John Calvin Stevens
| John Calvin Stevens | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
October 8, 1855 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | January 25, 1940 (aged 84) Portland, Maine |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Awards | Congressional Record of Recognition (2009) |
| Buildings |
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John Calvin Stevens (October 8, 1855 – January 25, 1940) was an American architect who worked in the Shingle Style, in which he was a major innovator, and the Colonial Revival style. He designed more than 1,000 buildings in the state of Maine.
Stevens was the son of Maria Wingate and Leander Stevens, a cabinet maker and builder of fancy carriages. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but when he was two, his family moved to Portland, Maine.
Stevens wanted to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but lacked the money to attend. Instead, he apprenticed in the Portland office of architect Francis H. Fassett, who in 1880 made him a junior partner to open the firm's new Boston office. Another architect working in the same building was William Ralph Emerson, whose historicist aesthetic in the Queen Anne Style had a profound effect on Stevens. He married Martha Louise Waldron in 1877, and they had four children. Stevens opened his own office in Portland in 1884.
In 1888 Stevens formed a partnership with Albert Winslow Cobb. Together they wrote the book Examples of American Domestic Architecture (1889), an early study of the Shingle Style. Cobb wrote the prose and Stevens provided the illustrations. The partnership was dissolved in 1891. Stevens' son, John Howard Stevens, became an architect and joined his father's firm in 1898. John became a full partner in 1904, and the firm was renamed Stevens Architects.
His most-acclaimed early house — the James Hopkins Smith house in Falmouth Foreside, Maine (1886) — was featured in George William Sheldon's Artistic Country Seats (1886–87). In The Shingle Style (1955), Vincent Scully described the Smith house as a "pièce de résistance" and a "masterpiece", "a more sweeping and coherent version of Stevens' own house". Sheldon also praised his "powerful alterations" to a summer hotel called the Poland Springs House.
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