Herbert Channing Burdett (1855–1891) was an American architect trained in the office of Henry Hobson Richardson who, in a brief career, established himself as a successful designer of Shingle Style and Richardsonian Romanesque buildings in western New York. With his partner James Herbert Marling (1857–1895), Burdett designed several public buildings in Buffalo, New York and a number of residential properties for the leading citizens of Buffalo, Woodstock, Ontario and Burlington, Vermont. Owing to his premature death, Burdett is little remembered today outside those areas where his known buildings still survive.
Early life Herbert Burdett was born on April 26, 1855, at 47 West Cedar Street in Boston, Massachusetts, the eldest of four children of Alfred Locke Burditt (1831–1901) and Mary Anna Joslin Burditt (1832–1900). A. L. Burditt, a native of Leominster, Massachusetts, was the longtime cashier of Leominster National Bank, as well as the treasurer of Leominster Savings Bank and, according to The New York Times, “one of the best-known financiers in Worcester County.” Previous generations of Burditts were among the founders of the area's famed comb industry.
When Herbert Burdett was young the family moved briefly to Sterling, Illinois, before returning to Leominster in 1861. In 1872 Burdett (by which time he and his siblings had changed the spelling of their surname) graduated from the town's Field High School. For the next two years he delayed entry to higher education due to ill health, recuperating at the family home at 8 Grove Avenue before entering Harvard College in 1874.
Education In 1878 Burdett graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard, where he was remembered as “a good student, of quiet tastes, unfailing good nature, courteous bearing, and excellent common sense. He attained a credible standing in College, reaching a disquisition on graduation. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa honor society, the Pi Eta Society and the Harvard Natural History Society."
For a year after graduation, Burdett remained in Cambridge, Massachusetts and continued taking courses at Harvard and studied law under the direction of a Boston lawyer before becoming “devoted to history and to several miscellaneous subjects he was unable to take up during the College Course.” Thereafter he spent the next two years teaching Latin, Greek, Mathematics and Drawing at small private schools in Delaware, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Architectural training In August 1881, Herbert Burdett entered the drawing office of the newly established architectural practice of Hartwell & Richardson at 68 Devonshire Street in Boston, “devoting himself to the study of architecture with the intention of making it his profession.” Burdett may well have worked on Hartwell & Richardson's first major commission, the Richardsonian Romanesque Belmont Public Library, in Belmont, Massachusetts.
After spending two years as a draughtsman for Hartwell & Richardson, in October 1883 Burdett left the firm to join the Brookline, Massachusetts, office of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886), then considered America's leading architect and well known for fostering young and upcoming talents such as Stanford White and Charles Follen McKim. Richardson was a major influence on a generation of architects such as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.
It is unclear on which projects Burdett was engaged once he joined Richardson's atelier, as the firm enjoyed a large portfolio of residential, commercial and public works across the country at the time. However, when Burdett took up his new position in Brookline, Richardson's office was in the process of developing the competition entry for the proposed Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a commission it ultimately won in January 1884. It is believed that during his three years in the practice, Burdett worked on the courthouse project, a design Richardson himself considered to be one of his most successful.
Around the time he joined the Richardson office, Burdett appears to have undertaken a small commission in his own right: the provision of plans to improve the Commons of his home town of Leominster.
Another major project at the firm at this time was the completion of the New York State Capitol at Albany, a commission shared by Richardson and fellow architect Leopold Eidlitz, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and, latterly, capitol commissioner Isaac G. Perry. The main phases of construction were divided between Richardson and Eidlitz, with Olmsted advising and, from 1883, Perry acting as the driving force to complete the designs and keep the building functioning during the course of construction. Richardson's main design tasks included the completion of the building's south side, including the Senate Chamber and the Great Western Staircase. This main stair was originally conceived by Richardson and was well underway at the time of his death in 1886, though Perry was later responsible for designing the wealth of elaborate carving that earned it the sobriquet of "the Million Dollar Staircase." The full role of Herbert Burdett in the design and construction of the New York State Capitol requires further research, but it has been established that he worked not only on the Senate Chamber but also provided designs for the state library and the west staircase.
It is also known that at this time Burdett furnished preliminary drawings of Richardson's proposed new city hall in Albany, work that the American Institute of Architects called "a charming bit of work for both."
