Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge was a successful
architecture firm based in
Boston,
Massachusetts, United States, operating between 1886 and 1915, with extensive commissions in monumental civic, religious, and collegiate architecture in the spirit and style of
Henry Hobson Richardson.
Two of the principals had been educated at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Shepley (class of 1882) and Coolidge (class of 1883). Shepley married Richardson's daughter; and Coolidge later married Shepley's sister.
In 1888, the firm was commissioned by Senator and Mrs.
Leland Stanford to join landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted in planning the campus for
Stanford University. For major commissions in Chicago and the
World's Columbian Exposition, Coolidge moved to Chicago and the firm opened its branch office there in 1893, in which many
Prairie School architects received their early professional training, notably
Hermann V. von Holst who was head draughtsman. A St. Louis branch office began the career of
John Mauran; a
Pittsburgh branch office developed into several firms, including Rutan & Russell formed by Frank Rutan, the younger brother of Charles. Other Pittsburgh firms developed by branch office employees include Longfellow, Alden & Harlow and Frank I. Cooper;
Pasadena architect
Myron Hunt spent three years with them in Boston as draftsman.
Stylistically, the firm continued to work mainly in the architectural vocabulary of
Richardsonian Romanesque, although with less imagination—for instance, Richardson's asymmetry disappears. The firm continued as Shepley Rutan and Coolidge through 1915, then became Coolidge and Shattuck (Boston) and Coolidge and Hodgdon (Chicago) concurrently from 1915 through 1924, then Coolidge Shepley Bulfinch and Abbott from 1924 through 1952, Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott from 1952, and is still in operation as
Shepley Bulfinch.
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abcdefPotter, Janet Greenstein (1996). Great American Railroad Stations. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 66, 81, 85, 92, 97, 190, 396.
ISBN9780471143895.
^Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl (June 1988). "Architecture for the Boston & Albany Railroad: 1881-1894". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 47 (2): 109–131.
doi:
10.2307/990324.
JSTOR990324.