At age 18, Cram moved toBoston in 1881 and worked for five years in the architectural office ofRotch & Tilden, after which he left forRome to study classical architecture.[2] From 1885 to 1887, he was art critic for theBoston Transcript. During an 1887Christmas Eve Mass in Rome, he had a dramatic conversion experience.[3] For the rest of his life, he practiced as a ferventAnglo-Catholic who identified ashigh-churchAnglican. In the 1890s, Cram was a key figure in "social-controversial-inspirational" groups including the Pewter Mugs and theVisionists.[4]
In 1900, Cram married Elizabeth Carrington Read atNew Bedford, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Clement Carrington Read and his wife.[5] Read had served as a captain in theConfederate Army during theAmerican Civil War. Elizabeth and Ralph had three children, Mary Carrington Cram, Ralph Wentworth Cram and Elizabeth Strudwick Cram.[1] The family burial site is at the St. Elizabeth's Memorial Churchyard.[6] The churchyard is adjacent to St Elizabeth's Chapel, which Cram designed, inSudbury,Massachusetts, where he lived later in life.[7]
Cram and business partner Charles Wentworth started business in Boston in April 1889 as Cram and Wentworth. They had landed only four or five church commissions before they were joined byBertram Goodhue in 1892 to form Cram, Wentworth and Goodhue.[8] Goodhue brought an award-winning commission in Dallas (never built) and brilliant drafting skills to the Boston office.
Wentworth died in 1897 and the firm's name changed to Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson to include draftsman Frank W. Ferguson (1861–1926). Cram and Goodhue complemented each other's strengths at first but began to compete, sometimes submitting two differing proposals for the same commission. The firm won design of theUnited States Military Academy atWest Point in 1902, a major milestone in their career. They set up the firm's New York office, where Goodhue would preside, leaving Cram to operate in Boston. He designed the sanctuary for theFirst Unitarian Society in Newton which represents elements of his signature ecclesiastical style and was built in 1905. From 1907 to 1909, Cram was the editor ofChristian Art.[8]
Cram's acceptance of theCathedral of St. John the Divine commission in New York City in 1911 (on Goodhue's perceived territory) heightened the tension between the two. Architectural historians have attributed most of their projects to one partner or the other, based on the visual and compositional style, and the location. TheGothic RevivalSaint Thomas Church was designed by them both in 1914 onManhattan'sFifth Avenue. It is the last example of their collaboration, and the most integrated and strongest example of their work together.
Goodhue began his solo career on August 14, 1913. Cram and Ferguson continued with major church and college commissions through the 1930s. Particularly important work includes the original campus of Rice University, Houston, as well as the library and first city hall of that city. Also notable is Cram's first church in the Boston area,All Saints, Dorchester. The successor firm isHDB/Cram and Ferguson of Boston.
One of Ralph Adams Cram’s lesser-known yet architecturally significant commissions is Sacred Heart Church in Jersey City, New Jersey, designed between 1922 and 1924. The church is a distinctive fusion of Spanish Gothic and Moorish architecture, reflecting Cram’s exploration of Iberian Gothic motifs. The building features intricate Samuel Yellin ironwork and stained glass windows designed by a young Harry Wright Goodhue, who was just 18 years old at the time. The church, originally built to serve a vibrant immigrant community, is considered an important example of Cram’s ecclesiastical designs outside of Boston. Although deconsecrated, it remains an architectural landmark and is currently undergoing restoration as part of a broader redevelopment of the Sacred Heart campus.
A leading proponent of disciplinedGothic Revival architecture in general andCollegiate Gothic in particular, Cram is most closely associated withPrinceton University, where he served as supervising architect from 1907 to 1929, during a period of major construction. The university awarded him aDoctor of Letters for his achievements.[1] In 1907, he served as chairman of the American Institute of Architects' Committee on Education.[8]
First Unitarian Society of Newton, Massachusetts (1905)
He made news with his defense ofAl Smith during his electoral campaign, when anti-Catholic rhetoric was used, saying "I... express my disgust at the ignorance and superstition now rampant and in order that I may go on record as another of those who, though not Roman Catholics, are nevertheless Americans and are outraged by this recrudescence of blatant bigotry, operating through the most cowardly and contemptible methods."[11]
In around 1932, he designed theDesloge Chapel in St. Louis, MO, the Gothic chapel designed to echo the contours of the St. Chapelle in Paris. Desloge Chapel, which is associated with theFirmin Desloge Hospital andSt. Louis University, in 1983, was declared a landmark by theMissouri Historical Society.[12] In 1938, he was elected into theNational Academy of Design as an Associate Academician. He died in Boston Massachusetts on September 22 1942 of a cerebral hemorrhage at 78.
