In 1880 a fire destroyed the city hall in Albany, New York. In the ashes of the old building, Henry Hobson Richardson would this time construct a bigger one, one which emulated his Romanesque style, and one that the city of Albany could be proud of, and so he did. Richardson, who was also working on the New York State capitol at the time, secured the commission for the replacement for the city hall after competing against five other architectural firms. The building was built between 1880 to 1883. It is without a doubt one of Richardsons most Romanesque designs with banded arches, a large tower placed on the corner, rhythmic fenestration, and bold use of materials. The building is laid out in a simple rectangle formation. The building is three-and-a-half stories tall. Besides the asymmetrical tower placement, the building is rather simple in its design. Its exterior is made of granite and features a brownstone trim. It features arched windows on the first and second floors. The roofs are redbrick red and are peaked in a traditional gothic style. The interior is also simplistic but still magnificent. Richarson, lacking funds, decided to spend most of his efforts on the exterior, hoping that feature architects would finish the interior space. The city finished the interior roughly thirty years after Richardson finished it. The building, in all its glory, is a great example of Richardsons Romanesque style.

The Ames Monument is a pyramid in Albany County, Wyoming, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson. The monument was constructed from 1880 to 1882 and was dedicated to the brothers Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames, Jr., two financiers of the Union Pacific Railroad. The monument marked the highest point on the First Transcontinental Railroad, at 8,247 feet. The monument is a four-sided pyramid constructed from ashlar stones made of light-colored native granite. The pyramid has a 60 feet square base and stands 60 feet high. The pyramid also features an interior passage that has now been sealed. On the east and west sides of the pyramid, there are sculptors of the brothers close to the top. The top quickly finishes in a shallower pyramid shape. Through his design, Richarson created a modern monument that looks as if it could have been from time antiquity. It is a fitting monument to be dedicated to the roughness and willpower that was required to build the Transcontinental railroad.

The Trinity Church was constructed from 1872 to1877 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson. The church is the only church in the United States that has been honored as one of the “Ten Most Significant Buildings in the United States.” The church is built in a classical cross structure with four arms extending outwards from the central tower. The base was built atop of Boston’s Back Bay, which was originally a mudflat. Because of this, Trinity rests on some 4,500 wooden piles which have been driven through 30 feet of gravel fill, silt, and clay. The outside of Trinity is built into three separate layers which lead into the tower in the center. The bottom level is decorated in columns that hold up the front facade. The second level features two towers that are constructed in a gothic style much like the central tower on the third level. The interior is large, wooden, and colorful with murals covering over 21,500 square feet along the inner walls. Light falls into the center of the church from windows in the central tower. The apse in typical fashion is built into a semicircular recess and covered in a hemispherical vault. The wall of the apse is decorated in gold and holds several pieces of stained glass.

Henry Hobson Richardson, known as one of “the recognized trinity of American architecture,” is the father of the Richardsonian Romanesque architecture style. Richardson first developed this style during his work on the famous Richarson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, New York, in 1870. Richardson’s style incorporated 11th and 12th century southern French, Romanesque characteristics. Richardson was presumably inspired by the architecture he saw during his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts while in Paris during 1860. Romanesque architecture is characterized by its use of semi-circular arches, thick walls, large towers, and decorative arcading. The Richardson Olmsted Complex features many of the same qualities with two large towers, intricate arcades, and semi-circular windows throughout the building. It is made of large Medina red sandstone and brick. The roofing is copper-green and is sharply slanted. The building is made of a central administrative tower and five pavilion wards set back on each side, totaling eleven buildings in all. The buildings are all connected by two-story curved corridors.

For this blog post, we’re not going to talk about castles or cathedrals or anything even remotely groundbreaking in the world of architecture, instead, I am going to talk about my favorite restaurant in all of New York City. It’s called the Tavern On The Green and as its name suggests it’s a restored tavern on the western edge of Central Park. I love this place and for good reason. I first visited New York City while I was in high school. It was the summer of my junior year and my mother, with New York being her favorite city, wanted to take me before school started up again. So away we went and after getting settled in our hotel in lower manhattan we decided to take a walk to central park because who wouldn’t?

