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Richardson Style Continued:
Some of these works were actually finished after his death, and it is difficult to assess how great a part he may have had in the planning. A romantic in an age of romanticism, Richardson was outstanding in strength, daring, and the skillful handling of materials. The tremendous vogue for the Richardson style continued until superseded by Roman classicism at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, in 1893.Beyond a very popular paper in Johnson's Rambler, Richardson wrote nothing more of importance. He continued to prosper in his business, made money, became Master of the Stationers' Company, and eventually Law Printer to the king. He was a nervous, inoffensive, sensitive valetudinarian, delighting in the stimulus of feminine adulation rather than in the robust criticism of his own sex. His style is hopelessly pedestrian and diffuse; but it has an extraordinary cumulative power which attracts, and by degrees detains, the persevering reader.
Trinity Church in Boston, begun in 1872 and finished in 1877, shows the perfection of Richardson's individual style. This style evolved from his study of the Romanesque churches of southern France. The church is cruciform in plan, but the distance from apse Wall to facade is only a little in excess of the distance between the two walls of the transepts. A departure from the Gothic revival style popular after the Civil War, this highly personal Romanesque style of Richardson's had a powerful effect upon subsequent designs.
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