Robert Seyfarth

Robert Edward Seyfarth
Born	(1878-04-13)April 13, 1878 Blue Island, IL, U.S.
Died	March 1, 1950(1950-03-01) (aged 71) Highland Park, IL U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	(As an assistant to George Maher) The original Patten Gymnasium, Northwestern University, 1909 - demolished 1940, Evanston, IL * Krueger Funeral Home, 1927, Blue Island, IL * West Ridge School addition, 1926, Highland Park, IL

Robert Seyfarth was an American architect based in Chicago, Illinois.

Background

The three buildings on the right were owned by the Seyfarth family and stood on the south-west corner of Grove St. and Western Ave in Blue Island, IL. The white building in the center of the photograph was the tavern that William Seyfarth operated after he came to Blue Island in 1848. It originally stood on the corner, but was remodeled and relocated in 1880 when the building shown here on the corner was erected to house Edward Seyfarth's hardware store.. All three buildings were destroyed in the Great Blue Island Fire of 1896, which began in a shed behind the Bairischer Hof, the building to their immediate left. The Bairischer Hof survived the fire.

Robert Seyfarth grew up as a member of a prominent local family. His grandfather William Seyfarth had come to the United States in 1848 from Schloss Tonndorf in what is now the state of Thuringia, Germany, with the intention of opening a tavern (what would now be considered an inn) in Chicago. Advised to locate outside of the city, he settled with his wife Louise in Blue Island, which a couple of years earlier had begun to experience an influx of immigration from what was then known as the German Confederation.

William purchased a building that was standing at the south-west corner of Grove Street and Western Avenue and opened his business. The location was a good one - it was on what was then called the Wabash Road a day's journey from Chicago, which guaranteed the tavern a steady supply of prosepective customers for many years. At about the same time he purchased a stone quarry about a mile south-west of the settlement (where Robbins, Illinois now stands) and operated it concurrently with the inn, although apparently without as much success. He served as clerk and later as assessor for the township of Worth from 1854 until he died in 1860. William and Louise had five sons, including Edward, who was the father of the architect.
Edward Seyfarth was active in community affairs on many levels. Not only did he own and operate the local hardware store, but in 1890 he was one of the founders of the Calumet State Bank, and in 1874 was a charter member of the Blue Island Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. He served as village treasurer from 1880–1884 and as village trustee from 1886-1890. Over the years other members of the family were also active in the community - they were involved in banking, the board of education, and the Current Topics Club (later the Blue Island Woman's Club), who was largely responsible for the founding of the Blue Island Public Library. C. A. Seyfarth was one of the founding members of the Blue Island Elks in 1916. (The architect was himself apparently a person of catholic interests - he was an active member of the Poultry Fancier's Association during the time that Blue Island was the headquarters for the Northeastern Illinois Fancier's Association in the early years of the 20th Century.)
From the time his grandparents arrived in 1848 to the time Robert Seyfarth left Blue Island in about 1909 for Highland Park, the village had grown from being a pioneering hamlet of about 200 persons to a prosperous industrial suburb with a population of nearly 11,000, which the noted publisher and historian Alfred T. Andreas had called "...a quiet, though one among the prettiest little suburban towns in the West"..It was in this atmosphere that Seyfarth grew up, attended primary and secondary schools, married his first wife Nell Martin (1878–1928), and built their first home.

Education and career

The Liederkranz Hall in Blue Island was designed by George Washington Maher and erected in 1896 to replace the club's building that had been destroyed by the Great Blue Island Fire of that year. It cost $8,000 to build and was itself destroyed by fire on January 9, 1918.

The William Weber house, Blue
Island, Illinois. 1898. George Washington Maher, architect.

Seyfarth received his architectural education at the Chicago Manual Training School, an institution created in 1882 by the Commercial Club of Chicago that was later incorporated into the University of Chicago. After graduating in 1898, he started his career in the office of George Washington Maher, an influential architect associated with the Prairie School movement.. It is likely that Robert Seyfarth was introduced to Maher through family connections. Because Edward Seyfarth was an important local businessman, he would almost certainly have been familiar with the older architect's work which had already been built in Blue Island.

The education of an architect in the early years of the 20th century was quite different than it is today, and the ambitious prospective architect could take many avenues to acquire it. In April of 1905, for example, Seyfarth attended his first meeting of the Chicago Architectural Club , which had been founded in 1885 as the Chicago Architectural Sketch Club by James H. Carpenter, a prominent Chicago draftsman, with the support of the magazine Inland Architect. The club was formed during a period in Chicago when architecture there was in its ascendancy - after the Great Chicago Fire (1871), the city had a large portion of itself to rebuild, a fact that had drawn a large population of some of the best architectural talent in the country to Chicago. Even so, the architectural community was taxed trying to perform all of the work that was necessary to keep up with the task. The club was an effort to help develop the talents of the city’s many draftsmen so that they could become qualified architects themselves at a time when a formal education for architects was generally unavailable and not required. Seyfarth joined during the time he worked for Maher, and was in good company – others associated with the club in various capacities included Charles B. Atwood, Daniel Burnham, Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, Howard Van Doren Shaw and William LeBaron Jenney. The club made its headquarters for many years in the former mansion of the piano manufacturer William W. Kimball at 1801 Prairie Ave. in Chicago. The club ceased to operate as an active organization in 1940 and was dissolved in 1967, but exists again today after it was re-formed in 1979.

