Paul Philippe Cret

Paul Philippe Cret (October 24 1876, Lyon, France – September 8 1945, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was a French-American architect and industrial designer.

Biography

Cret was educated at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon then in Paris, and went to the United States in 1903 to teach at the University of Pennsylvania. Although settled in America, he happened to be in France at the outbreak of World War I and remained in the French army for the duration, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and made an officer in the Legion of Honor.

Cret's practice in America began in 1907. The first major commission was his Organization of American States building in Washington DC, a breakthrough that led to many war memorials, civic buildings, court houses, and other solid, official structures.

His work through the 1920s was firmly in the Beaux-Arts tradition, but with the radically simplified classical form of the Folger Shakespeare Library, finished in 1927, he flexibly adopted and applied monumental classical traditions to modernist innovations. (Bertram Goodhue also falls in that category.) Some of Cret's work is remarkably streamlined and forward-thinking. In the late 1920s the architect was brought in as design consultant on Fellheimer and Wagner's magnificent Cincinnati Union Terminal, the high-water mark of Art Deco style in the United States. He became an American citizen in 1927.

In 1931 the regents of The University of Texas at Austin commissioned Cret to design a master-plan for the campus, and build the Beaux-Art Main Building with the university's signature tower. Cret would go on to collaborate on about twenty buildings on the campus.

Cret's contributions to the railroad industry also included the design of the side fluting on the Burlington's "Pioneer Zephyr" (debuted in 1934) and the Santa Fe's "Super Chief" (1936) passenger cars. [cite book|author=Johnston, Bob, and Welsh, Joe, with Schafer, Mike|title=The art of the streamliner|publisher=Metro Books, New York, NY|year=2001|id=ISBN 1-58663-146-2]

Cret won the AIA Gold Medal in 1938. Ill health forced his resignation from teaching in 1937, and after years of inactivity he died of heart disease.

Legacy

Cret founded the office now known as H2L2 in 1907. Cret served as the head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania for over 30 years, and designed such projects as the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, the master plan for the University of Texas in Austin and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia and the Duke Ellington Bridge in Washington, DC.

After Cret's death in 1945, his four partners assumed the practice under the partnership Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson, which for years was referred to by staff members as H2L2. The firm officially adopted this "nickname" as its formal title in 1976. H2L2 celebrated 100 years in 2007 and continues to uphold Cret's standards for design.

Major projects

* 1910 - Organization of American States Building, Washington, DC (with Albert Kelsey)
* 1913 - Indianapolis Central Public Library, Indianapolis, IN (with Zantzinger, Borie and Medary)
* 1921 - Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (with Zantzinger, Borie and Medary)
* 1923 - Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA
* 1926 - Rodin Museum, Philadelphia, PA (with Jacques Gréber)
* 1926 - Benjamin Franklin Bridge, Philadelphia, PA - Camden, NJ
* 1929 - George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge, Louisville, KY
* 1929 - Integrity Trust Company Building, Philadelphia, PA
* 1932 - Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.
* 1934 - Central Heating Plant, Washington D.C.
* 1935 - Duke Ellington Bridge, Washington D.C.
* 1936 - Fair Park Texas Centennial Buildings at the Texas Centennial Exposition, consulting architect, Dallas, Texas
* 1937 - Eccles Building, Washington D.C.
* 1938 - Texas Memorial Museum, consulting architect, Austin, Texas

Gallery

References

* [http://assets.cambridge.org/052149/6012/sample/0521496012WSN01.pdf First chapter of "The Civic Architecture of Paul Cret"]
* [http://www.design.upenn.edu/archives/majorcollections/cret/cretindex.html Examples of Cret's graphic work from University of Pennsylvania archives]

External links

*Find A Grave|id=10193475
* [http://www.h2l2.com H2L2]
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