George Aloysius Frederick (December 16, 1842 — August 17, 1924) was a German-American architect with a practice in Baltimore, Maryland, where his most prominent commission was the Baltimore City Hall (1867-75), awarded him when he was only twenty-one.A Baltimore Youth
George Frederick was born on December 16 , 1842 , to German immigrants from Bavaria that settled in Baltimore. As a child his parents called him Volishis Georg, but before entering his apprenticeship he Americanized his name to George Aloysius, remaining George A. Frederick for the rest of his life. His father was employed as a clerk and supported seven children: George, Mary, Alphonse Joseph, Wilhemena, Anna, Catherine, and Cecelia. Alphonse would become a Sulpician priest at St. Charles College in Catonsville, taking the name Reverend Joseph A. Frederick. The German Catholic roots nurtured in George's youth would influence the work he accepted throughout his career. He was educated at the Christian Brothers School in Baltimore until 1858 when he was accepted as an apprentice in Lind & Murdoch's architecture firm of Baltimore. Without formal architectural schools, apprenticeship was the most common way to enter the building profession. For the next four years he worked under this firm and had some experience also with Niernsee & Neilson of Baltimore.
Making a Career
Constructing Baltimore's City Hall
The young architect left his apprenticeship around 1863 with a masterful command of architecture and set up his own practice. At that time, Baltimore architects and builders looked to the City Council's arrangements for a new City Hall, with a budget estimated at $1,000,000, as the most enticing public project. The first competition to plan City Hall was in 1860, but the winner, William T. Marshall, fled from Baltimore during the Civil War. The second City Hall competition failed to elicit any entrants as the chaos of army movement to and from Gettysburg overwhelmed the city. Finally, a July 1 , 1864 , deadline was set for the third and final competition. At the age of twenty-one, Frederick submitted a design and beat out the more experienced bidders for the commission. Mayor Chapman and City Council summoned Frederick on September 18 , 1865 , to explain his plans and make any corrections. After doing so Frederick was commissioned as architect for City Hall on a two percent commission, paid monthly as work progressed. His plan was in the French Renaissance style of the Second Empire, capped by a cupola; the latter is thought to be inspired by the by the construction of the United States Capitol dome, begun in 1856. Frederick's design looked to the new additions to the Palais du Louvre, completed under Hector Lefuel in 1857, and well publicized to professionals and architects alike through engravings, lithographs and description; its high Mansard roofs, bold corner pavilions, richly framed dormers are reflected in Frederick's City Hall, above which rises the central dome, 227 feet (69 m) high, above an interior rotunda 119 feet (36 m) high. Twin interior courts provided every room with natural light. It was constructed with Baltimore County marble (also referred to as Beaver Dam Marble) and Falls Road bluestone. Baltimore carpenter J.M. Sudsberg designed and carved the doors bearing the seal of Baltimore and Battle Monument. Remarkably, the building was designed to be fireproof, the first municipal building so built in the nation. The Building Committee appointed him consulting architect in 1867 and as with many of his other projects, Frederick remained involved throughout the construction of his plans.
On October 18th of that year the cornerstone was laid. Though an address by Hon. J.H.B. Latrobe and Masonic rituals provided a spectacle to draw the crowds to the cornerstone laying ceremony, The Sun believed that the small crowd of onlookers represented the populace's view that a new City Hall at $1,000,000 was an unnecessary expenditure when economic strains from the war still crippled the city. In the summer of 1868 The Sun's fears were realized. The entirety of the Building Committee was forced to resign after charges of fraud revealed that they did not choose the lowest bidding contractors for marble, brick, lumber, and cement. Frederick was partly to blame for the brick contract. He used the term "common red" brick on his list of materials needed for the structure, when in fact no red bricks were used. Not knowing this, the Building Committee paid $8,188 for unneeded red bricks. Construction went on despite this setback. The new Building Committee included three mechanics to provide expertise and prevent a similar mistake. The building was finished in 1875, and to the surprise of the municipality, cost only $2,271,135.64 out of a total appropriation of $2,500,000 (the budget was expanded as construction progressed). The Building Committee and Frederick were seen as heroes for leaving $228,864.36 as a surplus to the city. A grand ceremony handing over the new City Hall from the Building Committee to Latrobe, representing the people of Baltimore, took place on October 26 , 1875 . Governor James Black Groome headed the procession, followed by the two regiments from Fort McHenry, civic and trade groups of the city, and the Baltimore Fire Department.
The House of Correction Corruption
Governor Groome recognized the talent of an architect that could take on such a large undertaking and stay under budget. As a member of the state Board of Public Works, he quickly hired Frederick even before the completion of City Hall. Unfortunately for Groome, Frederick's notoriety in state projects came from grossly exceeding appropriations rather than finishing with a surplus. He was commissioned as architect for the House of Correction in Jessup, Anne Arundel County, in 1875. Though not related to Frederick's actions, the Board of Public Works came under scrutiny in their management of this project. On July 17 , 1875 the individual members of the Board of Public Works—Governor James Black Groome, Treasurer Barnes Compton, and Comptroller Levin Woolford—filed suits of libel against Charles C. and Albert K. Fulton, proprietors of the Baltimore American , claiming $20,000 each in damages. The conflict originated in a letter to the editor and follow-up article published in the American on June 26 and June 28 , 1875. Both charged the overseers of the new House of Correction in Jessup with mismanagement at best, political corruption at worst.
After the officials filed their suits against the Fultons, the case was settled in open court on February 17 , 1876 . The Hagerstown Mail chastised the Board for failing to be open to public criticism, a requirement of American officeholders. A day after the court agreement, the Baltimore Sun reported that the Board of Public Works was expected to petition for an extra $200,000 over the $250,000 appropriation in order to complete the House of Correction as planned. Though optimistic at staying on budget in 1876, Comptroller Woolford’s 1877 Annual Report recognized that nearly the whole of the budget had been spent and “a considerable sum will be necessary to furnish the building and provide heat, water and light, so as to fit the institution for the reception of prisoners.” That considerable sum was expected to total $25,000 in 1878 and another $86,000 in 1879.
Repairs to the State House
Not deterred by the overspending, or at least not blaming it on Frederick, the Board hired him again in 1877 to design the repairs to the State House in Annapolis. Frederick was likely an apprentice to Lind & Murdoch when they worked on the octagonal library in the State House in 1858. In 1876 Governor Groome signed into law an act appropriating $32,000 for the repairs. After a year of delays, Frederick was finally instructed to contract with various builders in April 1877. Once work began, Frederick and the Board quickly realized that the building was in much worse condition than imagined. The cellar was too small to hold a heater, the floors had settled unevenly and were unsafe, and the roof was covered with tin which leaked and rotted the wood underneath. In fact, the American Architect and Building News reported that as Frederick worked on the repairs he discovered that the roof had been renewed three times, but each time the old shingles had been left underneath. The architect later commented "that under such conditions the State House had not resolved itself into a holocaust was a surprise to the architects when employed and of necessity made familiar with such surroundings." Once the building was stripped to address these repairs and install heating, it needed to be plastered and painted. Though the original intention had been to preserve the Senate Chamber and other historic rooms in their original Revolutionary appearance, as Groome testified on behalf of the Board of Public Works, having redone the entire b
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