Joseph Lyman Silsbee


Joseph Lyman Silsbee was a significant American architect during the 19th and 20th centuries. He was well known for his facility of drawing and gift for designing buildings in a variety of styles. His most prominent works ran through Syracuse, Buffalo and Chicago He was influential as mentor to a generation of architects, most notably architects of the Prairie School including the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Early life

Joseph Lyman Silsbee was born on November 25, 1848, in Salem, Massachusetts. Silsbee graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1865 and Harvard in 1869. He then became an early student of the first school of architecture in the United States, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Career

After graduating from Harvard and MIT, he served an apprenticeship with Boston architects William Robert Ware & Henry Van Brunt and William Ralph Emerson, respectively. Silsbee traveled around Europe before moving to Syracuse, New York in 1874. In 1875, he married Anna Baldwin Sedgwick, daughter of influential lawyer and politician Charles Baldwin Sedgwick. He had a prolific practice and at one point had three simultaneously operating offices. He had offices in Syracuse, Buffalo, and Chicago. From 1883–1885, his Syracuse office was a partnership with architect Ellis G. Hall. Silsbee's Chicago office had a number of architects who were later to become known in their own right, including:
Silsbee was one of the first professors of architecture at Syracuse University, another one of the earliest schools of architecture in the nation. He was a founding member of the Chicago and Illinois Chapters of the American Institute of Architects. In 1894, Silsbee was awarded the Peabody Medal by the Franklin Institute for his design for a Moving Sidewalk. This invention had its debut at the Worlds Columbian Exposition and saw usage in subsequent Worlds Fairs.

Style of architecture

Among his most prominent architectural works is the landmark Syracuse Savings Bank Building. Built next to the Erie Canal on Clinton Square in Syracuse, it is often referred to as a textbook example of the High Victorian Gothic style. Silsbee also designed the White Memorial Building, the Amos Block, and the Oakwood Cemetery Chapel, all extant in Syracuse. Upland Farm, the lost mansion designed for Frederick R. and Dora Sedgwick Hazard in nearby Solvay, New York is an example of the fashionable residential work that Silsbee was best known for. Silsbee also designed various dwellings around New York State in Ballston Spa, Albany, and Peekskill
Silsbee designed the lavish interiors of Potter Palmer's "castle" in Chicago. Several of his residential designs survive in Riverside and Evanston Illinois. His most prominent surviving work in Chicago is the Lincoln Park Conservatory. Considerably smaller in scale but filled with such elegant details as mosaic floors and a graceful oak roof with "hammer-beams trusses and curved brackets" is his Horatio N. May Chapel on the grounds of Rosehill Cemetery. Silsbee designed the movable walkway at the World's Columbian Exposition pier in 1893, and submitted plans to provide this improvement for the Brooklyn Bridge in 1894, although these plans were never executed.
In his 1941 autobiography, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote:
Silsbee practiced architecture until his death in 1913.

Works

Works include:
BuildingImageDatesLocationCity, StateDescription
William S. Warfield House1886 built
1979 NRHP-listed		1624 Maine St.
Quincy, IllinoisBuilt in 1886 on Maine Street in a blend of the Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne styles. The house features a stone exterior with terra cotta decorations, a massive plan, and a large western porch as well as several smaller porches throughout.
Bryant H. and Lucie Barber Housec. 1901 built
1993 NRHP-listed		103 North Barber Avenue
Polo, IllinoisConstructed around 1901, the house has brick walls, a stone foundation and incorporates steel into its construction.
Henry D. Barber Housec.1891 built
1974 NRHP-listed		410 West Mason Street
Polo, IllinoisDesigned by Silsbee and constructed around 1891, with minor alterations in 1899, the brick and limestone home is cast in Classical Revival style.
Amos Block1878 built
1978 NRHP-listed		210-216 West Water Street
Syracuse, New YorkRomanesque Revival building formerly fronting on the Erie Canal, from which goods were loaded and unloaded from boats
Syracuse Savings Bank1875 built
1971 NRHP-listed		102 N. Salina St.Downtown Syracuse, New YorkDesigned by Silsbee; built in 1875 adjacent to the Erie Canal; its passenger elevator, the first in Syracuse, was an attraction
White Memorial Building1876 built
1973 NRHP-listed		106 E. Washington St.
Syracuse, New YorkProminent, 1876-built, Gothic building with "exceedingly pleasant" dissimilatudes
Unity Chapel1886 built
1974 NRHP-listed		S of Spring Green off WI 23
Spring Green, WisconsinShingle style chapel designed by Silsbee, with assistance from his protege Frank Lloyd Wright, for Wright's Unitarian minister uncle Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
Charles H. Sedgwick House1884 built
c.1925 demolished		James St.Sedgwick neighborhood, Syracuse, New YorkIts roof had a "unique double-gable, a motif also seen on Silsbee's Thomas Drummond Home, built about a year later." Was built for Silsbee's brother-in-law, Charles Hamilton Sedgwick.
Thomas Drummond Home

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