Whether we had planned to go to the tavern or if it was out of pure convenience I can’t remember but eventually, we decided to get lunch there before continuing on. The tavern was originally designed by Calvert Vaux and was originally built as a sheepfold in the 1880s to house the 700 Southdown sheep that grazed in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow. In 1934 Robert Moss turned the building into a restaurant as a part of the park renovations going on at the time. The tavern to this day maintains its original charms. It is styled as a lavish red brick tavern with a few modern renovations to keep it with the times. One of those renovations can be found in the dining area where a large window opens up the entire side of the building and looks out into an open courtyard where guests are also able to dine. I love this dining area, it’s open and bright and allows you to look out into the heart of the park and see all the people going about their lives. Yet even with these modern renovations, the building has this comfy cottage feel about it which can be credited to the ancient-looking rafters that build the ceiling and to the vintage wallpaper that decorates the walls.

But above all the tavern is my favorite place because of its sentimental value to me. It was the first place we went to in New York and it really was just a great first stop on a great trip I went on with my mom, plus the food was not half bad (it’s great). I have been back to New York City several times since that summer and each time I am there I always make sure to have lunch at the tavern. If you ever find yourself in NYC I strongly suggest you give it a try and experience its charms.

A city! How can you write about an entire city for a blog about the architecture of individual buildings?! Well, dear reader, give me a chance to explain myself. The Blue City of Morocco, also known as the Blue Pearl (and Chefchaouen to the locals), is one of the most unique places in all of Morocco and indeed one of its prettiest. Built out of the golden dunes into the cliff sides of the Rif Mountains, the Blue City is a small blue dot in a country of tan and green. Founded in 1471, the Blue City was built to defend against the invading Portuguese. Two decades later and the city would expand with the arrival of Muslim and Jewish refugees fleeing forced conversion to Christianity in Granada, Spain. These newcomers are credited with the construction of the signature whitewashed houses and courtyards filled with citrus trees while also being influenced by Arabic styles of architecture. This in its own right makes the Blue City worthy of a blog about its unique architectural style, yet its true selling point is the dazzling blue that every house is painted with. Now, there are plenty of theories as to why this is the case, many believing it was motivated by the theological beliefs of the Jewish people who had migrated to the city, who, as legend has it, wanted to paint the houses blue to represent the sky which helped remind them about the presence of God. But, I have reason to believe that this is not the true reason. As a local would tell it the reason the houses are painted blue is for a practical reason rather than a theological one. Simply put the buildings are painted blue in an effort to drive away mosquitos and prevent malaria. This all being said of course as a mosquito casually sucked away at my arm, so actually maybe take this theory with a grain of salt. With all these fascinating details in mind, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to classify the entire city as one architectural marvel, and if you disagree with me then too bad I’m still going to talk about it.

I visited the city in the summer of 2019, and if you have read any of my other blogs before now then I am sure you have gathered by now that the summer of 2019 was a pretty busy time for me. Anyways, I had found myself in Morocco towards the end of July with a few other friends and had taken a bus tour to the city on one of our final days in the country. Just two hours outside of Tangier, the city is one of the biggest tourist destinations in all of the country. We arrived at the base of the city and were immediately welcomed by locals hoping to take us into their shops. After a bit of shopping, we decided to explore deeper into the maze-like alleys of the city. Eventually, I stumbled upon a river that cuts through the center of the town. Following it downstream I came across an informal bar setup in the riverbed. People took off their shoes here and sat in plastic chairs on top of the slick rocks. The bar, which was truly nothing more than just a tent and a table, was set against a nearby waterfall. Behind the table, the bartender let buckets of fresh fruit wash in the falling water. He then would slice the fruit and serve them on a paper plate for 4 dirhams (roughly 1 USD). After getting a beer and a plate of fruit I came across some ruins on the outskirts of the city. I was very fascinated by the ruins, knowing they must be hundreds of years old but also fascinated by how they were designed. They were made out of this very old stone and formed in a series of arches that built down into the river. I was very curious about what purpose they had served in the past, an old house, a church? Who could say, but regardless they stayed with me for some reason as I continued to think about their original purpose.

