw construction of the building and it was because of his work on it that he was able to get additional local work, eventually moving to nearby Elyria and setting up his own practice. 

James Kemble School for Utica School Board

In May of 1880, Joseph Silsbee appeared at a hearing before the Utica School Board regarding the plans he submitted as part of an architectural competition for a new public school for the City of Utica.   A year earlier, he had "lost" a similar competition for the Prescott School in the City of Syracuse.  Motivated by the outcome of that competition, he seemed concerned that unfair bias would be given towards buildings that were less than the stipulated budget amount of $10,000, as he felt was the case of the Syracuse competition.  He and other architects had submitted plans for buildings in that competition for the stipulated amount only to be beaten out of the project not by a better designed building but one that was cheaper.

Silsbee's concerns from Syracuse were unwarranted in Utica.  What Silsbee didn't know was that his proposal was the only one submitted.  It seems that Utica architects were not interested in the project and no other architects of the region seemed to take interest either.  Fresh off the Syracuse competition, he submitted a simple, yet finely detailed building design that seemed to be a big departure from the more rectilinear Italianate structures that dominated school construction in Central New York.  Given how soon it was between the two competitions, it would be interesting to know what Silsbee's proposal for the Prescott school was.  Unfortunately, no drawings of the entries exist.           

The image above is one of the very few that we have of this demolished building.  It was a two story brick structure.  The building once stood at the corner of Kemble and James Streets in Utica.  The double gabled roof on James Street was one remarkable feature of the building.  The ample-sized window area were another.   A carefully detailed porch and entry on the Kemble Street side of the building, concealed by a tree in the image was also a remarkable feature.  The lower story, with its huge arched windows was made of brick and the upper story was a mixture of brick and terra cotta trim and accents.  The original design featured stone but terra cotta was substituted due to cost concerns.  The larger portion of the building that extends down Kemble Street was an addition from the early 1900's.   

Jefferson School (for the Gary Land Company)

Joseph Lyman Silsbee was the primary architect employed by the Gary Land Company to oversee design and construction of buildings in the first subdivision of the new city.  It was a unique opportunity for the experienced architect to design an array of building types that would become the formative structures for a new community.  One of the earliest structures that was commissioned by the company was the Jefferson School.  Some excellent photos depicting construction on the school can be found U. S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection site.     

Built in in 1906 and opened in 1907, the Jefferson School was the earliest school structure in the area that was built of substantial materials.  It is a Classical Revival structure made of brick and stone and designed to house students from all grade levels.  The Jefferson School, and even Silsbee's work at Gary in general, can be seen as an end of an era in architectural design and construction.  With the increasing complexity of building systems and programs, subsequent buildings of this type in Gary and elsewhere would eventually be designed by architects that specialized in school design.  Incidentally, Silsbee's own son Ralph, an architect who eventually oversaw work on some of the buildings at Gary, would follow this trend and became an early "design specialist".  He was responsible for the design of schools in Elyria, Ohio and for many of the surrounding communities in the northern part of that state.

School for Boys at the State Institute for Feeble-Minded Children

In 1876, the state of New York was making significant changes to their Institute for Feeble Minded Children (Previously known as the New York State Asylum for Idiots and later known as the Syracuse Developmental Center), its first home and school for children with developmental disabilities.  J. L. Silsbee was retained by the state as the Institute's architect for a school for boys and continued as their architect to complete other property assessments and improvements at the Syracuse campus as well as other locations in the state.  Once located atop a hill adjacent to Burnet Park in Syracuse, the boy's school was the first major addition to the campus since it was first established there in 1854.

The sprawling structure consisted of large kitchen and cafeteria, living areas and classrooms for the male population of the Institute.  It was a Victorian Gothic style building, a style for which Silsbee had become very popular.  It was constructed of red brick with polychrome brick and stone accents and wood cupola and porches.

From the Immigration to the United States digital collection,
Open Collections Program, Harvard University Library