Savannah's Architects: Detlef Lienau

Hodgson Hall Interior

(​Savannah is known for its architecture. So it is no surprise when we discover that Savannah has had some of the country’s finest architects work here in our city. In the next few weeks I will examine some of these architects.
 
We begin with Detlef Lienau. He was a German architect born In Holstein in 1818.  He studied at German art centers and the L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He immigrated to the United States in 1848. He brought with him a diverse, creative and technically proficient style of architecture. He is credited with bringing the French style to American buildings. He is noted specifically for his mansard roofs with all of their stylish woodwork attached. He quickly became one of the most celebrated architects in America. One art critic has said, “It was Lienau, not Richard Morris Hunt, who was the first to bring to the United States a mind and a hand that was shaped, through contact with Henri Labrouste, by the French Beaux-Arts tradition.” He was one of the twenty-nine founding members of the American Institute of Architects.
If you are a fan of the movies and television shows of cult favorite Dark Shadows or have watched Stepford Wives you have seen one of his most famous designs. The mansion the main characters lived in is real and of his design. The real name for the mansion is Lockwood-Mathews Mansion (see below). It has been described as "one of the earliest and finest surviving Second Empire style country houses ever built in the United States." Today it is a museum celebrating the mansion and the social culture of the Victorian Age.
His only surviving residential building is called the Nuits (see below). It was built for Francis Cottenet, a wealthy New York merchant. It is a stone Italian villa-style house built in 1854. In 1977 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
He also designed the Sage Library for the New Brunswick Theological Library. The Gardner A. Sage Library was built in 1873. Lienau combined the elements of a Romanesque fourth-century basilica and a "Victorian bookhall" to create a space conducive to "the contemplation of God”. These are only an example of the extensive oeuvre of Lienau.
 
Here in Savannah his noted for the Headquarters of Georgia Historical Society, Hodgson Hall. The building was dedicated in 1876 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building was a gift of Margaret Telfair Hodgson and Mary Telfair as a memorial to William B. Hodgson. Hodgson was a member of the Society, American diplomat, and scholar. He was a master of thirteen languages. Although he did not attend college Princeton University awarded him a doctorate. Lienau’s design of Hodgson Hall has a main floor, reaching 36 feet with its three-story-high ceilings and two balconies for the Society’s library room. The room has vaulted arched windows designed to provide maximum light and ventilation. It is on the National Register of Historic Places
 
Another important contribution to Savannah was his design to change the Telfair mansion into the Telfair Academy of Art. His design opened up the foyer, added a sculpture gallery, a huge dramatic rotunda art gallery (see below), and behind the two galleries an educational space and art studio. His design is implemented so flawlessly that most people do not recognize where the mansion ends and the galleries begin. The art gallery contains some of the Telfair’s most revered paintings.
 
Although Lienau would also be responsible for the addition to the birthplace of the Juliette Gordon Low home, his Savannah legacy is found at the Georgia Historical Society and the Telfair Academy. His designs for these two important cultural buildings in Savannah makes his mark on Savannah’s cityscape indelible. He died one year after the Telfair Academy opened in 1886. He was buried in New York in 1887.

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Lockwood-Mathew Mansion or Collinswood of Dark Shadows

The Nuits

Telfair Rotunda or Art Gallery

Hodgson Hall