Before long it was time to leave, and after getting lost a couple of times, we made our way back to the bus. The Blue City was a marvelous adventure during my time in Morocco. Many of the cities in Morocco are beautiful and are all great examples of the wondrous world of Arabic architecture. But the Blue City stood out in such a different way. I think what stuck with me about its architecture is how it was its own thing, a homogenous whole really. None of its buildings look like the other buildings you’d come to expect in the cities of Morocco. Instead, they are made in a whitewashed style that you would be likely to see on the bountiful shores of Greece than in the arid dunes of the Sahara, and I think that’s something really amazing.

In the summer of 2019, I had the pleasure of visiting the city of Prague in the Czech Republic. Prague, in all of its glory, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Every building is an architectural treasure, making full use of the gothic style with arched peaks and flying buttresses. However, the real crowning jewel of the city in my opinion is the Czech Pražský hrad, or simply the Prague Castle. The castle lies in the historic center of Prague, sitting just west of the Vltava river. The castle has its origins during the 9th century under the reign of Bořivoj, the first Christian prince of Bohemia. The castle would also later feature a beautiful cathedral on Hradčany Hill. The construction of the cathedral started in the 14th century and was designed in the late gothic style by architect Petr Parléř, yet construction on the cathedral would not be completed until 1929.

Czech Pražský hrad was the first castle I had ever visited. My mother and I had decided to spend the day exploring the entirety of the castle. After a long, long, journey up the stone stairs leading to the castle gates, we took our time to explore the grounds. There were many gardens and crypts to look through. Maybe unsurprisingly the cathedral was the best part of the experience. It was enormous and made entirely of dark stone and clay. The ceilings, in typical gothic style, were high and vaulted. What I found most amazing was the painted glass. Never in my life have I seen such tall windows, they reached upwards to well over 20 meters. Further, every part of the windows displayed an imaginative portrait of an Abrahamic figure in a glorious array of colors. Another area of the castle that we had a chance to explore was the Golden Lane, a small neighborhood outside the main grounds of the castle, where Franz Kafka briefly lived with his sister from 1916 to 1917. My time at Czech Pražský hrad was indeed one of my favorite moments of my entire trip. The scale of the castle was awe-inspiring and as a fan of the fantasy genre, it really captivated me to explore its hallowed halls. I would strongly recommend it to anyone visiting Prague.

The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See stands directly in the heart of Seville, Spain. Completed in 1506, the Cathedral superseded the Hagia Sophia as the world’s largest Cathedral. Built on the remains of a mosque the cathedral is a Frankenstein of gothic and Arabic architecture, a common motif in the southern parts of the peninsula. This combination of cultures offers some of the most interesting architecture I have had the pleasure of witnessing. I hope that anyone who has the chance to visit Spain takes some time to go see this building.

During my stay in Seville, I passed by the large steps of the cathedral every day on my walk to the markets. On the last day of my stay in the city, I decided on a whim to take a tour of the cathedral. After waiting in the summer heat for what seemed like hours I was admitted into the cathedral along with the hundreds of other guests. Through a side entrance, you are immediately welcomed into the nave of the cathedral which spans an incredible distance in both width and length. Chambers throughout the nave run to the tops of the vaulted ceilings which were awash in colorful light from the painted windows that are built just below. Each chamber held a vigil of some sort, usually made of gold and always behind a dark set of iron bars. These chambers run the entire length of the nave until reaching the central cross, in which many guests stood admiring the many intricacies of the cathedral. Beyond the cross and opposite of the nave were the choir and apse. Many prayed here, taking their seats on the wooden benches that lined the choir. The apse was a dais with a set of carpeted stairs leading to a wall of pure gold. Inside the wall, sculptures played out stories from the bible, each of them looking to have been masterfully sculpted from porcelain.
The other two ends of the cross led to separate parts of the cathedral, one leading to a museum of artifacts, the other to an outside courtyard. The outside courtyard allows one to get an idea of how large the cathedral truly is while also allowing you to gaze at the amazing detail work on the outer walls. After walking around the grounds for some time I took some time to admire the facade of the cathedral. The facade was made of the same white stone the rest of the building was made from, with small statuettes of saints guarding the door which had rusted into a wonderful type of green.

Overall, I would say that the Cathedral of Saint Mary was one of the most positive memories I have of my time in Spain. It was a building I was truly in awe of, one that I wondered if it could have really been made by people. While I am not religious I was still inspired by the dedication to one’s faith through the medium of architecture. It truly is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen to this day.