Ralph Adams Cram

Cram was born on December 16, 1863, at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, to William Augustine Cram and Sarah Elizabeth (Blake) Cram. He was educated at Westford Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy. He was a cousin of Ralph Warren Cram.

At age 18, Cram moved to Boston in 1881 and worked for five years in the architectural office of Rotch & Tilden, after which he left for Rome to study classical architecture. From 1885 to 1887, he was art critic for the Boston Transcript. During an 1887 Christmas Eve Mass in Rome, he had a dramatic conversion experience. For the rest of his life, he practiced as a fervent Anglo-Catholic who identified as high-church Anglican. In the 1890s, Cram was a key figure in "social-controversial-inspirational" groups including the Pewter Mugs and the Visionists.

In 1900, Cram married Elizabeth Carrington Read at New Bedford, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Clement Carrington Read and his wife. Read had served as a captain in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Elizabeth and Ralph had three children, Mary Carrington Cram, Ralph Wentworth Cram and Elizabeth Strudwick Cram. The family burial site is at the St. Elizabeth's Memorial Churchyard. The churchyard is adjacent to St Elizabeth's Chapel, which Cram designed, in Sudbury, Massachusetts, where he lived later in life.

Cram and business partner Charles Wentworth started business in Boston in April 1889 as Cram and Wentworth. They had landed only four or five church commissions before they were joined by Bertram Goodhue in 1892 to form Cram, Wentworth and Goodhue. Goodhue brought an award-winning commission in Dallas (never built) and brilliant drafting skills to the Boston office.

Wentworth died in 1897 and the firm's name changed to Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson to include draftsman Frank W. Ferguson (1861–1926). Cram and Goodhue complemented each other's strengths at first but began to compete, sometimes submitting two differing proposals for the same commission. The firm won design of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1902, a major milestone in their career. They set up the firm's New York office, where Goodhue would preside, leaving Cram to operate in Boston. He designed the sanctuary for the First Unitarian Society in Newton which represents elements of his signature ecclesiastical style and was built in 1905. From 1907 to 1909, Cram was the editor of Christian Art.

Cram's acceptance of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine commission in New York City in 1911 (on Goodhue's perceived territory) heightened the tension between the two. Architectural historians have attributed most of their projects to one partner or the other, based on the visual and compositional style, and the location. The Gothic Revival Saint Thomas Church was designed by them both in 1914 on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. It is the last example of their collaboration, and the most integrated and strongest example of their work together.

Goodhue began his solo career on August 14, 1913. Cram and Ferguson continued with major church and college commissions through the 1930s. Particularly important work includes the original campus of Rice University, Houston, as well as the library and first city hall of that city. Also notable is Cram's first church in the Boston area, All Saints, Dorchester. The successor firm is HDB/Cram and Ferguson of Boston.

One of Ralph Adams Cram’s lesser-known yet architecturally significant commissions is Sacred Heart Church in Jersey City, New Jersey, designed between 1922 and 1924. The church is a distinctive fusion of Spanish Gothic and Moorish architecture, reflecting Cram’s exploration of Iberian Gothic motifs. The building features intricate Samuel Yellin ironwork and stained glass windows designed by a young Harry Wright Goodhue, who was just 18 years old at the time. The church, originally built to serve a vibrant immigrant community, is considered an important example of Cram’s ecclesiastical designs outside of Boston. Although deconsecrated, it remains an architectural landmark and is currently undergoing restoration as part of a broader redevelopment of the Sacred Heart campus.

A leading proponent of disciplined Gothic Revival architecture in general and Collegiate Gothic in particular, Cram is most closely associated with Princeton University, where he served as supervising architect from 1907 to 1929, during a period of major construction. The university awarded him a Doctor of Letters for his achievements. In 1907, he served as chairman of the American Institute of Architects' Committee on Education.

For seven years he headed the Architectural Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Through the 1920s, Cram was a public figure and frequently mentioned in the press. The New York Times called him "one of the most prominent Episcopalian laymen in the country". His work was part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics.

He made news with his defense of Al Smith during his electoral campaign, when anti-Catholic rhetoric was used, saying "I... express my disgust at the ignorance and superstition now rampant and in order that I may go on record as another of those who, though not Roman Catholics, are nevertheless Americans and are outraged by this recrudescence of blatant bigotry, operating through the most cowardly and contemptible methods."

In around 1932, he designed the Desloge Chapel in St. Louis, MO, the Gothic chapel designed to echo the contours of the St. Chapelle in Paris. Desloge Chapel, which is associated with the Firmin Desloge Hospital and St. Louis University, in 1983, was declared a landmark by the Missouri Historical Society. In 1938, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician. He died in Boston Massachusetts on September 22 1942 of a cerebral hemorrhage at 78.

Religion

Raised Unitarian, Cram converted to Anglo-Catholicism after a youthful visit to Rome. He later joined The Episcopal Church in the United States upon returning to his home country. Throughout his life, Cram was devoted to liturgical and devotional practices revived by Anglo-Catholicism, including the cultus of King Charles the Martyr. He, along with other Anglo-Catholics, viewed Anglicanism as a "branch" of the one true Church, alongside the Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and hoped for eventual unification with Rome.

Cram also co-founded the American branches of the Society of King Charles the Martyr and the Order of the White Rose. Traveling through Europe, Cram also befriended Catholic writers Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, who have been credited with influencing his views. He later became involved with a number of American Roman Catholic enterprises and co-founded the Catholic magazine Commonweal. Cram accepted papal primacy and frequently defended Catholicism against American anti-Catholic prejudice, though he never converted to the Roman Catholic Church.

Residences

The Birches, Garrison, New York, 1882

Moonstone Cottage, 559 York Street, York Harbor, Maine, 1889

House of the Rising Sun, 657 Highland Avenue, Fall River, Massachusetts, c.1890. Designed for Unitarian missionary Reverend Arthur May Knapp (1841–1921), it was inspired by a Japanese Pagoda.

Rehoboth, Chappaqua, New York, 1891–92

Richmond Court, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1896

Watkins Manor House, Winona, Minnesota, 1924–27

Standish Mansion, Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, 1934

Cram argued that the United States would be better off under a Semi-constitutional monarchy, with the right to vote restricted to white men who owned a sufficient level of property. He lays out some of his monarchist beliefs in his work Invitation to Monarchy, which appeared in The American Mercury in 1936.