Also in 1894, Lord, under the aegis of
Charles F. McKim, was appointed Director of the American School of Architecture in Rome (later the
American Academy in Rome), where he stayed until 1896.[4]
In 1899,
William A. Clark, a wealthy businessman (and later
U. S. senator) from
Montana, commissioned Lord, Hewlett, & Hull to design a large
house for him to be built on
Fifth Avenue in
New York City.[7] (Clark had commissioned the firm to design his
mausoleum in
Woodlawn Cemetery in the
Bronx in 1897.[8]) In 1904 the commission led to a major legal dispute within the firm which was only resolved in 1908,[9] and the house was not completed until 1911.
In 1912, Lord was appointed Trustees Professor of Architecture and Director of the
School of Architecture at Columbia University.[13] In the same year he was selected by
George W. Goethals to design the administration buildings for the
Isthmian Canal Commission in
Panama.[14] "Lord spent the month of July 1912 on the
Isthmus studying the
topography of the land and local conditions that would affect the design of the buildings. The agreement was that he would return to New York to work out a general scheme in which all of the buildings "from Toro Point to
Taboga Island would be of a prevailing style." Due to mutual frustration between Lord and Goethals, Lord resigned from the project in August 1913.[15] Lord's consequent neglect of his work at Columbia led to concern on the part of the trustees of the university and eventually to his dismissal from his position there in 1915.[16]
Wilton River, Silvermine Conn. Oct. 1915
Shortly after leaving his post at Columbia, Lord retired to
Silvermine, Connecticut, where he had bought a large farmhouse and had been active in the artists' colony there, the Silvermine Group of Artists, since its formal establishment in 1909.[17] Although his partnership with Hewlett was to remain until his death, it was about this time that Lord began to devote most of his energies to painting. This was due in part to his friendship with another member of the Silvermine Group, the painter
Carl Schmitt, who married his daughter Gertrude in 1918 and settled permanently in Silvermine the following year. In addition to being part of exhibitions at Silvermine and other local venues, including a one-man show in
Winona,[18] Lord's work was shown at the
National Academy of Design,[19] the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the
Art Association of Newport, and the Mahoning Institute in
Youngstown, Ohio.[20]
^Dennis McFadden, "Lord, Austin W.", in Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects edited by Adolph K. Placzek (New York: Free Press, 1982), vol. 3., p. 32.
ISBN9780029250006.
^"United States Department of Agriculture Building to be Built in Washington, D. C."
Architects' and Builders' Magazine, vol. 34 no. 10 (July 1902), pp. 371–74. The article includes plans and elevations of the proposed building.
^Lord and Hewlett v. United States, 217 U.S. 340 (1910) at
Justia.
^Vicki M. Boatwringht, "Administration Building Unites Past, Present and Future,"
Panama Canal Review October 1, 1979, p. 9, citing
Canal Record vol. 5 no. 50 (August 7, 1912), p. 397.
^Susan M. Strauss, "History III: 1912–1933," in The Making of an Architect: 1881–1981: Columbia University in the City of New York, ed. Richard Oliver (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), pp. 89–90.
^Annie Tolebate, "An Architect's Summer Home: The House of Austin W. Lord, Esq., Water Witch, New Jersey."
American Homes and Gardens vol. 4, no. 12 (December 1907), pp. 456–57.
^W. J. Nealley and J. Monroe Hewlett, "Brooklyn's Oldest Hospital Built Anew."
Modern Hospital vol. 7 no. 5 (November 1916), pp. 361–66.
Further reading
Yegül, Fikret K. Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding: Architecture at the American Academy in Rome, 1894–1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, chaps. 3 and 4.