Josiah Cleaveland Cady
Josiah Cleaveland Cady was a Trinity alumnus who was regarded as one of the most prolific and eminent architects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Cady was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1837. Cady only attended Trinity College as a student for a year in 1857 before venturing on his own to get an education in architectural design. There is not much known about his time as a Trinity student, but records indicate that he was a member of the Epsilon Chapter of Delta Psi fraternity. He later received an honorary M.A. from Trinity in 1880 and an honorary L.L.D. in 1905.
Cady undertook his architectural training between the years of 1857 to 1868, most likely in New York, where he opened his first office in 1868. His first large commission as a young architect came just a year later in 1869 as he was awarded the opportunity to design the Brooklyn Art Association building, the mother institution of the Brooklyn Museum. The building was designed in a high Victorian gothic style, sometimes referred to as Ruskinian Gothic; it opened in 1872 and contained both artists' studios and exhibition spaces.
Throughout his career, Cady designed many buildings with Milton See and Louis DeCoppet Berg, and later with William S. Gregory. The partnership between Cady, Berg, and See from the early 1870s until 1909 is often forgotten because many of the buildings designed by their firm (Cady, Berg & See) have since been destroyed. Cady's partnership with Gregory, who began as a student draftsman, lasted from 1909 until Cady's death in 1919. Some of Cady's most notable buildings include Yale University's Law School and the original Peabody Museum, as well as New York City's Metropolitan Opera House and the American Museum of Natural History. Cady's firm also designed buildings at Williams College and Wesleyan University.
Cady built two buildings at Trinity College: Jarvis Scientific Laboratory (also called Jarvis Hall of Science), which was demolished in the 1960s, and St. Anthony Hall, which still stands today. Jarvis Scientific Laboratory was constructed in 1888 on Trinity's then-south campus and served as the home of the chemistry and physics departments for many years before its demolition in 1963. The building was designed in an early French Romanesque style and contained two lecture halls, several laboratories, as well as workshops for optics, batteries, and electricity. St. Anthony Hall, located in the Gallows Hill section of campus on Summit Street, was “built in 1877-78 by Trinity College's Epsilon Chapter of the national fraternity of Delta Psi for use as Chapter headquarters.” 1) The money needed for the construction of the hall was contributed by Habersham Coleman, a former fraternity brother of Cady's and a Board of Trustees member. The building was the last that Cady designed in a High Victorian gothic manner.
Throughout his life, Cady remained very active in his involvement with Trinity, attending almost every commencement ceremony. A few months before his death, Cady donated the extensive architectural library from the firm of Cady, Berg & See to the College and according to the Trinity College Bulletin, “designed a handsome and appropriate book-plate for the collection, and the College has provided special shelving and cabinets for its proper care.” The collection currently is housed in the Watkinson Library.
Josiah Cleaveland Cady died on April 18, 1919 after a brief illness. He was 82.
Sources
"A forgotten architect of the Gilded Age: Josiah Cleaveland Cady's legacy" (1993) by Kathleen Curran.