Architect Owen Biddle

The Arch Street Meeting House was designed and built by Quaker master builder Owen Biddle, beginning in 1803.  In his time Biddle was among Philadelphia’s most prominent carpenter/ builders, and yet relatively little is known of him today because his promising career was cut short by his death in 1806.

 

Biddle was born into a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family; the Biddle family was among those who immigrated to the colony upon its formation in 1681.  Owen Biddle, Sr. was a clock and watchmaker, an astronomer, mathematician and active member of the American Philosophical Society, conducting astronomical experiments on its behalf.  In his later years, prior to his passing in 1799, he was extremely active in the Yearly Meeting and was among those responsible for the creation of the well-known Westtown School.  His son, Owen Biddle, Jr. was born in 1774.  He trained as a carpenter and began teaching “the rudiments of architecture” about 1800, the same year that he was accepted as a member of the influential Carpenters’ Company.  

 

He worked with fellow carpenter Joseph Cowgill from 1799 to 1801, but otherwise operated independently to serve a mostly Quaker clientele.  He often functioned as the builder for structures designed by others. Such was the case with the domed Greek Temple style Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1805-1806, no longer extant).  Designed by gentleman architect John Dorsey, it was among the buildings that confirmed Biddle’s reputation as a builder.  Biddle is also well-known for his role in the construction of the landmark Schuylkill Permanent Bridge (1798-1805, no longer extant); the bridge company president wrote that the bridge covering “was executed with singular fidelity and credit, by Mr. Owen Biddle, an ingenious carpenter and architect of Philadelphia who made addition to the design.”  Of his known works, the Arch Street Meeting House is considered Biddle’s principal accomplishment, one which he both designed and constructed.

  

Biddle is best remembered as the author of an influential builder’s handbook entitled The Young Carpenter’s Assistant, or A System of Architecture adapted to the Style of Building in the United States, published in 1805.  The book—which contains forty-four plates including his design for the innovative trusses used in the construction of Arch Street Meeting House—was one of the earliest handbooks on architecture written and published in the United States.  It was the third of only nineteen such books and articles written in America during the whole of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, preceded only by William Pain’s The Practical Builder (Boston, 1792), and Asher Benjamin’s Country Builder’s Assistant (1797).  The Young Carpenter’s Assistant is named among the “One Hundred Great Architectural Books Most Influential in Shaping the Architecture of the Western World.”  It is ranked among other seminal books on architecture published before 1850 such as Asher Benjamin’s The American Builder’s Companion (Charleston, 1806), Peter Nicholson’s The Carpenter’s New Guide, 8th ed. (Philadelphia, 1818), Minard Lafever’s The Modern Builder’s Guide (New York, 1833), and Andrew Jackson Downing’s Cottage Residences (New York, 1842).

 

Owen Biddle’s The Young Carpenter’s Assistant was a rare and valuable commodity in early nineteenth century America.  Before the first architectural schools were created in this country in the post-Civil War era (beginning with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1865), architectural training occurred through apprenticeship.  Likewise, most building design and construction was undertaken not by “architects,” but by master builders or those, like Owen Biddle, who considered themselves mere carpenter/builders.  The latter were dependent upon on-the-job experience and observation, and whatever drawings, sketchbooks, or limited publications they could acquire.  As a self-described “house carpenter and teacher of architectural drawing,” Biddle was interested in creating a guide for carpenter/builders such as himself, working in an era before the advent of pattern books and other useful references.  While a few such sources did exist at the time, they were of English origin and thus deemed inappropriate to the conditions found in America.  In his preface to The Young Carpenter’s Assistant Biddle writes,

 

"Having been for some time past in the practice of teaching the rudiments of Architecture, I have experienced much inconvenience for want of suitable books on the subject.  All that have yet appeared have been written by foreign authors, who have adapted their examples and observations almost entirely to the style of building in their respective countries, which in many instances differs vary [sic.] materially from ours.  Hence the American Student of Architecture has been taxed with the purchase of books, two thirds of the contents of which were, to him, unnecessary, when at the same time, in a large and expensive volume of this kind, he has not always been able to find the information he wanted."

