Architect Claude Bragdon: More Lives Than One

Andrea Reithmayr, curator of collections at the University of Rochester Libraries, explores the life and work of the modernist Rochester architect Claude Bragdon in this lecture. Today, Bragdon (1866-1946) is best known as a first-generation modernist architect, but he also wrote extensively about theater, film, color, yoga, feminism, Theosophy, and more. Although Bragdon?s architectural masterpiece, the New York Central Railroad Station in Rochester, was demolished in the 1960s, many of his designs still remain. Among these are nearly 100 residences, including the Bragdon House Bed and Breakfast at 527 South Main Street in Geneva and portions of the Nestor House, now Geneva on the Lake.
Andrea Reithmayr co-edited the book Claude Bragdon and the Beautiful Necessity, which contains both essays by scholars and a catalogue of the 2010 exhibition on Bragdon she curated at the University of Rochester?s Department of Rare Books & Special Collections. Copies of the book will be available for purchase following her presentation.