Joseph Ramee: International Architect of the Revolutionary Era. - book reviews

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 366 pp., 19 color ills., 300 b/w. $100.00

Since the early 1980s, Paul Turner has been uncovering or, as he so aptly puts it, "reconstructing" (p. xviii) the career of Joseph Ramee, a significant but highly peripatetic neoclassical architect whose very itinerancy is as characteristic as his style of this international movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The result, as evident in this book, is a richly detailed three-dimensional portrait of Ramee, his times, and his contributions not only to architecture but to both landscape and decorative design. To most people, if they have heard of him at all, Ramee, whose first name was given during the period as Joseph-Jacques, Jean, Jean-Jacques, and Joseph-Guillaume, but who seems to have used Joseph during the last thirty years of his life, is known only as the architect of Union College in Schenectady, New York, the first planned college campus in the United States. But Turner has discovered a myriad other designs and a significant number of executed buildings, gardens, and decorative designs by his hand in France, Belgium, different parts of Germany, Denmark, and the United States. In these, we can recognize a sensitive architect, trained by Francois-Joseph Belanger and Jacques Cellerier and influenced by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, as well as by other significant trends, ranging from the appeal of nonclassical and vernacular styles to the enjoyment of planned irregular landscape gardens. In short, Ramee illustrates within his own career the internationalism of the age.

By an enormous amount of scholarly detective work, which is documented in the detailed notes, Turner has resurrected this fascinating career, which began as a student and assistant in pre-Revolutionary Paris and began to blossom at the Fete de la Federation of 1790 and in two Parisian hotels of that and the following year. Sabotaged by political events, Ramee's career then took an incredible variety of turns - from Louvain to Thuringia (specifically Erfurt, Meiningen, Gotha, and Weimar), then to Hamburg and its Danish-controlled suburbs along the Elbchaussee. After fifteen years there, during which time he also worked in Denmark proper, both in Copenhagen and at estates in the country, as well as in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Ramee returned to Paris. After only two years, he was lured to America by a patron who offered him what seemed to be exciting opportunities for design in the northern part of New York State and also introduced him to the President of Union College, which resulted in that highly significant commission. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Ramee also provided other American designs, especially in that city and in Baltimore, including a significant country house outside the latter and a fascinating, albeit unsuccessful, design for the competition for the first monument to George Washington, also in Baltimore. After four years in America, Ramee moved on again, this time returning first to Belgium, then to Paris, then back to Hamburg and back to Paris, before moving to Noyon three years before his death in 1842.

In all of his travels, Ramee managed to leave a significant legacy - not only the plan and the first buildings of Union College but such other works as the Borsenhalle in Hamburg, the interiors of the Erichsen Mansion in Copenhagen, three country houses outside that city, the Mausoleum of Helena Paulowna at Ludwigslust, Calverton outside Baltimore, a series of wallpaper designs, a variety of landscape gardens from Germany to New York State, and three architectural books, all published in Paris. Composed primarily of plates, these are Jardins irreguliers of 1823, Recueil de cottages et maisons de campagne of 1837, and Parcs & jardins of 1839.

Ramee was not, of course, the only neoclassical architect to practice outside his native country. There were French architects galore in the various German states, as well as in Denmark, Russia, and the United States; a Scotsman and an Italian, as well as Frenchmen, in Russia; and a number of English and other French architects in the United States. But none of these worked in so many different countries, leaving his mark in almost all of them; and no one else could be said to be a truly international architect. Given the internationalism of the neoclassical style, it is, indeed, fascinating to see one architect taking certain of these strands and spinning them all over western Europe and the northeastern United States. And Turner has done an excellent job, not only of ferreting out the designs and the information but of weaving it into an effective narrative, accompanied by a good selection of photographs that illustrate the architect's interests and range.

Despite his best efforts, however, there are periods in Ramee's career that simply cannot be illuminated, a fact that Turner readily acknowledges. In an attempt to fill in these gaps, the author tends to speculate about what may have taken place; and there, I think, he speculates a little too freely, albeit readily acknowledging such speculation. Among these conjectures, for example, is his discussion of what Turner sees as Ramee's attraction to northern European architectural forms, a tendency that, in the author's view, "probably contributed to his willingness to forego the traditional architect's pilgrimage to Italy and to accommodate his principles to the northern regions through which he was to travel for the rest of his career" (pp. 90-91). Although this is an interesting and appealing thesis, it perhaps assumes just a little too much on Ramee's part. There is no doubt that Ramee responded to half-timbered and other northern vernacular tendencies, in common with such architects of the period as Soane, Weinbrenner, and even Adam, but to suggest that he would not have gone to Italy had he had the chance is, I think, to overstate this attraction. There are other places, too, where Turner seems to me to speculate just a bit too liberally; but, as indicated, all of these are clearly labeled as such, and they do not really detract significantly from the high quality of his interpretation and elucidation. As a matter of fact, although he cites Roger Kennedy's suggested attribution to Ramee of at least aspects of Gideon Granger's house and the First Congregational Church in Canandaigna, New York, he is careful to add the caveat that "If Ramee did provide plans to Granger for his house and the church, these plans must not have been followed closely in execution" (p. 188).(1) Incidentally, in his utilization of Kennedy's work and those of other scholars, Turner is extremely gracious in his citations, credits, and thanks.