  

Biddle was also interested in introducing formal training to Philadelphia’s young carpenters and thus may have seen his book as a supplement to classroom instruction.  Although much of the information provided by the Young Carpenter’s Assistant is, Biddle admits, derived from other sources, he takes his information largely from high-style English texts and makes it understandable to the average house carpenter, and applicable to local conditions.  As a member of the Carpenters’ Company of Philadelphia, the oldest existing trade guild in America, Owen Biddle was the first to propose the establishment of an architectural training program under the Company’s patronage, in January 1804.  Philadelphia was among the few American cities in which local institutions had begun to promote architectural education through various activities ranging from lectures to more formalized training.  Perhaps the first to teach architectural delineation in Philadelphia was Thomas Nevell, who gave private lessons “in the Art of Drawing Sundry Propositions in Architecture” in the mid-1760s, and briefly conducted a school about a decade later.  Although short-lived, Stephen Hallet announced the opening of a “School of Architecture” in 1796.  And, of course, Biddle himself was among those offering private instruction.  Despite these initiatives, Biddle’s proposal unfortunately was rejected.  It did, however, finally came to fruition in 1834 when George Strickland (brother of architect William Strickland) taught the first organized classes in architectural training at the Carpenters’ Company, using Biddle’s book as the basic text.

 

While Biddle’s intended audience was the young carpenter/builder rather than the nascent architect, in his book he emphasizes the value of architectural delineation and advocates for the use of elements of high-style classical architecture.  Based on Roman and Greek antecedents, the style was deemed an appropriate architectural expression for the new American republic; this Biddle understood.  As his preface states, “The four Orders of Architecture have been selected from such of the remains of ancient buildings as are supposed to be the most beautiful; and Palladio has been generally allowed to have been the best judge among the Moderns, who have given the proportions of the remains of Antiquity; the proportions in this book are pretty nearly the same as his.”   Biddle goes on to relay the necessary proportions for the various elements of each of the orders.  

 

Similar advice is given for determining proportions for elements such as mantles.  In addition to instructions for assembling roof trusses, Biddle also outlines the framing of arches and even that of domes.  As Lewis claims of Biddle, “He strove to elevate carpenter-builders to the level of their professional competitors.”  Carpenters’ guidebooks and training programs of the era were in part responding to growing public awareness about architectural styles, particularly early Classical Revival, and the need for builders to become more conversant with such designs.  It was during this period that architects began to distinguish themselves from amateur designers and carpenter/builders.  Among the marks of the professional architect was the ability to draw, producing for their clients visually compelling architectural renderings of the proposed structure.  In recognition of this, Biddle’s book discusses the how-to of architectural delineation. Biddle himself produced a very fine set of drawings for the Arch Street Meeting House (preserved at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia), including a perspective view of the proposed front façade.  

Publications such as Biddle’s were also responsible for the move towards a national architectural culture.

 

In the past, American architecture was defined by a vast array of regional building practices and indigenous materials.  As already suggested, local building traditions were generally communicated by word of mouth or by individual drawings and sketchbooks.  Emerging architectural professionals and arbiters of good taste were thus able to distinguish themselves, and their work, through their architectural libraries, collecting and utilizing books such as Biddle’s.  According to historian Michael Lewis, “A manual of architectural education in the eighteenth-century sense—in which builders and carpenters became architects by mastering drawing and, in particular, the drafting of the classical orders—Biddle’s book also anticipated the restless architectural culture of the nineteenth century, with its profusion of pattern books and increasing preoccupations with matters of fashion and style.”  Biddle himself had an architectural library of fifteen books, including those that he cites as sources of information in his own book: William Pain’s Builders Companion (London, 1762) and Peter Nicholson’s The Principles of Architecture (London, 1809).

Biddle’s guidebook was widely circulated during the first half of the nineteenth century.  As was the practice at the time, its publication was funded through subscription.  The majority of his original 198 subscribers were builders and carpenters in the Philadelphia region, many of whom were well-known in the profession, but also included subscribers from Lancaster and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Bristol, Rhode Island; and Lexington, Kentucky.  The book was first published by Philadelphia printer Benjamin Johnson in 1805, and another press-run or imprint soon followed.  A second imprint was released in 1810, followed by others in 1815 and 1817.  A second edition appeared in 1833, at which time the book was revised and supplemented by John Haviland, one of early nineteenth century Philadelphia’s leading architects.  Haviland included an introduction and twenty of his own plates in the new edition, aptly titled An Improved and Enlarged Edition of Biddle’s Young Carpenter’s Assistant.  This edition was likewise reprinted in 1837, 1854 and 1858; it was most recently republished in 2006.

 

Much like Biddle before him, Haviland acknowledged that most instructive publications of this sort were published abroad, and thus their content was “not calculated for the use of this country, or if so, the Editors have been ignorant of our customs, manners, and climate.”  The initiative begun by Biddle, and furthered by Haviland in the new edition, was to create working drawings that could be used as models for various building types—such as country villas, churches, banks, courthouses, etc.—that were suitable to the American milieu.  Haviland turned to Biddle’s work as one that exemplified his own intended purpose, and by doing so he demonstrates its value to American builders and architects, still in need of practical information a generation or two later.

 

                              Catherine Lavoie of NPS and the Arch Street Landmark Working Group