Michener Art Museum

Addison Hutton


Addison Hutton, Bucks County Prison, unidentified man at the entrance to the guard house, c. 1908, photo courtesy of Spruance Collection of the Bucks County Historical Society
ARCHITECT
BORN: November 28, 1834, Sewickley Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania
DIED: January 1, 1916, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Addison Hutton was just beginning his own practice as an architect in 1865 when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology opened the country's first professional school of architecture. Hutton's own training had been as an apprentice to his carpenter father and working in French Door's Factory in Salem, Ohio where he learned architectural drawing. In 1857, Hutton came to Philadelphia where he worked as Samuel Sloan's assistant until their partnership dissolved in 1868. Hutton worked independently and with various younger architects for 40 years, designing for a predominately Quaker clientele. While conservative, he was in step with the latest fads and fashions of the time. He used brick and stone favored in Philadelphia, incorporating them into the late Victorian style characterized by asymmetrical massing of elements, use of contrasting materials and combining various architectural elements from past and foreign cultures. He created buildings on a monumental scale that reflected the country's earlier search for the "sublime". Hutton's Bucks County commissions included the courthouse in Doylestown (1877), the Lenape Building co-designed with architect Thomas Cernea (1874), and the Bucks County Prison (1884), now the site of the James A. Michener Art Museum.