Russell Sturgis

Between 1865 and 1880 he designed Battell Chapel and Lawrance, Farnam and Durfee Halls at Yale; the Homeopathic Medical College and Flower Hospital, New York City; the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank of Albany; and churches, commercial buildings, and residences in New York City, Albany, Aurora, Tarrytown and Watertown, New York; New Haven, Farmington and Litchfield, Connecticut; Louisville, Kentucky; and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Upon the reorganization of the American Institute of Architects in 1868, Sturgis was elected secretary, while Richard Upjohn was president and R.G. Hatfield treasurer. Also in 1868, Sturgis published his Manual of the Jarves Collection of Early American Pictures in the Yale School of Fine Arts. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art was established in 1870, Sturgis was a trustee and a member of the executive committee until 1876, also serving as corresponding secretary from 1870 to 1873. He designed the First Baptist Church at Tarrytown, New York about 1875.

During the Exposition Universelle of 1878, Sturgis spent some months in France, and upon his return accepted the chair of architecture and the arts of design at the College of the City of New York. He was the co-author, with Charles Eliot Norton, of a Catalogue of Ancient and Modern Engravings, Woodcuts and Illustrated Books, Parts of the Collections of C.E. Norton and R. Sturgis (1879). On account of ill health he left his professorship and retired from business in 1880 and went to Europe. Residing chiefly in Paris and Florence, he remained abroad until 1884. For a short time after his return he was secretary of the New York Municipal Civil Service Board, but resigned out of dislike for the political complications involved in the position.

He trained architect Arthur Bates Jennings.

On December 30, 1886, Sturgis and his eldest son, Appleton, represented the family at the funeral of his wife's uncle, Ashbel H. Barney, retired president (1869-70) of Wells Fargo & Company.

Sturgis was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and of the National Academy of Design; an honorary fellow of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences; a fellow in perpetuity of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; life member of the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society; honorary member of the National Society of Mural Painters; and a member of the Architectural League of New York (president in 1889-93), the Grolier Club, the Municipal Art Society, Archaeological Institute of America, National Sculpture Society, the Japan Society, the Fine Arts Federation of New York (first president, 1895-97); member of the University, Century and Players clubs of New York City; and a member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in London.

He lectured on art at Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Peabody Institute of Baltimore and the Art Institute of Chicago; his Scammon Lectures of 1904-05 in Chicago were published under the title The Interdependence of the Arts of Design (1905). Sturgis received the honorary degrees of MA from Yale in 1870 and PhD from the College of the City of New York in 1893. A disciple of John Ruskin, Sturgis intensely disliked the trend toward neoclassic eclecticism at the end of the 19th century and hailed Louis H. Sullivan's work as the most significant that was being done in America.

A leading authority on the history of architecture and art, Sturgis was editor for decorative art and medieval archaeology of the Century Dictionary, editor of architecture and fine art for Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia (1893-95); and compiler (for the American Library Association) of the Annotated Bibliography of Fine Art (1897). In January 1897 he became editor of The Field of Art, a department of Scribner's Magazine, which he continued until his death.

He is best known as a writer on art and architecture, making many contributions to dictionaries, encyclopedias and periodicals. He was editor-in-chief of A Dictionary of Architecture and Building (3 vols, 1901-1902). Sturgis edited and revised the English version of Wilhelm Luebke's Outlines of the History of Art (2 vols, 1904), and was editor on fine arts for the Encyclopedia Americana (1904-05). He wrote:

• European Architecture: A Historical Study (1896).
• The Etchings of Piranesi (1900).
• How to Judge Architecture (1903).
• The Appreciation of Sculpture (1904).
• The Appreciation of Pictures (1905).
• A Study of the Artist's Way of Working in the Various Handicrafts and Arts of Design (2 vols, 1905).
• The Interdependence of the Arts of Design (1905).
• Ruskin on Architecture (1906).
• History of Architecture (4 vols., 1906-1915; Vols. III and IV were completed by A.L. Frothingham, Jr.).
  • Volume I. Antiquity (1906).
  • Volume II. Romanesque and Oriental (1909).
  • Volume III. Gothic in Italy, France, and Northern Europe (1915)
  • Volume IV. Gothic in Great Britain, Renaissance, Modern Architecture (1915)

During his last years he was nearly blind. He died on February 11, 1909, at his long-time home, 307 East 17th Street, in New York City. Sarah Sturgis died there on May 1, 1910.

• Joseph H. Scranton house (1867-71), Scranton, Pennsylvania.
• Farnham Hall (1868-70), Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
• Dean Sage house (1869), 839 St. Mark's Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.
• Durfee Hall (1870-71), Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
• Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. house (1872-73, demolished), 6 West 57th Street, New York City. Interiors were designed by Frank Furness and executed by Daniel Pabst.
• Mechanics' and Farmers' Bank (1874-75), State & James Streets, Albany, New York.
• Battell Chapel (1874-76), Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
• First Baptist Church (1875-81), Tarrytown, New York.
• Lawrance Hall (1885-86), Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
• Homeopathic Medical College and Flower Free Surgical Hospital (1888-89), York Avenue & 63rd Street, New York City.
• Rev. Cannon Douglas house (c. 1899), Tuxedo Park, New York.