In 1885 the American Architect and Building News asked seventy-five American architects to identify the ten buildings they most admired in the United States. The poll yielded one clear favorite: Trinity Church, in Boston's Copley Square. Designed by the Louisiana-born and Paris-trained H. H. Richardson (1838-1886), Trinity received 84 percent of the firstplace votes. Of the top ten vote getters, four other structures were Richardson creations: the city hall and the state capitol in Albany, New York, the Sever Hall classroom building at Harvard University, and the town hall in North Easton, Massachusetts. Richardson, just forty-seven years old at the time, stood without peer among American architects.

Parisian Training.

Born in New Orleans, Henry Hobson Richardson grew up in a well-to-do plantation household. After graduating from Harvard University in 1859, Richardson went to Paris to commence his professional training at the Ecole...