While still working in Maher's office, Seyfarth started to design houses on his own. His early works show the influences of Maher and other Prairie School architects. In about 1909 he opened his own architectural practice. In the early years the office was located in the Corn Exchange Bank Building (1908, Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, demolished 1985) on LaSalle Street which was a short walk from the Louis Sullivan masterpiece, the Chicago Stock Exchange Building (1893, demolished 1972). He later moved into the newly completed Tribune Tower (1925, John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood), where he had an office on the twenty-first floor until 1934 when the Depression forced the move of his business to his home in the North Shore community of Highland Park. His was a small office - he did the design, drafting and supervision work himself, and for many years was assisted by Miss Eldridge, who typed specifications and generally kept the office running. After the office was moved to his home, he took on as his assistant Edward Humrich (1901-1991), who himself became a noted architect after he left Seyfarth's employ shortly before the advent of World War II. Humrich enjoyed a distinguished career designing and building houses in the Usonian style of Frank Lloyd Wright. He earned his architectural license in 1968.
The year he went into independent practice, Robert Seyfarth built a gambrel roofed Shingle Style house on Sheridan Road in Highland Park, across the street from Frank Lloyd Wright's Ward Willets house (1901) (during his career he would design 54 houses in Highland Park alone), and it marked a change in the direction of his design work - for the rest of his career his would design in an eclectic style combining Colonial Revival, Tudor and Continental Provincial elements with strong geometric forms.

While sometimes considered to be a "society architect" , Seyfarth also has a number of small houses to his credit, but the largest percentage of his work was done for what would be considered upper middle-class clients. Almost exclusively a residential architect with the majority of his work in the Chicago area, he also designed projects in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky and Alabama. By the end of his career, he had designed over two hundred houses. One of his more important works is the Samuel Holmes House designed in 1926 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A shingle style house overlooking Lake Michigan, its landscaping was designed by Jens Jensen. Robert Seyfarth continued to live and work in Highland Park until his death on March 1, 1950.

The Chicago History Museum Research Center has an archive consisting of drawings for 70 of Seyfarth's projects dating after 1932.

Marketing

Although un-attributed in this ad for the Arkansas Soft Pine Bureau, this is the Alexander Stewart in Highland Park, IL, which Seyfarth designed in 1913 (see Image 7 below).

This advertisement features the house at 1236 Asbury Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois, which was designed c. 1920.
That Seyfarth was not averse to appropriating the elements of one project to improve the design of another can be illustrated here using the Baroque doorhead and pilasters surrounding the front door of this house - it was used at least one other time - on the house at 2500 Lincoln Street (1925) in Evanston, IL., where the house this time was finished with red brick and stone, and Colonial revival in style

. During his career, Seyfarth's work appeared in magazines and journals and in the advertisements of various architectural supply firms. The extent to which this was done is not know, but articles by Eleanor Jewett (1892–1968), art critic for the Chicago Tribune ("Cape Cod Architecture seen in B.L.T.'s Home" (date of publication unknown) discussing the Taylor house at 92 Dell Place in Glencoe, Illinois) and Herbert Croly of the Architectural Record ("The Local Feeling in Western Country Houses" which discusses the Kozminski and McBride houses in Highland Park at 521 Sheridan Road and 2130 Linden, respectively) survive to give us some idea of how Seyfarth's work was received during the time he was practicing. Additionally, photographs of houses he designed appeared in "The Western Architect" magazine a number of times in the 1920s. Also surviving are copies of advertisements from the Arkansas Soft Pine Bureau (see image, left), the California Redwood Association (again with a picture of the McBride house), The Creo-Dipt Company (see image, right), the White Pine Bureau and the Stewart Iron Works Company of Cincinnati (with a picture of the H. C. Dickenson house at 7150 S. Yale in Chicago). In 1908, his Prairie-style house for Dickinson was published in House Beautiful magazine. In participating in this activity, Seyfarth was following the example of George Washington Maher, who was widely published during his career.

