Word: wren
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...intelligent reader, that lame dog who often feels the need for help over styles, will find many familiar Lowell mannerisms. Among them: the dazzling fast shuffle of historical cards from different decks, imperial Rome, Emerson's Boston, Wren's London. There are, as always, several Lowells: Lowell the improper Bostonian, the politically engaged, the scholar, traveler and eclectic New England importer of foreign cultures. Lowell the poet has not only the chameleon's ability to change the color of his verse to fit the subject but that wizard lizard's faculty of independently focusing each...
Seeking to commemorate the occasion, Westminster began looking for a memorial in 1961. The college decided that nothing could be more appropriate than a church designed by Sir Christopher Wren. As surveyor to King Charles II, Wren had rebuilt London after the Great Fire of 1666, creating out of its ashes a new city-as indomitable an assertion of man's stubborn will to survive as was Churchill's trumpeted defiance when the bombs fell on Wren's London during World...
Bold Virtuosity. Wren's must have been one of the most sizable architectural commissions of all time. In the years between 1670 and 1711, he over saw the design and construction of St. Paul's Cathedral, Chelsea Hospital, most of Greenwich Hospital, portions of Hampton Court, and many lesser secular buildings. His most sustained performance was to design and rebuild the 55 churches destroyed in the fire...
Trained as a mathematician and astronomer at Oxford, Wren used an empirical approach to architecture. In general, he kept to the Gothic tradition, with steeples and layers of construction piling upward, but to this he added French, Flemish and Italian Baroque as it suited his purpose, pleased his fancy, or kindled his architectural imagination. He might be called a virtuoso of the eclectic. St. Paul's combines coupled columns from the Louvre with the triple-layered dome of Mansart's Hotel des Invalides. It served as a model for the U.S. Capitol dome. At St. Mary leBow...
...Quest. The Wren church that Westminster College finally settled on was St. Mary the Virgin, which was more simple, restrained and less celebrated than some of Wren's other churches. Still, in many ways it has a classical elegance equaled by few. The church was built on the foundations of an earlier church; its facade was constructed with a triangular pediment surmounting a Romanesque window flanked by Baroque volutes. The slim neo-Romanesque belfry contained five bells and was surmounted by a lead-sheathed clock tower...