2012 Theses Master's

Deconstructing James Brown Lord, A Monograph

Tobin, Richard Leonard

The genesis of this thesis began in 2006 with the renovation of what is now known as The Grand Gallery located within the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) campus and was predicated on the discovery of the floor plan for the structural analysis of the floor load for what was known at the time as the Foyer to the museum on West 79th Street circa 1902. On this drawing were taped the names of Charles Volz and James Brown Lord, no date nor title block are listed on the drawing. This was the second encounter after having previously worked on the renovation of James Brown Lord’s Yorkville Branch Library at 222 East Seventy-ninth Street in 1986 in conjunction with Gwathmey Siegel and Associates; ‘the first of the Carnegie Branch Libraries’ built in New York City in 1902 for the New York Public Library (NYPL), Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Both sites were constructed posthumously to Lord, but were supervised and completed by Charles Volz, his ‘associate'.