When H. H. Richardson died in March, 1886, he bequeathed his practice to three senior associates, George Foster Shepley (1860–1903), Charles Hercules Rutan (1851–1914), and Charles Allerton Coolidge (1858–1936). The newly re-christened firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge completed existing Richardson projects such as the Allegheny County Courthouse and the iconic John J. Glessner House in Chicago, as well as taking on new commissions for "Richardsonian" buildings around New England in the late 1880s and 1890s. Burdett seems to have stayed on with the successor firm and continued living in Brookline, and it is believed that he was occasionally dispatched to Buffalo in 1886 to oversee the construction of Richardson's final residential commission, the William H. Gratwick house at 776 Delaware Avenue.
It is likely that during one of these trips to Buffalo from his home in Brookline, Burdett encountered local architect James Herbert Marling, who, early in 1887, had just disbanded his partnership with Joseph Silsbee, best known as the first employer of Frank Lloyd Wright. According to Burdett, "in February, 1887, I came to Buffalo, and since that time I have been in business on my own account, with J. H. Marling, in the firm of Marling and Burdett, architects, and have been reasonably prosperous."
Marling & Burdett The earliest commissions undertaken by the new Buffalo partnership of J. H. Marling and H. C. Burdett are difficult to identify with certainty, as there appears to be a number of Silsbee & Marling projects in that firm's final year or two that were either completed or reworked by the successor firm. In fact, some sites once thought to be early works of Marling & Burdett are now known to be late efforts by Silsbee & Marling.
Institutional and recreational works The first major commission undertaken by the new Buffalo partnership was also a high-profile one: the city's International Industrial Fair planned for 1889, billed as "An Exposition of the Arts, Industries and Breeding Interests of the United States and Canada." The new Fair buildings included an art gallery, industrial and agricultural expositions, sporting facilities, administration blocks and restaurants. A contemporary account of Burdett's hometown of Leominster commented on the work of their erstwhile resident: "The International Fair Building, the largest, so far as known, in the world, and the finest, from an architectural point of view, of any ever constructed in this country, was recently built from their plans. The accompanying drawing of his building will be interesting to the schoolmates and friends of Mr. Burdett here in his native town, showing, as it does, the advancement he has made in his chosen profession." Another project that attracted much attention to Marling & Burdett was the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd on Jewett Parkway in Buffalo's Parkside neighborhood. Originally a Silsbee & Marling commission, the design was reworked once Burdett joined the practice in 1887. The refinements to the exterior included extending the height of the tower and replacing single, louvered round-arched openings on each site with three narrow round-arched of equal heights, shortening and relocating the entrance porch and reducing the fenestration of the nave and transept gables from a large mullioned round-arch window above a series of square openings to a series of three narrow round-arch lights in keeping with those at the top of the tower. Altogether the new design more closely adhered to the principles of Richardsonian Romanesque with its references to the Ames Free Library built by Burdett's former master in North Easton, Massachusetts a decade before. The first major Marling & Burdett project to be attributed solely to Herbert Burdett was Buffalo's original Saturn Club, a private club founded in 1885. After five years in temporary locations, the "college men's social and whist club" purchased a site on the corner of Delaware and Edward Streets for a purpose-built building and turned to a fellow member for the design. According to a contemporary account, the "new and beautiful club house ... [was] one of the unique and striking structures of Delaware Avenue, the architectural design being that of the skilful architect, Mr Herbert C. Burdett." The success of the Saturn Club was such, however, that by the early 1920s the membership had expanded to the point where the club relocated to larger premises constructed further north on Delaware Avenue and the Burdett building was sold to B'Nai B'Brith for use as a Montefiore Club.
Residential works During the fifty months of their architectural partnership, J. H. Marling and H. C. Burdett produced designs for at least a dozen residential properties in and around Buffalo, as well others in Woodstock, Ontario, Burlington, Vermont and eastern Massachusetts. Many of the early residential projects came to the partnership through contacts developed out of Silsbee & Marling commissions (such as the wealthy Hamlin family), and undoubtedly projects such as the International Fair brought them to the attention of influential clients like Jewett M Richmond, city councillor, leading businessman and "one of Buffalo's foremost citizens," who sat on the Fair's board. In addition to their palatial designs for William H Hamlin house at 1058 Delaware Avenue (demolished 1938) and the J. M. Richmond house at 844 Delaware Avenue (extant), other more modest houses known to have been designed by Marling & Burdett were constructed in Elmwood, Linwood, Summer and Fargo Avenues in Buffalo. Number 354 Fargo Avenue is considered to be the last surviving example of Richardsonian Romanesque domestic architecture in the city, and features a tripartite set of round-arch windows in a brick version of the pattern built in stone at the Church of the Good Shepherd.