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  1. The first Robert Seyfarth house - 12852 S. Maple Ave., Blue Island IL, 1903.
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  2. H.C. Dickinson house, 7150 S. Yale Ave., Englewood, Chicago, IL, 1908.
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  3. H.S. Crane house - 10400 S. Seeley Ave., Beverly Hills, Chicago IL, 1909.
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  4. Samuel E. Thomason house - 10451 S. Seeley Ave., Beverly Hills, Chicago IL, 1910.
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  5. R.E. Thompson house - 10610 S. Seeley Ave., Beverly Hills, Chicago IL, 1910.
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  6. The second Robert Seyfarth house - 1498 Sheridan Road., Highland Park, IL, c.1910
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  7. Alexander Stewart house - 1442 Forest Ave., Highland Park, IL, 1913.
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  8. 2064 W. Pratt Blvd., West Ridge, Chicago, IL, 1914.
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  9. 700 Greenwood Ave., Wilmette, IL, c.1926
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  10. Mayfield house - 145 Montgomery St., Glencoe, IL, c. 1926
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  11. The Krueger Funeral Home - 13050 S. Greenwood Ave., Blue Island IL, 1927.
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  12. Arthur Seyfarth house - 12844 S. Greenwood Ave., Blue Island IL, 1929.
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  13. Page house - 2424 Lincoln St., Evanston, IL, c.1934
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  14. Freeman house - 2418 Lincoln St., Evanston, IL, 1935
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  15. 2730 Broadway Ave., Evanston, IL c. 1935

Notes on the pictures

• 1.) The first Robert Seyfarth house. This simple Prairie School house was built while Seyfarth was still working for George Washington Maher. The older architect's influence is clearly evident here, down to the use of a Maher hallmark, the lion's head, which appears as a bracket to support the second floor sleeping porch balcony.
• 2.) H.C. Dickinson house. This is the first Robert Seyfarth house, writ large, in brick and stone. Although the sleeping porch on the second floor has been enclosed in a manner not in keeping with the style of the house, this house is otherwise very similar in style to the John Ellis house in Beverly Hills, Chicago (1908), which shows that Seyfarth, like many of his profession, felt free to copy himself when necessary. Note that the house retains the wrought iron fence that appeared with it in the c. 1910 ad for the Stewart Iron Works Co. Note, too, that this house shows the beginnings of the use of the inverted dormer, which Seyfarth would use extensively in his later career.
• 3.) H.S. Crane house. Maher's influence is clearly still evident in the design of this early house.
• 4.) Samuel E. Thomason house. The composition and the stucco finish, casement windows, and tile roof shows that Seyfarth owes a debt of inspiration to Howard Van Doren Shaw for this Arts and Crafts design.
• 5.) R.E. Thompson house. Much of Maher's influence is still apparent in Seyfarth's early work. Note particularly the stucco finish, casement windows and dormer window (cf. the same feature in the Corbin house (1904) in Kenilworth, IL).
• 8.) 2064 W. Pratt Blvd. Note the symmetrical pavilions attached to the east and west ends of the house, a device used by Seyfarth a year earlier at the Alexander Stewart house in Highland Park.
• 9.) 700 Greenwood Ave. Although not particularly large, this house presents an impressive façade to the street by virtue of its correct proportion, commanding front entrance, and lack of clutter brought on by extraneous detail that might tend to make the house seem smaller by breaking up its clean geometry. With the use of inverted dormers, Seyfarth is free to locate windows on the second floor without having to give consideration to the protuberances that would result with conventional dormers.
• 11.) The Krueger Funeral Home. In 1913 Seyfarth had designed a house two blocks farther north on Greenwood Avenue for Robert Krueger, whose family had founded the funeral home in 1858. The funeral home was designed to look like a house to blend in with the residential architecture that surrounded it in Blue Island's "silk stocking" district. The Krueger and Seyfarth families were related by marriage. (The building was used inside and out in the 2006 Paramount Pictures film Flags of our Fathers.)
• 12.) Arthur Seyfarth house. Note how the inverted dormers help to maintain the simple geometry of the building.
• 15.) 2730 Broadway. Seyfarth embraced the ranch style floor plan here with his own twist, two years before Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Jacobs I house (1937), which is credited with inspiring the craze for single-level living that lasted for nearly fifty years.

Salient features

Although considered a revivalist architect, Seyfarth's designs were not pedantic copies of existing work or even typical examples of the revival architecture that was popular at the time. His buildings provided their owners with architecture that offered the most up-to-date conveniences and floorplans that were considered modern - but that was carefully imbued with the warmth and character of earlier times. One feature of the 20th century, the ubiquitous attached garage (the successful inclusion of which apparently continues to confound architects today), was frequently incorporated into the design of the main house with such skill one observer noted that "...Norman peasants must have been driving automobiles since the Conquest."

Further reading

• Cohen, Stuart (2004). North Shore Chicago: Houses of the Lakefront Suburbs, 1890–1940. Suburban Domestic Architecture Series. ISBN 0926494260. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• "The Home You Longed For: Designs by Robert Seyfarth Architect" (1918). Arkansas Soft Pine Bureau.
• van Zanten, David (1985). "Robert Seyfarth". Chicago Architectural Club Journal. 5: 40–41.

External links

• Blue Island Illinois Landmarks
• John Ellis House
• Winnetka Historical Society; 175 Chestnut
• RobertSeyfarthArchitect.com