Frank Furness

Architect, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He trained with Richard Morris Hunt, then fought in the Union cavalry in the Civil War. Returning to Philadelphia, he practised first with John Fraser and George W Hewitt, and after 1881 with Allen Evans. He was an outstanding exponent of the picturesque eclectic style, which blended colours, textures, and ornamental details from foreign styles of every period. Among his nearly 400 public and institutional buildings are the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1871–6) and the building regarded as his masterpiece, the Library (now the Furness Building), University of Pennsylvania (1888–91). He was reduced to obscurity in his later years, a victim of fashionable Neoclassicism, but his reputation revived in the 1960s, when post-Modernists found inspiration in the decorative richness of his style.

Frank Heyling Furness (November 12, 1839 - June 27, 1912) was a noted American architect.

Furness was born in Philadelphia. His father, William Furness, was a prominent Unitarian minister, and his brother, Horace Furness, was an outstanding Shakespeare scholar;

Furness began his architectural training in the office of John Fraser, Philadelphia, in the 1850s.

Furness considered himself Hunt’s apprentice and was influenced by Hunt’s dynamic personality and accomplished, elegant buildings.

During his career, Furness designed over four hundred buildings including banks, churches, synagogues, railway stations for the Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio railroads, and numerous stone mansions in Philadelphia and along Philadelphia's Main Line, as well as a handful of commissioned houses at the New Jersey seashore, Washington, D.C., New York state, and Chicago, Illinois.

Furness died on June 27, 1912, and is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. it is an almost insane short story of a castle on a city street.”

A fictional desk built by Furness was featured in the John Bellairs novel The Mansion in the Mist.

Some buildings by Furness, all located in Philadelphia:

Guarantee Trust and Safe Deposit Company, 1875 (demolished) Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1876 Provident Life & Trust Co., 1879 (demolished) National Bank of the Republic (later Philadelphia Clearing House), 1883 (demolished) Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Building (formerly University of Pennsylvania Library), 1890 Knowlton Mansion, 1880

Buildings by Furness, not in Philadelphia:

All Hallows Church, 1897, Wyncote, Pennsylvania New Castle Library Society building, 1892, New Castle, Delaware

Three adjacent buildings in Wilmington, Delaware are reputed to be the largest grouping of Furness-designed railroad buildings:

Pennsylvania Railroad French Street Station (now Amtrak), 1908 Pennsylvania Building, 1905 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Water Street Station, ca.