A p r i l 2 0 2 2 • M a r i e m o n t, O h i o • Vo l u m e X LV I , N o . 7
Architects of Mariemont: Lincoln Fechheimer and Dale Park School By Matt Ayer Previous articles in this series describe Charles Livingood’s search for the finest talent in the selection of architects for the new town of Mariemont. Looking back, it is hard to imagine a better choice than Abraham Lincoln Fechheimer to design the town’s first school. Fechheimer was born in 1876 into a prominent Cincinnati Jewish family. Deaf at birth, Lincoln benefited from a private teacher in speech and lip reading beginning at the age of five. At nine, he studied six years at a boarding school specializing in deaf education, Clarke School in Northamton, Mass. He would later credit his Clarke teachers with his success: “It was through the results of their Lincoln Fechheimer work that I was able to associate with the hearing world and thus overcome what, to my mind, is the deaf person’s greatest handicap, namely, his inability to associate freely with hearing people.” His teachers employed the “oral method,” relying solely on lip reading (not supplemented by sign language) to teach both speaking and a substitute for aural listening. Upon his return to Cincinnati at fourteen, he became the first deaf student to enter a local “hearing” school, i.e., one that had no specialized instruction for a deaf student. He excelled to such a degree that upon
Fechheimer designed the paviliion in Ault Park. graduation, an Ivy League education was within reach. In 1899, he not only graduated with a degree in architecture from Columbia University, but by his own accounts he was also the first deaf student in the United States to graduate from a “hearing” college. From there he honed his drafting skills in Chicago for a year, then traveled to Paris to try for admission to the Ecole des Beaux-sArts, considered the foremost school of architecture in the world. He later wrote: “Their entrance requirements are of a most rigorous nature. Five or six hundred take these examinations, and out of this number forty-five Frenchmen and fifteen foreigners are accepted. I was fortunate enough to be admitted during my first year.” Competing
at the absolute highest level in the field of architecture in a “hearing” world, he received his diploma in four and one-half years. His feat exemplifies the near limitless bounds of human learning. Remarkable in another sense, for this small town in Ohio, Charles Livingood was able to acquire the services of architects equipped with the world’s finest training in the Beaux-Arts for three adjacent projects on Chestnut Street: Mariemont Memorial Church (Louis Jallade), the Dana Group (Richard H. Dana Jr.), and Dale Park School (Lincoln Fechheimer). Beaux-Arts architecture emphasizes the use of historic forms, rich decorative detail, and a tendency toward monumental conception. Cont'd on page 4