Henry Bacon - Mature Work

Mature Work

Bacon was very active as a designer of monuments and settings for public sculpture. He designed the Court of the Four Seasons, for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, and the World War I Memorial at Yale University. He collaborated with sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens on the Sen. Mark Hanna Monument in Cleveland, Ohio, and with Daniel Chester French on numerous monuments, notably the Lincoln Memorial's pensive colossal Lincoln. The Olin Library, one of Bacon's buildings at Wesleyan University, houses many of Bacon's documents and blueprints of the Lincoln Memorial.

Bacon rarely found time to design for private residences. There are two known residential projects that are clearly his work. The first is the La Fetra Mansion in Summit, New Jersey, designed and built under the firm Brite & Bacon from 1897 to 1900. Bacon skillfully integrated into a residential setting many of his signature Greek Revival and Roman Renaissance elements and proportions. The resulting elegance, peace, tranquility, and sense of divine protection exuding from the comfort and functionality of a private residence, is astoundingly masterful. The La Fetra Mansion was commissioned by industrialist Harold A. La Fetra of the Royal Baking Powder Company, which later merged with RJR Nebisco.

The other Bacon designed private residence is the Chesterwood House, which he designed for his friend, the noted sculptor Daniel Chester French, as his summer home and studio at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Its exterior bears similarity the "La Fetra Mansion"

Bacon was served as a member of the United States Commission of Fine Arts from 1921 until his death in 1924. In May, 1923 President Warren G. Harding presented Bacon with the American Institute of Architects's Gold Medal, making him the 6th recipient of that honor. Bacon died of cancer in New York City, and is buried at Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina.

In World War II, a Liberty Ship was named after architect Bacon: the SS Henry Bacon, which was commissioned on November 11, 1942, and was the last merchant ship to be sunk by the Luftwaffe during World War II.