As an author, lecturer, and architect, Cram propounded the view that theRenaissance had been, at least in part, an unfortunate detour forwestern culture.[13] Cram argued that authentic development could come only by returning toGothic sources for inspiration,[2] as his "Collegiate Gothic" architecture did, with considerable success. For hisRice University buildings, he favored a medieval north ItalianRomanesque style, more in keeping with Houston's hot, humid climate.
A modernist in many ways, he designedArt Deco landmarks of great distinction, including the Federal Building skyscraper in Boston and numerous churches. For example, his design of the tower of theEast Liberty Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, was inspired by theEmpire State Building. His work at Rice was asmodernist as medieval in inspiration. His administration building, his secular masterwork, has been compared by Shand-Tucci toFrank Lloyd Wright's work, particularly in the way its dramatic horizontality reflects the surrounding prairies.[citation needed]
The architectural historian Sandy Isenstadt wrote in a review of Cram's biography that "... (modernist) disdain (of Cram) turned out to be modernism's loss".[citation needed] Peter Cormack, director of London'sWilliam Morris Gallery, said regarding the critical neglect of Cram's work that it was "a phenomenon which has significantly distorted the study of America's modern architectural history... (Cram) deserves the same kind of international--and domestic--recognition accorded (all too often uncritically) to his contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright".[citation needed]
Cram argued that the United States would be better off under aSemi-constitutional monarchy, with the right to vote restricted to white men who owned a sufficient level of property.[14][15] He lays out some of hismonarchist beliefs in his workInvitation to Monarchy, which appeared inThe American Mercury in 1936.[16]
Cram also co-founded the American branches of theSociety of King Charles the Martyr and the Order of the White Rose. Traveling through Europe, Cram also befriended Catholic writersHilaire Belloc andG. K. Chesterton, who have been accredited with influencing his views. He later became involved with a number of American Roman Catholic enterprises and co-founded the Catholic magazineCommonweal. Cram acceptedpapal primacy and frequently defended Catholicism againstAmerican anti-Catholic prejudice, though he never converted to the religion itself.[17]
Farm Houses Manor Houses Minor Chateaux Small Churches in Normandy and Brittany, The Architectural Book Publishing Company, Paul Wenzel and Maurice Krakow, 1917
Sins Of The Fathers, Marshall Jones Company, Boston, 1918
Convictions and Controversies, Marshall Jones Company, Boston, 1935
My Life in Architecture, Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1936
Cram also wrote fiction. A number of his stories, notably "The Dead Valley", were published in a collection entitledBlack Spirits and White (Stone & Kimball, 1895). The collection has been called "one of the undeniable classics of weird fiction".[30]H. P. Lovecraft wrote, "In 'The Dead Valley' the eminent architect and mediævalist Ralph Adams Cram achieves a memorably potent degree of vague regional horror through subtleties of atmosphere and description."[31]Henry S. Whitehead describedBlack Spirits and White as "a delightful rendition of several characteristic ghost stories."[32]
^"Ralph Cram Dies; Noted Architect; Redesigner of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine Here Stricken in Boston; An Authority on Gothic; Fashioned Buildings for West Point and Princeton; Wrote on Religion".The New York Times. September 23, 1942. p. 25.
^Whitehead, Henry S. "The Occult Story", inThe Free-Lance Writer's Handbook, 1926. Reprinted inS. T. Joshi,The Theory of the Weird Tale. Seattle, WA, Sarnath Press, 2024.ISBN979-8332097829 (p. 194).
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This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.
