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Rochester City Hall

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The current article says, "A popular but erroneous belief is that Harvey also designed the United States Court House and Post Office in Rochester, now the Rochester City Hall. Extensive documentation in the National Archives reveals that this building, like other government structures throughout the country at this time, was designed in the Office of the Supervising Architect of the United States Treasury."

This is the building in question, and the online HABS resource contains convincing and detailed information about how the Ellises were awarded the commission. The Supervising Architect office almost invariably collaborated with local firms. Unless there's very good evidence to the contrary, this one should have stayed on Ellis's commission list. --Lockley (talk) 08:08, 5 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The HABS documentation, which was prepared in 1979, does indeed provide a wealth of details. What it says about the physical aspects of the building has stood the test of time. What it says about Harvey Ellis has not. The information about him was mainly derived from a 1968 article and a 1971 exhibition catalog that decreed him the designer of the Rochester building. Their rather operatic portrayals of Ellis have been superseded by ongoing research during the past thirty years. History is not a static body of conclusions, and knowlede about a subject can change over the course of years. There is only one thing about doing good history that never changes: the need to maintain objectivity and to consider all of the known information available about a given subject at a given time and to follow where it leads, casting preconceptions, or sometimes just wishes, aside. In the case of Ellis, we now know the HABS statements that were extracted from the article and catalog are inaccurate. Just one example: the idea that Ellis sometimes secretly signed his perspective renderings with the pseudonym Albert Levering. We now know that there really was a person named Albert Levering, who was a contemporary of Ellis, and he signed his renderings that deliberately imitated those of Ellis with his own name. Revised information coming from different historians adds up to a very different, reconfigured portrait of Ellis from that of thirty years ago. You are right that a local architect was always involved with the office of supervising architect on the government buildings. But he functioned as a superintendent of construction who took direction from the supervising architect in Washington and sent him detailed weekly reports. At the time the Rochester building was designed, local architects played no substantive part in the design of government buildings. That of course became a very sore point for them and was remedied by the Tarsney Act of 1893, which allowed local architects to design the buildings if the supervising architect agreed in each particular case (for years some of them refused to do so) Admittedly the early history of the Rochester building is complicated, but consideration of all of the material about it in the National Archives reveals that the Ellises did not design the building that is now the Rochester City hall. Sorry this got so long, but the issue you raised is an important one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ellishistorian (talk • contribs) 16:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Forgot to say that you might be interested in Antoinette Lee, Architect to the Nation: The Rise and Decline of the Supervising Architect's Office (2000), which details the functioning of that office. Appendix A in Michels, Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis, 328-44, details the design and construction of the Rochester building. Because it is such a complicated story, it is understandable that there was confusion about who designed it. ----Ellishistorian

This page has improved immensely since last I checked it. It looks great. I see that several of the buildings that are usually associated with Ellis are not mentioned on the page: the Adam Brown Block in Rochester, the Mabel Tainter Memorial in Menomonie, the National Casket Company building in Rochester, the building on Water Street in Rochester. Were these buildings not designed by Ellis? Britishisles (talk) 19:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Corrected information

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For the past several days I have endeavored to correct misinformation unfortunately recently inserted, apparently ineradicably, into the entry about Harvey Ellis. A Mr. Andrew Dingley, who has identified himself as a furniture makier but is unknown in the community of Ellis researchers, keeps undoing the corrections. I have wearied of the situation, and will sign off with the observations that follow. The educated reader would do well to consult the references cited in the main entry and form his or her own opinion -- keeping in mind the truism that, as new information is unearthed by scholars, the historical record will change to reflect it. It also helpis to keep in mind a statement by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but everyone is not entitled to his own facts. Readers might also be interested in various posts on the blog http://harveyellisfacts.blogspot.com/

First. Re: The Tainter Memorial in Menomonee, Wisconsin. Some time ago, when the nomination of the Tainter Memorial to the National Register was prepared, the building was attributed to Harvey Ellis. The primary basis for the attribution was a now discredited article published in the late 1960s in Minnesota History. Research since then, by a number of people, has led to the conclusion that the bulding was designed by Edgar E. Joralemon. Consequently, several years ago new information reflecting the changed attribution was submitted to the Register. This change had no significant bearing on the Register listing, because the stage machinery of the Tainter Memorial is as historically significant as its architectural design.

Second. Re "Ellis" furniture. The concept that Ellis designed furniture for Stickley dates from the 1970s when Ellis's 1903 Craftsman drawings were seriously misinterpreted. Chapter 14 of Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis examines and refutes the idea that Ellis designed furniture for Stickley as does the lemgthy post "Did Ellis Design Furniture for Stickley?" in http://harveyellisfacts.blogspot.com/ In recent years historians, curators, and even some antiquities delers have backed away from the idea that Ellis was a furniture designer for Stickley. It still reigns, to an extent, in certain commercial circles, including Antiques Roadshow. Dealers in antiquities might well have a vested interest in maintaining that Ellis designed furniture, since for a while furniture allegedly designed by him was sold for astronomical prices. The market has now noticeably softened. For an insider's view of the sometimes unsavory Ats and Crafts art market see Tod M. Volpe's 2002 book, Framed, Tales of the Art Underworld. A segment on Antiques Roadshow by a dealer, John Solo, also unknown in the broad Ellis commuinity, extolling "Ellis" furniture is best taken with a grain of salt.````

```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emeritahistorian (talk • contribs) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If Ellis' attribution of the Tainter Memorial has now been re-atrributed to Joralemon, there will no doubt be Reliable Sources to back up this claim. Likewise your deletion of the well-recorded works for Gustav Stickley where you claim, "There is no evidence that Ellis designed furniture for Stickley so removed paragraph ".
I admit that I am not a published authority on the subject of Ellis and for his architectural works I know almost nothing. However I am a commercial maker of furniture in the styles of the Stickleys, and particularly Ellis, so I'm not entirely ignorant on the subject. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:29, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that this change refactored and expanded several of the paras I'd already replied to.
Couple of simple questions - Are you, Emeritahistorian (talk · contribs) the same editor as Ellishistorian (talk · contribs)?
Secondly, what's your connection with the authorship of Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis? Are you indeed Eileen Manning Michels, its author? If so, perhaps you should read both WP:COI and WP:RS.
You are advocating a position here, "Ellis didn't design the 'Ellis' pieces", that is new to me. Now as you so disparagingly point out, I'm a mere cabinetmaker, not an published authority like yourself. Still, cabinetmaking was good enough for Gustav, and apparently more than Harvey Ellis was capable of, so at least I'm in good company. This viewpoint is "non-mainstream", to be charitable. It occurs, AFAICS, in just one book: self-published, from a publisher that I can't even find listings for on this continent, and supported by a blogspot website. Please read WP:RS as to why these are an issue on Wikipedia.
If there are other sources that support this theory, then please point them out - that's what we need here, not throwing mud at John Solo or myself for being no more than a pack of dealers and carpenters. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:58, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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