Robert Seyfarth
| Robert Edward Seyfarth | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
April 13, 1878 Blue Island, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | March 1, 1950 (aged 71) Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Buildings | See "Significant works" list below. |
| Projects | Plan Portfolio - The Home You Longed For - The Arkansas Soft Pine Bureau, 1918 |
Robert Seyfarth (/ˈsaɪfərθ/ SY-fərth) was an American architect based in Chicago, Illinois. He spent the formative years of his professional career working for the noted Prairie School architect George Washington Maher. A member of the influential Chicago Architectural Club, Seyfarth was a product of the Chicago School of Architecture.
Although his early independent projects directly reflected Maher’s stylistic influences, as his own style developed Seyfarth’s work became distinguished more as a distillation of prevailing revivalist architecture, characterized not by the frequent devotion to detail that typified the movement but by strong geometry, a highly refined sense of proportion, and the selective, discriminating use of historical references. Although any use of these references was condemned by many of the proponents of what was seen as "modern" architecture in the ensuing years, "the neoclassical impulse...was an effort to purge American architecture of the wilder excesses of historical revivalism [of the nineteenth century] by returning to fundamental architectural principles. The ideals this architecture sought to express were the very ones the most inventive Chicago architects were trying to embody in their own work - order, harmony, and repose...". As a result, the conception of modern architecture was anything but a static event. “Architects and critics engaged in lively debates concerning the definition of modern architecture and the future direction of building design. This discourse reflected the development of diverse architectural ideologies and forms that ranged from Beaux-Arts classicism to streamlining.”Joseph Hudnut, the first dean of Harvard University's School of Design and a noted proponent of modern architecture, recognized the emotional limitations of houses that expressed their design using the typical modern vocabulary of glass, concrete and steel: "They have often interesting aesthetic qualities, they arrest us by their novelty and their drama, but too often they have very little to say to us".
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