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058
LIBERTY TOWER
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(b Brookline, MA, 19 Aug 1859; d
New York, 27 March 1931). American architect. He spent one year at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology before enrolling in the Lawrence
Scientific School of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, in 1877. He
studied there until 1880 and was awarded a degree in 1881. Cobb worked
first for the Boston architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns. Having
won the competition of 1881 to design a building for the Union Club in
Chicago, Cobb moved to the city in 1882 and began an association with
Charles Sumner Frost (1856–1931), who had also worked for Peabody &
Stearns. Cobb & Frost’s most notable early commission, a castellated
Gothic mansion (1882–3; destr. 1950) for Potter Palmer, led to a number
of sizeable residential jobs in Chicago. Cobb’s popularity rested on his
willingness to ‘work in styles’, as Montgomery Schuyler observed. The
Shingle style was used in the Presbyterian Church (1886), Lake Forest, IL,
while Romanesque Revival was favoured for the Dearborn Observatory
(1888–9), Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, and the Chicago and
Alton Railway Station (1885), Dwight, IL. The two major commercial
buildings designed by the partnership are the Opera House (1884–5; destr.),
which incorporated offices to support the theatre, and the Owings
Buildings (1888; destr.), both Chicago. |