New York Public Library, central block, built 1897–1911, Carrère and Hastings, architects (June, 2003)

Carrere and Hastings, the firm of John Mervin Carrère (November 9, 1858 - March 1, 1911) and Thomas Hastings (1860 - 1929), sited in New York City, was one of the outstanding Beaux-Arts architectural firms in the United States. The partnership operated from 1885 until 1911, when Carrère was killed in an accident. Thomas Hastings continued on his own. The firm's founders, John Carrère (1858–1911) and Thomas Hastings (1860–1929) studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and worked at the firm of McKim, Mead, and White before they established their own partnership. Their firm was successful locally in New York City in the 1880s and early 1890s, and rose to national prominence by winning the competition for the New York Public Library in 1897. The firm designed many other lavish residences and public buildings in New York and beyond.

John Mervin Carrere was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the son of a prosperous French-American coffee trader. He graduated in 1882 from a course of studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he had met Tom Hastings through a student design project. The two men became even faster friends when they both worked as draughtsmen for the great architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White, before striking out on their own in 1885. Carrère married Marion Dell of Jacksonville, Florida, in 1886.

Carrere's life was cut short dramatically by a collision between the taxi in which he was riding and a streetcar. He suffered a brain concussion and never regained consciousness.

Thomas Hastings was a New Yorker from a colonial Yankee background; his father was a Presbyterian minister and president of the Union Theological Seminary. His grandfather had composed hymns, notably 'Rock of Ages .' Hastings abandoned his college preparation courses to work with the chief designer at Herter Brothers, the premier New York furnishers and decorators. He married Helen Benedict of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Carrère was an active member of the American Institute of Architects, a founding member of the Beaux-Arts Society of Architects . The admirable Carrère was outspoken and frank. Hastings noted his "seriousness and absolute fearlessness in speaking the truth under all conditions and at all times." Carrère was the one who spoke flawless French. Hastings was the genial partner who enjoyed excellent social connections, a prerequisite for an architect of that generation. Hastings was the articulate writer and publicist of their work.

Their first major commissions came from a parishioner of Rev. Hastings, Henry Flagler, the Florida developer, for whom the partners built the Ponce de Leon Hotel (1885 - 1888) in St. Augustine, Florida (now part of Flagler College), and the Hotel Alcazar (now the Lightner Museum), followed by a succession of St. Augustine hotels and churches.

After Carrère's death in 1911, Tom Hastings went on to design the Arlington Cemetery Tomb of the Unknowns and Henry Clay Frick's Louis XVI mansion on Fifth Avenue, now the Frick Collection, as well as residences for such distinguished names as Guggenheim, duPont, Harriman, even a 'poultry cottage' for William K. Vanderbilt . After World War I, Hastings designed the American Monument in Paris that memorializes the defeat of Germany at the Marne. Hastings outlived the Beaux-Arts world. Though he dressed up the Manhattan Bridge in a Beaux-Arts skin and helped clad conservative office buildings in Roman masonry, he denounced skyscrapers as "bad in style, definitely bad for city traffic and the health of the citizenry". He felt a zoning law should have been passed to limit their height to a maximum of eight stories as has been done successfully in Paris.

The joint career of the firm lasted from 1885 to 1911, The early work of the firm was robust and dramatic, Baroque in flavor, with well-designed somewhat overscaled details, an inheritance of their Ecole des Beaux-Arts training. After the World Columbian Exposition of 1892, the firm's syle became more chaste and refined, The classicizing surfaces of their work never compromised the functionality of the interior spaces and circulation. They took advantage of new technology, from structural steel to electrification, even centralized vacuum-cleaning.

Although they designed a few early tall buildings, the office's significant skyscrapers were not designed until the late 1910s and early 1920s when, in association with other architects, the office worked on the Cunard Building (1917–21) and the Standard Oil Building (1920–28), which stand across the street from each other on Broadway at Bowling Green.

One of the most beautiful and intact creation by the firm are the parks that surround the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon, Baltimore, which remain essentially as conceived by the firm more than a century ago. Their masterpiece is the New York Public Library, begun in 1897 and opened a few weeks after Carrere's tragic death. The firm rebuilt the East Front of the U.S. Capitol building, 1904, and the House and Russell Senate Office Buildings in Washington DC. (See also Carrère and Hastings).

External links

• Biographies and architectural careers
• Carrère and Hastings biographies, and the Life Magazine Building, now the Herald Square Hotel
• New York Public Library illustrated