Raymond Hood

Early life and education

Early life Raymond Mathewson Hood was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on March 29, 1881, to John Parmenter Hood and Vella Mathewson. John Hood was the owner of J.N. Polsey & Co., a crate and box manufacturing company. The family lived at 107 Cottage Street in a house designed by John Hood and local architect Albert H. Humes. In a 1931 profile of Hood in The New Yorker, writer Allene Talmey described the Hood home as "the ugliest place in town." In 1893, the Hood family visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. This experience may have sparked Hood's interest in architecture.

At MIT, Hood studied under Constant-Désiré Despradelle, a prominent proponent of the Beaux-Arts style. Hood excelled at creating meticulously rendered architectural drawings, and after graduating worked as a draftsman for Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson. During his time at Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, Hood purportedly worked on the 1899 design of the Classical Revival Deborah Cook Sayles Public Library.

Career

In 1911, Hood returned to the US, taking a job at the office of Henry Hornbostel in Pittsburgh.

Chicago Tribune Tower

In 1922, New York architect John Mead Howells, who had met him at the École des Beaux-Arts, invited Hood to become his partner in the Chicago Tribune building competition in which Howells had been invited to compete. The neo-Gothic design submitted by Howells and Hood won the competition, beating the designs of prominent competitors, including Eliel Saarinen, Walter Gropius, and Adolf Loos.

The design proved pivotal in Hood's career, catalyzing his emergence as a preeminent architect of the era. writing:

There has been entirely too much talk about the collaboration of architect, painter and sculptor; nowadays, the collaborators are the architects, the engineer, and the plumber. ... Buildings are constructed for certain purposes, and the buildings of today are more practical, from the standpoint of the man who is in them than the older buildings. ... We are considering effort and convenience much more than appearance or effect.

Hood's design theory was aligned with that of the Bauhaus, in that he valued utility as beauty:

Beauty is utility, developed in a manner to which the eye is accustomed by habit, in so far as this development does not detract from its quality of usefulness.

Despite this paean to utility, Hood's designs featured non-utilitarian aspects such as roof gardens, polychromy, and Art Deco ornamentation. As much as Hood might insist that his designs were largely determined by the practicalities of zoning laws and the restraints of economics, each of his major buildings was different enough to suggest that Hood's design artistry was a significant factor in the final result.

Hood died at age 53 due to arthritis and was interred at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Influence Hood's buildings were featured in works by Georgia O'Keeffe (Radiator Building—Night, New York, 1927), Diego Rivera (Frozen Assets, 1931), Berenice Abbott (McGraw-Hill Building, 1936; Fortieth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, 1938), and Samuel Gottscho (Rockefeller Center and RCA Building from 515 Madison Ave, 1933). St. Vincent de Paul Asylum, Tarrytown, NY, 1924; with J. André Fouilhoux Tribune Tower, Chicago, IL, 1924 Raymond Hood House, Stamford, CT, 1924 American Radiator Building, New York, NY, 1924 Bethany Union Church, Chicago, IL, 1926 Ocean Forest Hotel, Myrtle Beach, SC, 1926-1927 McCormick Mausoleum, Rockford, IL, 1927 William R. Morris House, Greenwich, CT, 1927 711 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 1927 3 East 84th Street, New York, NY, 1928; with John Mead Howells Ideal House, London, UK, 1929 Daily News Building, New York, NY, 1929 Masonic Temple, Scranton, PA, 1929 Beaux-Arts Apartments, 307 and 310 East 44th Street, New York, NY, 1930 DuPont Building; Wilmington, DE, 1930; additions with Godley and Fouilhoux Joseph Patterson Residence, Ossining, NY, 1930; with Fouilhoux Rockefeller Center, New York, NY, 1933–1937; where Hood was a senior architect on the Associated Architects Rex Cole Showrooms, Bay Ridge and Flushing, NY, 1931; with Godley and Fouilhoux McGraw-Hill Building, New York, NY, 1931

Unbuilt works

Pawtucket City Hall, Pawtucket, RI, 1911 Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI, 1916 Providence County Court House, Providence, RI, 1924; competition Polish National Alliance Building, Chicago, IL, 1924; Hood's design won the competition but was never built Ridgewood Municipal Building, Ridgewood, NJ, 1926; Hood's design won the competition but was never built Central Methodist Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH, 1927 Rockland County Courthouse, New City, NY, 1929; competition Girard College Chapel, Philadelphia, PA, 1930; competition

Exhibitions In 1984, the Whitney Museum hosted an exhibition of Hood's work entitled "City of Towers." Curated by Carol Willis, the exhibit featured Hood's sketches and blueprints.

In 2020, The David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Hood's alma mater, held an online exhibition titled "Raymond Hood and the American Skyscraper." The exhibition focused on a selection of Hood's built and unbuilt skyscrapers, and included about 70 of his architectural drawings, photographs, models, and books.