LEOPOLD EIDLITZ

'Leopold Eidlitz' (March 23 1823, Prague, Bohemia - 1908, New York, New York) was a prominent New York architect best known for his work on the Temple Emanu-El (New York, 1866-68, destroyed 1927) and the New York State Capitol (Albany, New York, 1876-1881). Other important commissions included the Broadway Tabernacle (1859, demolished about 1907), P. T. Barnum's Iranistan and the completion of the New York County Courthouse, better known as the Tweed Courthouse (1876-81). He was possibly America's first Jewish architect and a founding member of the American Institute of Architects in 1857. In 1859, he joined the Century Association. He was author of numerous articles published in such journals as ''The Crayon'' and the ''American Architect and Building News'' and published a major book of architectural theory ''The Nature and Function of Art, More Especially of Architecture'' (1881). Educated in Habsburg-sponsored technical schools in Prague and Vienna, Eidlitz was a proponent of organicism in architecture that wedded German notions of art and science to American transcendentalist concerns.

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References

★ Montgomery Schuyler, "A Great American Architect: Leopold Eidlitz," parts 1, 2, and 3. ''Architectural Record'' (September, October, and November 1908).

★ Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, David Fishman, ''New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age.'' New York: Monacelli Press, 1999.