Frederick Clarke Withers (b. 1828, d. 1901)

 

Frederick Clarke Withiers was born in Somersetshire, England, educated in King Edward's school in Sherborne, Dorsetshire, and then went on to study architecture. He came to the United States in 1852 at the invitation of the renowned American landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing and established his reputation by designing churches.  Among these are St. Luke's, Matteawan, New York; the 1st Presbyterian, Newburg, New York; St. Thomas's, Hanover, New Hampshire; the Church of the Advent, Louisville, Kentucky; St. Luke's, Altoona, Pennsylvania; and Calvary, Summit, New Jersey.   After Downing’s untimely death Withers then turned to Calvert Vaux, Downing's former partner. In 1857 Withers was one of the first to be asked to join the newly founded American Institute of Architects. Although he always retained his British citizenship, he volunteered for service in the Union Army in 1861. He returned home an invalid the following year, but recovered, and resumed practice in New York City, joining Vaux along with Frederick Law Olmstead in a partnership that lasted until 1871. He continued to practice architecture, and in 1888 formed a partnership with Walter Dickson. Together as supervising architects for the Board of Charities and Correction they designed several buildings on Roosevelt Island among them the Strecker Memorial Laboratory and three brick structures for the Almshouse. In 1897 Withers retired to his home in Yonkers, New York.

 

The most enduring monument to Withers is the Jefferson Market Courthouse and Jail designed in the Italian Gothic style that currently houses the Greenwich Village branch of the New York Public Library. It is an ingenious organization of spaces compacted into an odd, triangular site. A bell tower in the corner commands a view up and down Sixth Avenue in New York City. Withers incorporated the functions of police court, district court, and fire observatory in a structure which many consider his masterpiece. While the High Victorian Gothic Jefferson Market Courthouse, located in the Greenwich Village Historic District, is the best known of Wither's New York City works, he had many other New York commissions, among them the commercial building at 448 Broome Street in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District, the high altar in Trinity Church, the lich gate of the "Little Church Around the Corner" (Church of the Transfiguration), and the City Prison which replaced the original "Tombs." Withers was primarily considered an ecclesiastical architect and published the influential book "Church Architecture" in 1873. He was a strong advocate of the Gothic style for churches, and the Chapel of the Good Shepherd illustrates his conceptions and ideas of what a church should be.

 

 

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