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Architects of Mariemont: Richard Henry Dana and “The Dana Group” By Matt Ayer Architect Richard Henry Dana was born in 1879 in Cambridge, Mass., into a remarkable family. His paternal grandfather, as an undergraduate at Harvard, had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his health, he signed on as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn to California, returning two years later on another brig. He kept a diary throughout his voyage, and upon his return wrote the American classic Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840. He then finished his degree at Harvard and pursued a career in law. Richard Dana’s maternal grandfather was poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, most famous for “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” Dana’s father, another Harvard man, was a well-known lawyer, author, and civil service reform advocate. He recognized the need for a voter’s identity to be anonymous to counter practices of intimidation, blackmail, and potential vote buying. He authored the Massachusetts Ballot Act of 1888, the first “Australian ballot” (secret ballot) law in the US and now a fixture in all fifty states. Richard Dana also graduated from Harvard (1901), followed by three years at Columbia University, where he earned a BS degree at the School of Architecture, followed by two years of study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris to complete his formal architectural training. Next, Dana worked as a draftsman, serving one year each with two different New York firms. He then entered into partnership with Henry Killam Murphy, an association that lasted twelve years. During this period, Dana designed
Part of The Dana Group residences on Chestnut Street. twelve of the eighteen educational groups undertaken by the firm in China and Japan, primarily the Yale in China project in Changsha. He also served as a visiting professor at Yale and received an honorary degree in architecture. Recognizing that the work in the Orient demanded personal supervision, but unwilling to relocate there with his family, Dana dissolved the partnership in 1920 and practiced under his own name for the remaining twelve years of his life, from an office in Manhattan. In 1933, his life and distinguished career were cut short at the age of 54, from pneumonia. His practice centered on the design (as well as restoration or alteration) of commodious homes for wealthy clients, primarily in Connecticut and New York. His son wrote that
he “was known to his friends as an expert in the refinements of the Colonial and Georgian styles, though his success in this field was probably inadvertent. The choice of style was often a requirement of the client, and an architect cannot always choose his own clients. He was particularly successful in planning for both the practical and artistic needs of his clients, in making sure they had what would suit them best, and in supervising every detail of the work.” Two projects brought Dana to the Midwest, each notable as “outside his wheelhouse” of fine homes, churches, and schools. In 1929, the Muncie, Ind., Chamber of Commerce commissioned sculptor Daniel Chester French Cont'd on page 4